Chapter V: Part 5

Such a cold wave may visit us only once in a lifetime and should not discourage us from carrying nut culture to its highest development. We must not think for a moment that other walnut sections are exempt from similar visitations. They have them in the Pacific Northwest, and in France and Germany.

As regards the walnut industry for Lancaster county or Pennsylvania in general, I am safe in saying that a fair percentage of the farmers are taking hold of it. This is because of the fact that the San Jose scale has practically destroyed all the old apple trees around the farm buildings, and, not wishing to have the building denuded of the customary shade and fruit, nut trees are planted instead. This is in reality the practice prevalent in France and Germany where they utilize every foot of ground to profitable account.

The life of an apple tree is from fifty to sixty years whereas a walnut tree is just in its prime at that age and destined to live for hundreds of years afterwards. Then again the ravages of the chestnut tree blight are destroying the cultivated paragons just as freely as the chestnuts in the forests, which in a few years will be things of the past, thus giving still more room for walnut and other nut trees.

The Northern Nut Growers Association was organized for a grand and noble purpose, that is to stand together shoulder to shoulder to devise ways and means to bring nut culture to a grand and glorious success.

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Mr. Corsan: The temperature Mr. Rush spoke of rather surprises me. Last year at Toronto it did not fall lower than 9 degrees below zero. We had summer almost until New Year's and then a very severe winter until April. I didn't notice any evergreen trees killed, but at Detroit, the Bronx and various other places, I never saw a winter so disastrous for killing evergreens.

The Chairman: Not only that but nurserymen all over eastern New England said they suffered greater losses last winter than ever before.

Prof. Smith: I would like to ask Mr. Rush if it would be possible to cut scions by December 1st, so as to escape danger from such great freezes.

Mr. Rush: I really have little experience in keeping scions. This fall I put some in the moist cold earth in the cellar. I think the experiment will be successful because I have known chestnut scions cut in the fall, to be kept under leaves in the grove till spring.

Prof. Smith: I should like to suggest that you try the following experiment; bury them, wrapped up in a gunny-sack or something, entirely underground where they will have absolute moisture and be shut away from the air. I have found that very successful.

Mr. Rush: Sometimes the trouble is they get too moist.

The Chairman: There is a principle here, and we had better keep down to principles as much as we can. That principle is that if the cells of the scions are distended with water a certain chemical process is going on all the while, because a scion is just as much alive as the red squirrel; it is a living organism. Now then, if the cells are a very little below normal dryness the chemical processes mostly cease, and that is better. We have to use nice judgment in avoiding having a scion so dry that its cells perish or so moist that its cells are undergoing chemical processes too rapidly. Our scions are cut, say, the last of November, then covered with leaves enough to prevent freezing and thawing. That will carry scions pretty well through the winter and perhaps is the best way, but we must never forget that in dealing with scions we are dealing with living red squirrels just as when we are dealing with pollen.

A Member: Are the leaves moist or dry?

The Chairman: The driest leaves in the woods contain more water than you think they do. They carry enough to maintain the life of the cells, if they are packed pretty firmly about your scions, and at the same time the scions are still allowed to breathe. I keep them above ground. I put a layer of shingles on the cellar floor, if I've got a bare ground cellar floor, and then a layer of very fine leaves like locust leaves, then a single layer of scions and then a good big heap of leaves over those, packed tight, a good big heap of apple leaves or anything you have at hand. Try it on the basis of principles. It is a complex question. You can't settle any of these questions off-hand. Every man who has had much experience has learned that he needs a whole lot more.

Prof. Smith: Have you had any experience in fixing up a bed of scions like that and putting it in cold storage?

The Chairman: Yes, but you must tell the cold storage people not to let them get too dry. Tell them you want them in moist cold storage, and to keep the temperature about 40.

A Member: We have found with walnuts that if you have the scions too damp they won't keep very long. If you have them just moist enough to hold them you can keep them all winter, maybe indefinitely.

The Chairman: If your cell is full of water the scion will work as hard as an Irishman.

A Member: I find that we have to graft them above ground, in the North, and if they are too moist when grafted they will dry up, but if kept dry they will grow, because they will remain in good condition until the sap comes up in the stock.

The Chairman: Yes, you must choose a position midway between too dry and too moist.

Mr. Littlepage: That is very important; they won't stand dampness.

Mr. Pomeroy: Wouldn't it be well to dip the cut end of the walnut scion in wax to hold the sap?

The Chairman: I am afraid that would stop its breathing. You are dealing with a red squirrel all the while, remember that.

Col. Sober: My method is this: I have a little room about six feet wide with ice packs on both sides and double doors. In that I pack my scions in this way: I take carbide cans made of iron and put damp sawdust, about an inch or so, on the bottom and then I pack my scions in the cans, cut end down, then I put the top on loosely. I have carried them over the second year in that way.

The Chairman: But you let them breathe all the while?

Col. Sober: Certainly, and they have but very little moisture. They are kept in a temperature of about 40 degrees.

Prof. Smith: How often do you wet that sawdust?

