Persimmon Wilt

Persimmon wilt is very destructive to the native persimmon (Fig. 4). It is caused by the fungus Cephalosporium diospyri, which was described in 1945 by Bowen S. Crandall[13]. The fungus grows in the wood of the trees, producing discolored streaks. Most trees are rapidly killed, with yellow, wilted leaves making quite a contrast to the normal green trees.

This disease was found in spots from central Tennessee south to the Gulf, east into Florida, and up the coast into North Carolina. The American persimmon seemed to be in danger, as this quickly killing disease appeared to be spreading. The limited work on this disease was discontinued because of the war and the transfer of Mr. Crandall to Peru. However, this summer Mr. Crandall and the senior writer spent two weeks surveying some of the old infections and nearby territory, and were pleased to note that the disease had made very little progress into new territory. On several small areas where the disease was present some six years ago practically all of the larger trees had been killed, but some new small trees were coming up. At Chattanooga National Park, where the wilt was rampant about six years ago, it is continuing to kill trees, but many new ones are coming up. No northward extension of the disease in Tennessee or North Carolina was noted in the limited time spent in inspection.



What does the disease mean to the grower of grafted persimmons, both native and Oriental? The Japanese or Chinese persimmons do not grow as well on their own roots, although they are quite safe that way as these two species are very resistant to the wilt. In the East, most of the Oriental persimmons are grafted on American root stocks, and trees in one case were killed by the wilt fungus getting in on the susceptible root stock. No attempts to control the wilt have been made, and these recommendations are based on procedure with other diseases and on knowledge of the spore production of this fungus. An owner of a valuable planting of grafted trees in a region where the disease is present should watch his trees for the first indication of trouble. The planting will be safer, if there are no nearby native trees; and if native trees are growing nearby and cannot be removed, they should be given a general inspection. Prompt removal and burning of any infected trees found is advisable. The fact that usually fungus spore production does not take place until after the tree has been dead for a while makes the prospect for control better than with most diseases. Care should be taken not to bring in scions or trees from infected areas.

Most members of the Northern Nut Growers Association have only a few grafted persimmon trees, usually located outside of the infected zone and therefore in little danger. Persimmon scions and trees should not be shipped from infected to healthy regions. The disease has not been reported in nurseries, but it could occur there because it attacks small trees.

[Footnote 13: Crandall, Bowen S. A new species of Cephalosporium causing persimmon wilt. Mycologia 37 (4): 495-498. 1945.]

Thyronectria Disease of Honeylocust

Honeylocust is widely distributed both in native stands and in plantations. Some farmers plant this species or leave native trees in their pastures for the pods, which have a high sugar content, up to 38 per cent. J. C. Moore, of the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station, reported preliminary tests indicating a per-acre yield of livestock feed equal to that of oats.

In many areas the growth of honeylocust is seriously affected by a canker and twig fungus, Thyronectria austro-americana. The disease often kills many twigs and branches and sometimes results in death of the tree. In most areas it causes only slight injury. Bowen S. Crandall and Jesse D. Diller have made a few observations on the prevalence and damage by this disease, which is present from New England south into the Gulf States and west into the Great Plains States.

The fungus causing this disease is morphologically somewhat similar to the chestnut blight fungus, having two spore stages produced in reddish-brown pinhead-size fruiting bodies on the bark. Cankers are produced on the smaller branches, but they usually are not noted until some of the affected ones wilt and die. In the exposed outer wood of a branch cut above or below the canker there are reddish-brown streaks several inches long, indicating that the fungus has grown in the vascular system.

As no control experiments are known, recommendations are based on general knowledge of sanitation. If an owner has only a few valuable planted trees, he should cut off the diseased parts a foot or more back from the lower edge of the affected bark and burn or bury them in the soil. If he has many trees scattered over extensive pasture areas, it is questionable whether any action other than elimination of the more susceptible trees is justified. We will be interested in the results obtained from control work.

* * * * *

President Davidson: Now I will turn over the chairmanship of the meeting to Mr. Chase, who will have charge of the Round Table Discussion.



Round Table Discussion on Chestnut Problems

SPENCER B. CHASE, Presiding

Panel of Experts: Max E. Hardy, Carroll D. Bush, H. F. Stoke, G. F. Gravatt, J. C. McDaniel.

