Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

I am presenting a description of the new inarching method promptly, before obtaining more extensive statistics, in order that members of this society may apply it experimentally next spring. Should it succeed according to present promise, it will allow nurserymen at least two months of grafting season, and they will not have to rush their work. In addition it will perhaps open up a method of grafting which may be employed freely with nut trees in the northern states.

Another unusual method for propagating nut trees consists in facilitating the development of adventitious buds from the roots of some particularly desirable tree. I do not know at the present time how many species of nut trees will develop adventitious root buds, as my experiments have been confined to roots of the shagbark hickory, beech, and hazel. Segments of roots of these three species when placed in sand, allowing an inch or so to protrude, will develop adventitious buds if they are kept warm and moist. Various lengths of root segments have been employed, ranging from two or three inches up to two or three feet. The beech and hazel will apparently start adventitious buds from almost any sort of root segment; but in the shagbark hickory, adventitious buds started best upon root segments which were more than six inches in length and more than half an inch in diameter.

Hazels may be propagated in an unusual way from the cuttings of branches, very much like roses, if these cuttings are placed in sand and kept warm and moist, although they do not strike nearly so readily as rose cuttings. I have not given much attention to this experiment in its practical bearing, but have simply observed that hazel cuttings will strike roots if they are particularly well cared for.

Experiments with hickories and with walnuts from branch cuttings were a failure, but they remained alive so well and formed such good callus, that I believe someone with steam-heated hot-house beds at his disposal may by experimentation succeed in propagating some of these trees by cuttings, particularly from herbaceous growth of the year, in August. As an amateur plant physiologist I foresee what the more scientific plant physiologists may do for this subject.

One unusual method for propagating nut trees may perhaps be described more correctly as a method for propagating unusual nut trees, and it opens a vista of distant horizon in horticulture. The discovery was due to an accident, and I claim no credit beyond recognizing the significance of an odd phenomenon.

Three years ago some pistillate chinkapin flowers which had been covered with paper bags, were left unpollenized because I did not have pollen enough to go round. The bags were left in place because I was busy with other things. When these bags were removed at the end of about three weeks, it was found that the flowers had set a full complement of nuts without having received pollen. These nuts continued to develop and were fertile. Some of them presented a peculiarity in growth of the cotyledons and germ, both of which grew and protruded beyond the involuere before the nuts were ripe, indicating that the germ had not come to a state of rest during its usual period in the nut. This freak appeared in only eight of the nuts, a larger number having normally resting germs.

In all of these nuts it seemed to me we were probably dealing with parthenogenesis. In order to make sure that no pollen had been carried in by any sort of insect, I made check experiments last year, covering pistillate flowers so carefully that there could be no question about their having received no pollen. It was found that the chinkapin would develop nuts freely in this way, and that the bitternut hickory, shagbark hickory, and pignut (Hicoria glabra) would develop nuts sparingly in this way.

I speak of the matter as parthenogenesis in advance of microscopic examination of the ovules,--which will be made next year; but parthenogenesis seems to be the most likely explanation. If this is the case, the embryo has not been formed by the conjugation of two gametes, as generally occurs in the algae and higher plants. It is possible that the embryo in the unpollenized chinkapins does not originate from the female gamete at all, but that it originates from a formative budding of other cells in the ovule. We can speak of parthenogenesis only when the embryo originates from a female gamete alone, _i. e._, without fusing of protoplasmic mass of the female gamete with protoplasmic mass of the male gamete.

Some of the nuts which I am calling parthenogens have developed plants this year. The chief peculiarity to be observed is great disparity in size between plants of the same age from the same parent tree. Some of them grow very much more rapidly than the average plant of the species, and others less rapidly when subjected to similar conditions of soil, temperature and moisture.

We assume in biology that one of nature's objects in having two sexes is to prevent early senescence of the allotment of protoplasm for a species, and to avoid undue intensification of characteristics of one parent. This is apparently nature's device for maintaining a mean type. For man's purposes we may now make artificial selection of individual plants which represent intensification of desirable characteristics of one parent. The growing of trees from unfertilized ovules will apparently open an entirely new field in horticulture, and no one can prophesy the result of selection of trees which present intensification of desirable characteristics of a single parent through several successive generations.

THE POSSIBILITIES OF NUT CULTURE IN UTAH

LEON D. BATCHELOR, UTAH

I suppose the majority of you have very little or no idea of agricultural conditions in Utah. Perhaps some think it is a desert. When I went to Utah, three or four years ago, the first thing that struck my mind forcibly in traveling around through the state was the absolute lack of any nuts. Being born and brought up in Massachusetts, I naturally noticed this, as one of the pleasures of my boyhood days consisted in gathering chestnuts, hickory nuts, hazelnuts and beechnuts. We found them all around the fence corners and pastures and in the woods, and I missed this in Utah, and it occurred to me immediately to look up the cause of the lack of nuts in the state and I found no good reason except that nature has not seen fit to plant nuts there. There is no reason in climatic or soil conditions which will make it impossible to grow many of the hardier nuts, and even, in the southern part of the state, to grow almonds and the tenderest walnuts. Climatic conditions are not unlike some of the best fruit sections in New York. Peaches and apples are grown successfully and as soon as you get down to the central and southern part of the state, many of the hardier European grapes are grown. In the extreme southern part you can grow any of the European grapes grown in California, so nothing in the way of climatic conditions exists which would prevent the development of nut growing in this state. The soil conditions vary widely, all the way from the sandy loams to the deep soils and gravels, and it is possible to find thousands of acres of deep, rich loam soil. Some of it is five to twenty-five feet deep. Of course the rainfall in that semi-arid region is insufficient for nuts but that can be supplemented by irrigation water, so that is practically no disadvantage. Since I have been there I have tried to interest some of the fruit growers in the planting of a few different varieties of the hardier nuts, and I have distributed among them some of the walnuts and this year I am bringing in some of the old shagbark hickory nuts from Massachusetts, and I am going to distribute them among my friends and acquaintances there to be used to raise shade trees--trees around the home and pastures--and I find there is considerable interest manifested in the last few years in nut planting. The nut industry has a little mite of a start there in a way--that is, there are a few seedling trees distributed from Logan on the north to Arizona on the south. Seedling Persian walnuts fruit from Brigham City on through Salt Lake and Provo, and practically all of the nuts that are produced there in the state are of seedling origin. It is reasonable to expect that some of the best grafted varieties will be very much better. It seems to me that the state has every natural condition for success in the production of nuts. If not in a commercial way we can do a great deal to our advantage in planting nut trees as shade trees. I simply want to let you know that there is a man out there in the mountain section who is interested in nuts and going to help the cause along.

THE DISEASES OF NUT TREES