Col. Sober: Not once.

The Chairman: Well, that's in keeping with our theoretical basis.

Col. Sober: I cut scions any time between now and March. I don't take them out of storage until we use them. We graft up to the middle of June.

The Chairman: I found some hickory scions that had been accidentally overlooked, kept under leaves, and the buds in the cambium were perfectly good after two years. In regard to winter injury--in the vicinity of Stamford, Conn., the nurserymen reported greater losses of all kinds in nursery stock than they had had before in their experience. I noticed that some small branches of the Persian walnuts had been injured, and particularly where grafts had started a little late and had not lignified quite thoroughly I lost whatever grafts had not had time to lignify. Last winter the injuries in our vicinity consisted chiefly of two kinds; occasional killing of the small branches--this does little harm because, where the branch is killed and dies back for a certain distance, we have three or four more branches starting up, so that perhaps it is not sophistical to say that it does the tree good. We get a larger bearing area than if it were not for this occasional freezing of small branches. Another form of injury occurs in the spring. The sap will start to ascend when we have warm days in February and March; then a few cold days come and, if we have absolutely freezing temperature at night, this sap freezes and when it freezes it expands, as water does everywhere, and the result is a bursting of the bark. That is an occasional happening with all trees but particularly with exotics. One kind of winter injury has been overlooked in connection with the walnut. The very last thing which the tree does in the autumn is to complete its buds for female flowers. That is the very last job the tree has on hand and if the tree cannot complete the buds for female flowers perfectly, then a very little wood killing will make that a barren tree, although it appears to be a good strong tree. That covers the kinds of winter injury I have seen in the vicinity of Stamford, Conn.

(Here Col. C. K. Sober of Pennsylvania showed lantern slide views of his orchards of paragon chestnuts and his methods.)

The Chairman: We will have now Mr. Reed's address with lantern views.

A 1912 REVIEW OF THE NUT SITUATION IN THE NORTH

C. A. REED, WASHINGTON, D. C.

In taking up the question of the present status of the nut industry of the Northern States, we have to do more with what has not been accomplished than with what has been. Very little has been done toward developing the northern chestnut. What has been done has been mostly with the European species and so far that has not been very satisfactory. The European species is quite subject to the blight. The Japanese nut is not ordinarily of a quality equal to that of the American. It is thought, too, that with the Japanese chestnut the chestnut blight has been introduced, which has been so serious to our native species. The walnut has not become well established in the eastern states. So far, most of the European nuts that have been imported have been too tender to adapt themselves to our climatic conditions, and the filbert, when brought from Europe, proves quite subject to a blight that prevails everywhere with our native species, but with them is not so serious. In running over these slides, I will begin first with the chestnut. That is perhaps the best known species in this locality. That shows one of our native chestnut trees as it is familiar to you all in a great part of this territory under discussion, that is, the part of the United States east of the Mississippi River and north of the Potomac. That photograph was taken some time last June or July when the tree was in full bloom. The chestnut is one of the most beautiful of our native nut trees. This tree has the blight in one of the earlier stages and it is shown here merely to call attention to the disease, because no discussion of the chestnut industry at the present time can be complete without at least calling attention to the seriousness of that blight. That tree, perhaps, has not been affected more than two years, possibly one. Is that right, Mr. Pierce?

Mr. Pierce: About two. That's an 18 or 20 inch tree, isn't it?

Mr. Reed: Yes, sir.

Mr. Pierce: It must be an 18 or 20 inch tree to be so badly blighted at the top.

Mr. Reed: Two years, but you see it's pretty well gone. We come now to the Paragon, one of the first trees of that variety ever propagated. It was planted where it stands, by the introducer, Mr. Henry M. Engel, at Marietta, where they had quite an orchard at one time, but the blight is so serious that there are only a few specimens of the trees left. That tree is probably in the neighborhood of twenty-five years old. The next slide shows two trees of the same variety that we may possibly see this afternoon. They are on the farm belonging to Mr. Rush and they are about twenty years old.

Prof. Smith: What have those trees yielded?

Mr. Rush: They yield four, five, six and seven to eight bushels. You can see that they are not far from the barn and the roots run under that barnyard manure pile.

Mr. Reed: What would you consider an average crop?

Mr. Rush: They grow five or six bushels per tree.

Mr. Reed: The greatest attention that has been paid to developing the paragon chestnut in orchard farming has been on the plan Mr. Sober has just shown, by clearing away the mountain side and cutting down everything but the chestnut sprouts. This photograph was taken in a thicket where the underbrush had not been cleared away. Those are a good age now or perhaps a little bit older than we usually graft, aren't they, Mr. Sober?

Mr. Sober: Yes, sir; one or two years old. When they get to be three years old they are past grafting, according to my method.

Mr. Reed: This photograph was taken at Mr. Sober's a little over a year ago, taken in the rain and is not very clear, but it shows the distance between the trees at the time when these trees were four or five years old--is that right?

Mr. Sober: They are eleven year old trees.

Mr. Reed: Do you thin them out after they get that size?