Mr. Chase: Gentlemen, in the last hour and a half we have heard perhaps more about chestnuts from qualified specialists than we will ever hear in any meeting of ours, and we requested each one to withhold questions until this point. So now we will have some questions from the floor, please.

Mr. Slate: What is the present status of breeding chestnut species for timber purposes?

Mr. Gravatt: The prospects are coming along. We have one cross between a none-too-promising Chinese chestnut and an American chestnut, with a good bunch of hybrids and they are different from other hybrids. It looks like they will stand up against blight. They will have blight canker growth from 10 feet down to the ground but it doesn't go into the cambium region. It is too early to evaluate the hybrids, but they do have the upright form and rapid growth of the American chestnut.

Now when we take these first-generation hybrids, cross them back with the Chinese and get more resistance, as we have done so many times in the past, we lose that rapid and more upright growth habit of the American chestnut. But we have a lot more work to do before we are ready to say anything final on this question.

Dr. Arthur H. Graves, formerly at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden is now consulting pathologist at the New Haven, (Conn.) Experiment Station. We have been working with him and partially supporting his chestnut breeding for a good many years. He has a lot of hybrids up there. We expect to have something later, but have nothing to release yet.

A Member: Do you have any sprays to control diseases and insect pests in the tree that when they go into the soil won't destroy our ground friends?

Mr. Chase: Mr. Gravatt?

Mr. Gravatt: I don't know what insects you are after, in the first place. We have a lot of trouble with Japanese beetles. Around Washington, Dr. Crane's and my plantings there would be defoliated if they weren't sprayed for Japanese beetle control, and it is the same way with filberts.

A Member: The same sprays have a tendency to work against most of the pests, do they not? Of course, DDT will take one, the arsenate of lead takes another, Black Leaf 40 another, but if we had a spray that we can use around on—well, not limited to the chestnut—that would be neutralized in the earth. Now, we have a good deal of friendly bacteria and insects in the soil that we want to keep.

Mr. Gravatt: I would say that I am a pathologist, and insect work is out of my line.

Mr. Chase: Does anyone else have a comment on that? Dr. Cross, did you hear the question?

Dr. Cross: I didn't get his question.

Mr. Chase: Would you stand and repeat your question?

A Member: Is there a spray that we can use for combating the insect pests of our trees that when it is washed off and goes into the soil doesn't kill our soil friends. We have the friendly bacteria in the soil, as well as insect and worm life. Do we have a spray that will be neutralized as it hits the soil so we can spray the tree and not kill our lower friends?

Dr. Cross: Sorry, Mr. Chase, that's beyond me.

Mr. Gravatt: You are thinking of arsenate of lead poisoning the soil where you keep on spraying with it?

A Member: Yes.

Mr. Gravatt: I think DDT may build up a little in the soil, but it is broken down, isn't it, Dr. Crane?

Dr. Crane: Yes, DDT is broken down and it is not a fungicide and it is not a bactericide. It is an insecticide that kills insects through affecting the nervous system, according to my understanding of it. I am not an entomologist, but that's what the entomologists say. So far we haven't any evidence to my knowledge of any build-up of DDT in soils that has been detrimental. I don't know what the situation would be if DDT was used to the same extent as arsenate of lead. It was not uncommon for some growers to put on anywhere from 6 to 15 lead sprays in a season in order to control codling moth, as they used to do in certain apple orchards, particularly in the West.

I was talking to Dr. Van Leeuwen just a day or two before I had to leave for the meeting, and he is not ready yet to say anything about it, but he has already tested some very promising insecticides as far as the control of weevil is concerned. This DDT and some of the other new insecticides are very easily decomposed, and, of course, that's one of the disadvantages of them. Under certain climatic conditions they would need to be less readily decomposed to give control over a longer period. I know that we have not had enough experience to know all about those new spray materials.

Mr. McDaniel: There has been one instance reported where DDT in the soil was injurious to fruit plant growth. That was Goldsworthy's and Dunegan's work on strawberries. Where they used large amounts of technical DDT in the soil, they found that it inhibited the growth of the strawberry plant. I believe that's the only instance I've heard of, where soil application of DDT hurt growth of fruit plants. Benzene hexachloride, and some other chlorinated hydrocarbons, and parathion actually appeared to have a stimulating effect on the berry plants.[14]

Mr. Frye: Why would there be any more danger of affecting the soil in a chestnut orchard than there would in the apple and peach orchard by spraying seven, eight and ten times? That's the only question that arises with me.

Mr. Chase: Let's get back to chestnuts specifically, now, gentlemen.

Mr. Kays (Oklahoma A. & M. College): Since I don't come from a chestnut area, my impression of the nut samples supplied by Mr. Moore of Auburn, was: "I'd like them if they had salted them." I am wondering if it wouldn't have affected their rancidity if they had been treated—salting material added, prior to or in the process somewhere along the line.

Mr. J. C. Moore: I'd just like to say I have tried putting salt in the water, to boil the nuts with salt, and then I have tried shelling them and sprinkling salt, and I find that salt does not add anything to the flavor. Tasting the nuts raw, I, too, get the impression salt is what I want, but I haven't been able to add it satisfactorily. I don't say that it cannot be done.

Dr. MacDaniels: Mr. Chairman, in view of the whole situation of chestnut incompatibility of stock with scion, what would be the position that we in the Northern Nut Growers Association can take in advising people what kind of chestnuts they should plant? Should they be encouraged to try to get grafted trees? What should be our position?

Mr. Chase: Mr. Stoke, would you care to comment on that?

Mr. Stoke: You are asking me to stick out my neck, and it seems as if I have always done that. The Chinese chestnut is in the Johnny Appleseed stage, in my opinion, and we are investigating to find out the best varieties, that is, the best specimen, best performance, best quality, best in blight resistance, growth, and other qualities and when we winnow out all we have and arrive at the best, we are going to find—now, this is just my personal opinion—I will say that for myself I'd rather have one acre of the best selections we have budded or grafted—asexually propagated, than five acres of seedling trees as a financial good bet, because I say that one acre of our very best produce virtually as many nuts as five acres of seedlings. I have trees from seed I imported through the Yokahama Nursery Company, and I think it came from Korea. The nuts run very small, and compared with those I am sure the others will pay much better, and I think it would be profitable to pay three or four or five times as much for your trees if you get good trees of good, known varieties and grafted or budded.

Don't misunderstand me. We shouldn't ask the American public to wait until those can be furnished, because they won't wait, and they shouldn't. But I say as a commercial proposition, to plant trees commercially, I would exercise caution and I would encourage my customers to exercise caution unless they are willing to follow up and do their own top working later on, and a Chinese chestnut doesn't top work as readily as a black walnut.

Mr. Chase: I don't believe that's quite the answer he wanted. The comment that I think Dr. MacDaniels is after is what position should the Northern Nut Growers Association take in regard to planting seedlings or planting grafted stock. Is that the point?

Dr. MacDaniels: Yes, it seems to be seedlings against grafted stock.

Mr. Stoke: May I answer? I don't think the Northern Nut Growers Association should take any position. They should present the facts and let the buyer decide. I don't think we need to go on record, and I don't think we should. There is too much diversity of opinion.

Dr. MacDaniels: Between ourselves—and this is not an academic question—we get continual inquiries regarding the Chinese chestnuts and what should they plant and where can they get the trees, and so forth. It isn't good enough in most of these cases to write several pages explaining what the whole situation is, the if's, and's, and but's. But I just wonder what the opinion is of the people who know best in this regard. Who has a good orchard of 20-year-old grafted Chinese chestnuts? Where are they? I don't know: I am asking for information.

Mr. Chase: Dr. Drain, are those trees you have grafted trees or seedling trees?

Dr. Drain (University of Tennessee): They are seedling trees. They have produced a rather nice quality nut, and we have enjoyed propagating seedlings from them. That's really all we know. We haven't grafted any.

Mr. Chase: Mac, would you care to comment on this?

Mr. McDaniel: I am ashamed to say that at present we have no grafted chestnut trees on my own north Alabama farms. We have about 50 trees that are 8-year-old seedlings from imported (Chinese) nuts, growing next to a commercial peach block, and find the production quite variable on the different trees. I am aiming at top-working most of these with the named varieties, beginning this year. At present I can't answer the question of seedlings vs grafted trees. I have been advising people who are interested in trying them in Tennessee that for their first planting (to test the adaptability of their locations) they can get the seedlings generally quite a bit cheaper than the grafted trees. With the experience we have had over the State and the high mortality of trees, both grafted and seedling—killing of the tops and in some cases the whole tree—the seedling might be best economically to begin their experimenting with. I am not recommending that anyone plant seedlings commercially, but just in a small way for trial. They are well worth a trial anywhere peaches are doing well. When we find a suitable site, then is the time to think about using the more expensive grafted trees.