Mr. Sober: Yes, sir, they should be thinned out more, but I hesitated on account of the blight; I have thousands that I could spare, but for fear the blight will take them out.

A Member: Do you cultivate the ground?

Mr. Sober: I don't cultivate it, I just pasture it. The land is fertilized, but not cultivated.

Mr. Reed: That is a photograph of a large chestnut orchard in this county. It is not many miles from here. I understand that owing to the blight and to the weevil, that orchard has not been satisfactory, and I was told two or three days ago that it was being cleared away.

The Chairman: What varieties?

Mr. Reed: Paragon and native stock.

A Member: Was that the old Furness Grove?

Mr. Reed: Yes, sir. That slide shows the congeniality, ordinarily, between the stock of the native chestnut and the paragon. The next slide shows a typical instance of malformation between the Japanese and native chestnut. I understand that this is not unusual at all. The Japanese, ordinarily, does not make a good union with the American sweet chestnut. That slide was taken in Indiana. It is a twenty-five acre paragon orchard owned by Mr. Littlepage and Senator Bourne of Oregon, planted in the spring of 1910. The next slide shows one of the trees in the orchard during its first season. Mr. Littlepage had to have them all gone over and the burs removed. They were so inclined to fruit during the first season that they would have exhausted themselves if the burs had not been removed. They made a very promising start, but I understand from Mr. Littlepage that a number of the trees have since died. Is there anything you'd like to add to that, Mr. Littlepage?

Mr. Littlepage: I haven't yet quite determined the cause of the trouble. Last winter I lost perhaps one-third of the trees with a peculiar condition. The wood under the bark was darkened. I sent some of them to Washington the year before to see if there was any blight or fungus and they reported there was none on any of the trees, but this winter perhaps one-third of the trees died down to the graft. A few, however, would sprout from the scion, giving me, of course, the grafted top again. It seemed to indicate, perhaps, a winter killing and yet I would not undertake to assert that that was the cause, but it was very serious.

Prof. Smith: Was the land low or high?

Mr. Littlepage: High land along a hillside, very excellent land for chestnuts.

Mr. Reed: Sandy loam?

Mr. Littlepage: No, it's a hilly clay with a considerable humus and set in clover.

The Chairman: Which way does it face?

Mr. Littlepage: South.

The Chairman: That is rather bad.

Mr. Littlepage: I don't know. I have some over on the other side of the hill and I don't know whether the killing was greater on the other side or not.

Mr. Reed: We have before us a view of the original Rochester and its originator, Mr. E. A. Reihl, of Alton, Ill. Over in the Court House we have on exhibition nuts of that variety which most of you have seen. You are aware, probably, that it is a native chestnut. It is one of the largest and best of the native chestnuts and originated in southern Illinois, where so far the blight has not spread. It gives considerable promise for the future. We come back now to Lancaster county to a chinkapin tree, a hybrid chinkapin. The original tree stands in a forest in this county, and as you notice there, it is a very good sized tree. You might think from the looks of the photograph that that is a chestnut, but the nuts are small and borne in racemes, so they are typical chinkapins.

Mr. Lake: One parent was a chestnut?

Mr. Rush: We don't know; it's a native tree; it's a hybrid.

Mr. Lake: It's a supposed hybrid.

Mr. Reed: Yes, the chestnut and chinkapin grow close together.

The Chairman: What is the form of the nuts?

Mr. Rush: Round like a chinkapin. I think it was a chestnut on a chinkapin.

Mr. Lake: If it is a chinkapin, what is there to indicate that there is any chestnut blood in it?

Mr. Rush: The size of the tree and the fact that the nut matures with the chestnut. The chinkapin is about three weeks earlier than this variety of chinkapin.

Mr. Reed: That photograph is typical of the Rush hybrid chinkapin. We take up the butternut now. So far as we know, there are no named varieties of the butternut; there cannot be until some good individual tree is found which is of sufficient merit to entitle it to propagation by budding and grafting. It is one of the best known nuts in our field, especially in New England; it is more common there than it is further south.

This slide shows the native butternut in the forests of southern Indiana near the Ohio River. Of course, those trees in forests like that don't mature many nuts. It is not in the forests, ordinarily, that you will find individual trees of sufficient merit to entitle them to propagation. It is the tree in the open that has had greater opportunities than are afforded in the forest.

Mr. Lake: Are there any coniferous trees in that forest?

Mr. Littlepage: No, that's an alluvial bottom, Mr. Lake. There is quite a long bottom by the creek where the butternut grows profusely. We have the same tree on the farm that Senator Bourne and I own. Hundreds of those trees grow in the woods there. It's rich alluvial soil.

Mr. Lake: The fact that it is rich alluvial soil does not usually bar coniferous trees; it may in your section.

Mr. Littlepage: There are none there.