Pres. Davidson: I just want to give a little bit of my experience along that line. Way back in 1934 I planted a few seeds that I got from Amelia Riehl. They were nuts of the Riehl hybrids. [Ed. note: Mostly American—European crosses.] She named one Dan Patch and another Gibbons. They are now about 13 years old. Each of them is bearing burs this year. They have borne burs, a few of them, in the past, but no nuts. So far in 1948, the burs that have fallen to the ground, of course, have no nuts, but whether the burs that are still on the trees have nuts I don't know. I want to know whether those trees are normal—-whether a hybrid of that kind is likely to be sterile or not. That's another matter that might be discussed. Anyhow, you are taking a chance, no question about that, when you plant seedlings.

Mr. Stoke: Mr. Chairman, if you will pardon me for saying one more word, here is a suggestion I will make. Now you can check for yourself. The whole thing hinges on whether we can get permanent grafts on the tree and get the characteristics in the grafted tree that the parent has—in the good selected tree. Now you take the reports sent us by Mr. Hemming; you take the reports of the station at Albany—of individual trees in those plots. You take the worst trees and you will find they are nothing but boarders. You take the best and you will find they are very profitable. You take the average and it will fall somewhere in between.

Now, why keep a lot of boarders that don't pay—free boarders—or why use run-of-mine seedlings, if we can graft successfully—and some people like to dispute that—and produce nothing but the best? And you can check it on any of those tables. [Mr. Hardy's paper.] We have a few tables in our former Reports. You can check it and figure it out for yourself.

Dr. Crane: To clear up this situation I wanted to ask Mr. Hardy a question, and then I wanted to make a statement. In this report from the 1938 and 1940 planting at Albany, Georgia, in the Brown tract in 1947 there were 188 trees that bore crops, but that planting consisted of 274 trees planted in 1938 and 60 trees planted in 1940. Why weren't those 274 trees plus those 60 trees represented in the 100 with the yield records of 1947?

Mr. Hardy: Dr. Crane knows the answer, so I will let him ask the question and answer it, too.

Dr. Crane: In 1936 we planted 1,000 trees of the same Peter Liu selections on the Station farm at Beltsville, Maryland. They were of the same number and letter designations as others that were distributed to cooperators. Out of the thousand trees that we planted on the Station farm some of them came into bearing at four and five years after planting. But the nuts were small in size and were not much good. With one or two exceptions, out of that planting there were none bearing satisfactorily to suit us after ten years. In 1945 we applied the ax, because a Chinese chestnut tree, from an orchard standpoint, if it's not in bearing in ten years after planting is not worth keeping. We haven't got time to wait. So out they came. And in addition to that we have had other trees that have done the same thing.

Now, out of this 274 plus the 60 at Albany, Georgia, we have three trees that we now figure are good enough to be raised to a variety status, plus possibly two or three more. Now, you can figure your percentage of good trees when you plant seeds.

Dr. Overholser: Mr. Chairman, may I ask a question, whether these three seedlings to which they propose to give variety status have been propagated in sufficient number that they are able to give distribution in other areas.

Mr. Hardy: Dr. Overholser, they are not available yet in quantity. That same answer is part of the answer I wanted to make to Dr. MacDaniels. The present situation in the chestnut industry is that there are very few nurserymen who know how to propagate nursery grafted trees successfully. There is going to have to be quite a bit of work done on that. If some of you here know how to do it, I would like to know, myself. There are a lot of nurserymen who would like to know, according to the reports I have, how to graft or bud a nursery chestnut tree.

As long as the situation is that way I would say to recommend seedling trees because of their low price, but—and every grower who has trees can fall in line with this—the seeds should be from properly culled-out orchards of the highest type, leaving nothing in there producing nuts or pollen but what is the highest type. I think all of you who have more than one type of chestnut in your plantings should cull them all down to the pure Castanea mollissima. I don't mean by cutting out the whole tree, but go ahead and top-work them. If they won't take the top, then cut them out. But if you can top-work them and the grafting is good, you can increase your planting of good trees in that manner.