Mr. Reed: The slide before us shows typical black walnuts that are almost as common, perhaps more so, in many parts of the area under discussion, than the butternut. This photograph was taken in Michigan where the trees are growing along fence rows without cultivation or special attention. No one knows whether the nuts of those trees are of special value or not. It merely shows the starting point for improvement in the walnut. We come now to the Persian walnut, which Mr. Lake will discuss more fully in a few minutes. This is one of the trees we will probably have an opportunity to see this afternoon. It is between Mr. Rush's nursery and the station, on the right hand side as you are going out. Just above the top of the fence you will notice a dark line which indicates the point of union. The Persian walnut was grafted on the black stock. The Persian is of slightly greater diameter. Now we have Mr. Rush in his walnut nursery. These are seedling walnuts in their third year.

Mr. Rush: Second year.

Mr. Reed: Second year from the time of planting. You will notice the luxuriant growth. The next slide shows the methods of propagation. This is the first step in the operation. The knife is similar to those on the tables in the Court House. The next slide shows the second stage in the operation where the bark has been lifted and Mr. Rush holds the bud of the Persian walnut in the fingers of his left hand, and the next slide shows the bud in position and being held firmly by a finger of the left hand. As soon as it is in position like that, Mr. Rush lifts the pencil--the instrument that he holds in the right hand and folds the bark back over the new bud and then cuts it on the outside, so that he makes a perfect fit. If anything, the bark of the black walnut overlaps slightly the bark of the bud, and the third step in the operation is the wrapping. Below, right at this point, is a completed operation. That was done in August, using buds of the present season's growth, and in about how many days is it that you take off the wrapping?

Mr. Rush: About two weeks.

Mr. Reed: In about two weeks take off the wrapping; and about how much longer is it before you get a growth like that?

Mr. Rush: About two weeks more, three weeks more.

Mr. Reed: In about four or five weeks from the time of the operation a growth like that is not uncommon.

Prof. Smith: When is the top cut off?

Mr. Rush: When I see that growth is taking place I cut the top off in order to encourage the growth to get strong enough for the winter. Of course our object is to keep the bud dormant until the following season, perfectly dormant, but sometimes they do make a growth and, if they do, cut them off at the top and force them. You will not get that bud to grow next summer, but another bud starts out below that branch and gives you your tree.

Mr. Reed: That one dies then?

Mr. Rush: Yes, sir, invariably dies.

Mr. Reed: There is one of Mr. Rush's own growing of the Rush walnut, a little tree which, in its second season, matured two nuts. That photograph was taken just about the time the nuts were ready to be gathered.

Mr. Corsan: I noticed in the nurseries at the Michigan Agricultural College, a lot of black walnuts that were sun-scalded. They were too far apart. Can anyone tell us anything about this danger of sun-scald to the trunk?

Mr. Reed: Well, in this particular instance, the tree stands right next to a fence, so it is protected from the hot sun during a large part of the season. Perhaps Mr. Rush could tell us whether he has had any trouble with sun-scald.

Mr. Rush: Not at all, none whatever, never.

The Chairman: There is, in some localities, a great deal of danger from sun-scald. In the vicinity of Stamford, Conn., most of the English walnuts will sun-scald more or less unless we look out for that and give them shade; mostly in the trunk below the branches.

Mr. Lake: How about the nuts?

The Chairman: I haven't seen any scalding there.

Mr. Reed: These are all interesting points and I am glad to have them thrown in. Mr. Rush can tell us about this slide. It is one of the cut-leafed varieties of walnut from California that he is propagating. It is more of an ornament than it is a commercial nut, isn't it?

Mr. Rush: It is both combined. It is very productive and very hardy. The nut is not quite as large as the Nebo. It is the cut-leafed weeping walnut. The first tree that came from California cost twenty dollars. It is very ornamental.

Mr. Reed: This is a view of a seedling Persian walnut orchard in Bucks county, this state, some twenty or thirty miles north of Philadelphia. It is now about ten years of age and is owned by Mrs. J. L. Lovett, of Emilie. Some of the nuts of this orchard are on exhibition over in the Court House. The orchard was not given any special cultivation at the time this photograph was taken. The nuts from the trees, of course, are very ununiform, being seedlings, and the bearing of the trees is not especially large, but the apparent thrift and vigor of these trees gives a good deal of ground for looking forward to a walnut industry in the eastern states.

Prof. Smith: Do you know the origin of the seed?

Mr. Reed: No, sir, we do not. The nuts from which those trees were planted were obtained and planted by Mr. Lovett who is now deceased.

The Chairman: One of the most important features, it seems to me, of grafting, is the idea that we can graft from prolific trees. The majority of trees, of walnuts, hickories, anything you please, are not remarkably prolific, but in grafting you select a tree that is prolific as one of the most desirable of its qualities.

A Member: You say that this grove was given no particular cultivation; are they careful to allow all the foliage to remain on the ground where it drops?

Mr. Reed: I couldn't answer as to that.

A Member: Mr. Sober, do you do that?

Col. Sober: Yes, sir.

A Member: The point I wanted to make is that that is probably very much better than any cultivation that could be given.

The Chairman: The matter of cultivation is one we have got to settle in this country. I have been over the walnut orchards on the Pacific coast, in the East and in Europe, and I find three entirely separate and distinct methods of treatment. On the Pacific coast, the rule is to cultivate every year and irrigate where they can, but to cultivate, at any rate, whether they irrigate or not. In the East, where people are supposed to be very industrious, we have adopted the lazier way of letting the trees grow in sod; but that is not so bad if we follow the principle brought forward by Stringfellow of letting the leaves all decompose, and adding more fertilizer and more leaves and taking away nothing. In France and Germany and England, where the trees are cultivated, particularly in France, where they are best cultivated, we find two methods; first, keeping up clean cultivation and adding a little lime every year and, second, add lime without the cultivation. One great feature of the treatment of the tree in France, where the best walnuts come from, is the addition of a little lime every year, even if it's a limestone ground, and that may possibly account for the delicate character of the French walnuts and the reason why they have the first call in the market. I don't know that that is true, but it seems to me, at least, a collateral fact, and collateral facts often mean something.

Mr. Pomeroy: Judging from my own experience I think that that orchard would be producing now two or two and a half bushels per tree each year if put under cultivation and given the care of an ordinary peach orchard.

Mr. Reed: These are seedling trees, you understand, in that orchard we showed. This is a Persian walnut tree in Mr. Rush's front yard. I've forgotten the variety.

Mr. Rush: That is the Kaghazi.

Mr. Reed: Now we come to the original hickories. This is one of the earliest hickory nuts propagated, in fact, it's about the only one so far. That tree is owned by Mr. Henry Hales of Ridgewood, N. J.

Prof. Smith: Have they fertilized it?

Mr. Reed: No, not especially. It stands on good, fertile soil but I think no attention has ever been paid to it in the way of cultivation.

Prof. Smith: Have you its yielding record?

Mr. Reed: It never made large records; as I recall it now, it has never borne more than a few bushels at any one time, perhaps two bushels.

The Chairman: One reason is because it has been cut back regularly every year for scions?

Mr. Reed: Yes, that's true.

Prof. Smith: Over two hundred years old, then?

The Chairman: I doubt if that tree is over fifty or sixty.

Mr. Reed: That's what I should say,--somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty or sixty years old.

Mr. Reed: That slide shows a typical grafted tree in Mr. Hales' garden. It's a nice shapely, thrifty tree about seven years old and only recently came into bearing to any extent. The nurserymen have had great difficulty in propagating it until recently. Now that Mr. Jones has come up from the South and he and Mr. Rush are getting down together earnestly in the propagation of these northern trees, we will probably have more of them, but in all the years that Mr. Hales has been working with that particular variety, he has never been able to get more than a few trees grown in the nursery, so it is not disseminated to any extent.

The Chairman: Do you think that this will be like the pecan and hickory, that some varieties will bear fifteen years after grafting and other varieties two years after grafting, for instance, as extremes?

Mr. Reed: Probably so, the same as it is with other fruits.

The Chairman: It seems to me that that is what we may fairly anticipate.

Mr. Corsan: Like Northern Spy apples and other apples.

Mr. Reed: This slide is a little bit out of order. It's a native Persian walnut tree that stands in this county. It is owned by Mr. Harness. Mr. Rush has propagated it under the name of Geit. That photograph was taken in the fall of 1911. Last year it suffered greatly during the extreme weather, but it came out again and made a very good growth. This is the original Rush tree that we may be able to see this afternoon. And this is the original Nebo that we had hoped to be able to see but will probably not succeed. It is some seven or eight miles from Mr. Rush's home and we will hardly be able to make it this afternoon. The slide before us shows some European filberts that were planted by Mr. Hales and up to the present time they are doing nicely although they have never fruited especially heavily; but there is no blight.

The Chairman: How many years?

Mr. Reed: I think those are ten to twelve years old. Perhaps you have seen them.

The Chairman: Yes. There are two features connected with the filbert that we ought to discuss right here. One is the tendency to its being destroyed by the blight of our American hazel, which extends to Indiana, and another is the fact that it blossoms so early that the female flowers or the male flowers are both apt to be killed by the frost. All the members of this Association ought to get to work to bring out a variety which will have the blight-resisting features and the later blooming of the American hazel.

Mr. Reed: This slide shows a filbert we will probably be able to see this afternoon. It is in Mr. Rush's door yard and is still pretty young. I believe it has not borne of any account.

Mr. Rush: It has borne a little.

The Chairman: How old is it?

Mr. Rush: I think it's about five years old. It is a Barcelona.

Mr. Reed: The next slide is taken in the orchard of Mr. Kerr at Denton, Md. At one time he had a very nice orchard of these filberts, but the blight has gotten in and has about wiped out everything. In a letter from him this fall he said he had very few nuts of any variety, although he did have a few. A letter that came this week from J. W. Killen, of Felton, Md., said he had found filberts to be about as unprofitable a nut, as any he could have grown.

We will spend a few minutes now running over the pecan situation. We can hardly omit it altogether because there are so many people in the northern states who are interested in the pecan in a financial way. The chart before us shows first the native area. This part here is the portion of the United States in which the pecan is a native. You notice how far upward it extends, almost to Terre Haute, Indiana, and across southern Indiana along the Ohio River, and it is right in here, about where the pencil indicates that some of our best northern varieties have originated. Mr. Littlepage and W. C. Reed and others have shown us nuts over in the Court House that originated there. The Busseron and the Indiana are the two most northern. They are a little way north of Vincennes. No varieties so far of any merit have originated in Illinois. While we have the map of Illinois before us, I would like to point out the place where Mr. Riehl originated the variety of chestnut we referred to some time ago. Down in more southern Illinois is where we find Mr. Endicott. This darkened area along the southeastern part of the United States, and extending away up into Virginia, shows the area to which the pecan has been planted with more or less success. This area extending down over the Piedmont and up into Virginia and West Virginia, is the mountain area to which the pecan is not adapted. You never find pecans on the uplands. This thick, heavy area shows the territory within which the pecan has been most extensively planted. It is not common down in southern Florida. You notice, too, that over here in Texas there have been very few orchards planted to pecans. North of these shaded areas, anywhere up in Ohio or Pennsylvania or New York, the pecan has not shown any adaptability or has not shown sufficient adaptability to justify commercial planting. Whatever planting of pecans is done in the area north of the shaded portions there must be considered as experimental.

The Chairman: The southern part of Texas is actually in the tropical zone. It would be interesting to know if we have the pecan actually growing in the tropics.

Mr. Reed: We have more or less vague reports that it is growing down near Brownsville. I think Mr. Littlepage told us the other day of a friend of his who is planting pecans.

The Chairman: Brownsville is very close to the tropics.

Mr. Littlepage: Mr. Yoacum told me he had a grove down there that had not been a success so far. I know that quite a number of people have discussed the question of planting pecans in that section.

Mr. Reed: This is one of the largest of pecan trees; it is the largest that it has ever been my personal privilege to see. It has a circumference of between 18 and 19 feet and a spread of about 125 feet. We estimated that it was about the same height. It stands on the west side of the Mississippi River, some distance south of Baton Rouge.

Mr. Littlepage: What is the approximate water level below the ground?

Mr. Reed: It is quite near the surface.

Mr. Littlepage: I thought so. There are conditions you will observe that are unusual. In lands where the water level is near the surface, there is a tendency in the tree to shove out a lot of surface roots. You can travel all over the pecan belt of Indiana and will never see a pecan tree that does not look as if it had been driven in the ground with a pile-driver, but I have noticed that you find those spreading roots where the water level is near the surface of the ground.

Mr. Reed: It is interesting to know that right near this tree were other large trees, nearly as large, that were blown over, and they showed no tap-roots, but merely the surface roots, This slide shows a pecan bloom. The pistillate bloom is clear up on the terminate growth; the staminate, like other nut trees, is on the growth of last season and comes out somewhat in advance of the pistillate, necessarily.

We come now to the wild pecans of Texas. The recent census figures show that fully three-fifths of all the pecans produced in the United States come from Texas. This photograph shows the native wild pecans along the Colorado River. Here is the pecan as a park tree. This picture was taken in Llana Park, New Braunfels, in west Texas. One of the nuisances in pecan trees is illustrated in the upper part of this photograph; you will notice the Spanish moss that grows so densely on the pecan trees if neglected. Unless the moss is kept out it gets so dense that it smothers the fruiting and leafing surface, so trees that are densely covered with that are able to make leaves only on the terminals. You notice in the rear the leaves of bananas that grow there throughout the entire year.

The Chairman: I have noticed that the mistletoe was a bad parasite on the pecans in some regions. Have you found that?

Mr. Reed: Yes, that is true; that is one of the pests of the pecan. This slide shows a typical Texas scene. The wild pecans have been gathered and are brought into town and are waiting the buyers. You will notice right here is a bag that has been stood up and opened, waiting for a buyer, the same as we see grain in the streets of northern towns, and here are pecans on their way from the warehouse to the car. The next slide shows another step; they are on their way now from Texas to the crackery or the wholesalers. The crop of pecans in Texas alone usually runs from 200 cars to 600 or 700 cars. This year the crop is small and probably not over 200 cars, so the prices are going up. This is the pecan crackery in San Antonio, having a capacity of 20,000 pounds a day. The pecans are cracked by machinery and the kernels are picked out by hand. This slide shows a native pecan tree. The one in the foreground was from across the river near Vincennes. It is one of the first northern varieties that was introduced, but it is now superseded. The next is the original tree of the Busseron. The nuts from that tree are on exhibition over at the Court House brought here by Mr. Reed. The tree was cut back quite severely several years ago to get budwood and has not made sufficient top yet to bear normal crops again. This is the original tree of Indiana. Beside the tree is the introducer, Mr. Mason J. Niblack, the gentleman with his hand by the tree. Now we come to the original Green River, one of the northern Kentucky pecans. It is in a forest more than twelve miles from Evansville across the Ohio River in Kentucky. The trunk of that tree is typical of others in the forest. There is a pecan forest of perhaps 200 acres, from which everything but pecan timber was removed several years ago.

The slide before us shows the trunk of a supposed chance hybrid between hickory and pecan. The next slide shows a grafted tree of that variety. It is interesting to note the vigor of this hybrid. It is quite the usual thing to get added vigor with hybrids. This is one of the most beautiful, dense, dark green trees that I have ever seen in the hickory family. This tree is in northern Georgia, but it is not so prolific as the parent tree.

The Chairman: Does the shell fill down there?

Mr. Reed: No, it does not.

The Chairman: It grows very vigorously in Connecticut. It is a perfectly hardy hybrid, but I am afraid I shall only be able to use the crop for spectacle cases.

Mr. Reed: This shows one of the most common methods of propagating the pecan, the annular system. It is a slight modification of the system Mr. Rush applies to the propagation of the walnut. This shows one of the tools designed especially for annular budding, the Galbraith knife. The rest of the operation you already understand. It is merely placing the bud in position and wrapping the same as Mr. Rush does.

The Chairman: I would like to ask, does it make a great deal of difference whether the bud ring is half an inch long or an inch and a quarter long?

Mr. Rush: It does not make any difference. The union takes place on the cambium layer. It is not made on the cut.

The Chairman: Then the length of the bud is not of great importance?

Mr. Rush: No, it is of no importance at all.

Mr. Reed: This slide may be a little bit misleading. Two nuts matured in the nursery on a scion that was inserted in February. The scion was taken from a mature tree and the fruit buds had already set and had enough nourishment to carry them through the season so that they matured. That is no indication of what may be expected in the way of bearing. It is one of the freaks. This is merely a view of a fourteen-year old pecan orchard in south-western Georgia, a 700-acre orchard owned largely by one person. That is the orchard belonging to Mr. G. M. Bacon, a name probably familiar to some of you. Those trees are set 46 feet, 8 inches apart, each way. There are twenty trees to the acre, just beginning to bear now. That photograph was taken some two years ago showing the first step in topworking. The top has been removed, as you notice, and the next slide shows the subsequent water-sprouts which are later budded. The lower branches were left in the first place to take up the sap while the new head was in formation. They have now been removed. Our next point might be brought out in connection with this slide. One of the typical, sub-tropical storms, not unusual in the Gulf States, swept over this area in September, just as the nuts were beginning to mature and defoliated the trees and whipped off the nuts. The sap was still in circulation, and the varieties that respond most readily to warm weather, that start earliest in the spring, sent out new leaves, so that foliage was foliage that ought to have come on the next year, that is, it was exhausting next year's buds. The same year the tree sent out its blossom buds, so it had no fruit the following season. This slide shows one of the pests in the pecan orchard, the twig girdler, at work. The insect deposits its egg under the bark up at about that point, then goes down below girdles the twig, and it breaks off, goes to the ground, and the insect comes out, goes into the ground and comes out the next season. There are a good many drawbacks that are occurring and more are to be expected the same as with other fruit. There are probably no more setbacks to pecan growing than there are to the growing of other fruit, but this is one of the things. This orchard was set in land bordering the Flint River and at the time this picture was taken the water stood at the depth of three feet. It probably did no harm, because it didn't stay more than a week or ten days. Sometimes it stays longer and in such cases it is a serious matter. In Texas, floods come up like that into the branches of the trees, so high in some seasons after the nuts are formed, that the nuts deteriorate and fall to the ground. In such cases it is a pretty serious thing. (Applause.)

The time for which the "scenic" was engaged having expired, the delegates returned to the Court House and the regular program was resumed.

The Chairman: We will next hear from Mr. Lake.

Mr. Lake: My topic, aside from the slides, was concerning the result of the work at Arlington this year. It is all written out but I don't propose to read the paper at this stage. I have not been a teacher and lecturer for 25 years for nothing, and I don't propose to kill the few friends I have among nut growers by talking them to death when they are hungry and want to see something interesting. I will send this paper in due time to the secretary, and give way now to Mr. Jones. I did want to show you on the slides a few illustrations of cross fertilization between the Japanese and the American walnut, but we will put those in engravings and put them in the Northern Nut Growers' Journal, so that you will see them there with better satisfaction. Now one or two words about these Persian walnuts. These are eastern grown seedlings, the best that I have been able to pick out. Here is an Oregon grown nut. That is the ideal type for dessert walnuts. This is the Meylan. There is only one better, and that is the real Mayette, of which we grow very few in the United States, but we are growing considerable of the Meylan. Whether we can grow this successfully here or not, I am not certain, but it is well worth trying. The better type of our nut seedlings in the east are from the Parisienne. We must get a nut something like this that you can crack between your fingers, not one that is sealed so hard that it requires a hammer, and must get one with a very good quality of meat. One great advantage to the walnut grower in the East will be that he can get his crop on to the Thanksgiving market, which is the cream of the market--something the Western or European nut grower cannot do. So if we can grow a nut reasonably fair in quality we can expect excellent results.

The Chairman: Mr. Jones, will you give us your points now?

Mr. Jones: Dr. Deming yesterday asked me to give a little demonstration of grafting and I have brought along a sort of transplanted nursery on a board, so that I might do so.

(Here Mr. Jones demonstrated methods of grafting the pecan.)

The Chairman: Tell us about the wax cloth, Mr. Jones.

Mr. Jones: We use that over the cut.

The Chairman: How do you make your wax cloth?

Mr. Jones: We take a roll of this, possibly three or four yards long, very thin muslin, roll it up and drop it in the melted wax.

The Chairman: How do you make that wax?

Mr. Jones: We don't measure the ingredients, but I think it varies from four to six pound of rosin, to one pound of beeswax and a tea cup full of boiled linseed oil and about a tablespoon of lamp black.

Prof. Smith: What do you use the lamp black for, Mr. Jones?

Mr. Jones: To toughen the wax so that it will not crack and so that it will adhere better.

A Member: How do you get your excess of wax off the cloth?

Mr. Jones: We just throw the rolls on a board and press them.

Mr. Reed: I believe you would find it easier to tear it up into strips than to put it in rolls. We have been using that method. We ran short of cloth and I went to town and got some and tore off a piece about 8 or 9 yards long and folded it up into strips that wide and dipped it in the pure beeswax and pressed it on a board and it was ready for work.

Col. Sober: I take just a common corn cob and wind it on as you would on a spool, then, while the wax is warm, I dip it in; you can have the cloth half an inch wide or an inch wide just as you please. My way of making wax is, I take two pounds of rosin, one pound of beeswax and half a pound of tallow. I find that stands all kinds of weather.

Mr. Jones: You prefer the tallow?

Col. Sober: Yes sir, I do.

The Chairman: Beef tallow or mutton tallow?

Col. Sober: I prefer mutton tallow; two pounds of rosin, one of beeswax and half a pound of tallow. Then you want to boil it very slowly and thoroughly, and pour it in cold water.

A Member: Do you unroll this roll of cloth?

Col. Sober: I have a machine to turn it on just the same as you would on a spool.

Mr. Jones: The strip goes through the wax?

Col. Sober: No, you wind that, then when your wax is warm, you drop this in but secure the ends, then take it out and lay it by till it's all saturated; then I tear it off as I use it. I find that is the most convenient thing, and I generally get calico, that is pretty closely woven, but is rotten so that it tears easily.

Mr. Jones: Did you ever use raffia for tying your grafts?

Col. Sober: No sir, I have not.

Mr. Jones: We have used it on pecans and walnuts for the reason that it doesn't have to be untied as it bursts off with the growth of the tree.

Col. Sober: This wax I have tried on thousands and thousands of grafts and it stands all kinds of weather. You can get wax that's been there 8 or 10 years and you can take it off now and use it.

Mr. Jones: That is one advantage of using the tallow; linseed oil will dry out.

Col. Sober: Tallow is the best; that's been my experience.

A Member: If linseed oil is not used immediately or very soon, it gets hard.

Mr. Jones: It's all right in wax and all right in cloth, too, if you keep it in a damp place till ready to use.

Mr. Hutt: Can you use parafine in place of beeswax?

The Chairman: Have you tried this method on the other hickories besides the pecans?

Mr. Jones: Yes sir.

The Chairman: You've got shagbark to catch fairly well, have you by this method?

Mr. Jones: Yes sir.

The Secretary: How did your pecans and hickories do last summer?

Mr. Jones: I've forgotten the exact percentage that grew. Some died after they had made a growth of several inches. I think I left too many limbs growing on the hickories. Some of them made quite good growth.

A Member: When is this kind of grafting done?

Mr. Jones: We wait until the sap is up.

The Chairman: What do you cover the top with?

Mr. Jones: With wax. We leave this open at the bottom, for the reason that the sap can get out and not ferment. If it holds the sap, it will sour you know.

The Chairman: How far down does your wax go, Mr. Jones?

Mr. Jones: Far enough to cover up the wrapping.

A Member: Does that work on pecans as well as hickories?

Mr. Jones: Yes sir. To show the value of this patch, we have grafted rows side by side and got 80 per cent where we used this patch and 34 per cent where we waxed it over solid and left no ventilation or exit for the sap.

A Member: Isn't that to keep the wax out of the cambium layer?

Mr. Jones: Yes sir, it does that too.

Prof. Smith: Are there any fine points about this trimming, other than mere wedge?

Mr. Jones: No sir, only it's thick on one side, as you will see so that it wedges tightly.

A Member: Isn't it a fact that you can use three and four year pecan wood just as well?

Mr. Jones: Yes sir, two year wood or three will give you better results than one year.

Col. Sober: What time in the season do you graft?

Mr. Jones: The 20th of April to the 20th of May here.

Prof. Smith: What stage of stock do you prefer?

Mr. Jones: Well it doesn't matter, you can graft these after they have made a foot of new growth, if you've got a good dormant scion; you could put in a graft any time in the summer, perhaps.

A Member: How long do you leave on the paper bags?

Mr. Jones: Until the scion begins to grow. Sometimes I have made a mistake and left them on until they grew up and curled down.