The improved quality of the seed will improve the quality of seedlings going to the buyer, and the chances of a higher percentage of good seedlings showing up will be greater. I think it will improve the industry through a period of years.

Dr. MacDaniels: I think I agree with his position. In fact, that's exactly what we are telling the inquiries that come in: At the present state of our knowledge, better try seedling trees.

But I didn't hear anybody get up and say they had an orchard of 20-year-old grafted chestnut trees. I have tried to get them, I have grafted successfully, I suppose, 7 or 8 different varieties on many different Chinese stocks that I have bought, or had given to me, and numbers of grafted trees. I have nothing left. They grow fine, 7 or 8 feet the first year, 3 or 4 feet the next year, then they go along for a while and then they die. In other words, there is an unsolved problem there, so that it seems to me at the present state of our knowledge we had better admit it and say, "If you are an amateur, you better get the best seedling trees that you can and wait awhile."

Mr. J. C. Moore: I just want to give some data on some of the class work at Auburn with Chinese chestnuts. We were studying Chinese seedlings, and we attempted to bud those Chinese chestnut seedlings, and on some of the larger seedlings we top-worked. We had some 3-year-old seedlings, and we top-worked the limbs. We put in patch buds, and we put in T-buds or shield buds, and in practically every case on some of the trees the buds stuck beautifully.

In June and again in August, with another class, we had the same results, either with T-bud or shield bud or patch bud. Some of the seedlings wouldn't take the buds at all. I can't think why one seedling would take 100 per cent of the buds and another seedling growing right by it wouldn't take any buds.

Mr. Weber: The oldsters here will remember Colonel C. K. Sober, one of our former members who propagated what he later named the Sober's Paragon chestnut. It was a grafted tree and apparently it was grafted successfully on native stocks, and it grew until the blight got it.

Dr. MacDaniels: I am not talking about European or American, I am talking about Chinese chestnuts.

Mr. O'Rourke: It may affect the nursery industry. The nurserymen are looking to the Northern Nut Growers Association, Federal bureaus and State experiment stations to guide them in the propagation of desirable trees. We know now that the Chinese chestnut is becoming quite prominent, is becoming quite popular in many sections of the country, and many nurserymen are now getting requests to supply the public in their states with Chinese chestnuts. They, in turn, would like to know what they should do. If they sell Chinese chestnut trees which have been propagated vegetatively and they only grow five, eight, 10 or 15 years and then die, it's going to come back on the nurserymen. They should like to know whether they should do that or whether they should rely upon seedlings which they can develop into pure lines as best they may.

Now, that really is a serious question. I am wondering from what Mr. Hardy has told us today if it may not be an understock problem, and if it is an understock problem—if there are certain strains of understock which are compatible with certain scions, possibly we should ask for some investigations, some more research to be done in this direction.

Then possibly, on the other hand, we should also ask that certain investigations be carried out so that we will have some idea of the inheritable characters that may be "fixed" through seed selection. I really think that this seed selection should be very seriously considered, and that nurserymen in particular and the public in general would benefit greatly by such consideration.

Mr. Hardy: Mr. Chase, may I make this suggestion: I think it is something that a number of individuals could try, perhaps they should be backed up by agricultural institutions, either Federal or State. We are all interested and concerned with stocks, and I think a large part of our trouble with grafting chestnuts is a stock-scion relationship.

We have some top-worked trees 13 years old that are just as healthy, just as normal as they can be. We have some top-worked trees of various ages below that. The graft-union is good; they are just as healthy and continue to be as productive and vigorous as the parent tree. Where there is incompatibility we run into difficulties very shortly. To a large extent I think we are involved with two problems in the trouble with incompatibility, or perhaps I should say the dying, of grafted trees. One is a stock-scion relationship, the other a mechanical problem.

I think there are these two types of incompatibilities. Now, as to the mechanical part—that can be improved through developing the art of grafting or budding, whichever works out best. The other will require quite a lot of study, perhaps the development of certain strains of the root stocks for certain scion varieties.

I have made this suggestion to two or three. I have started the work myself by putting out with friends two or three or four trees. After they get up to a size where I can top-work them, I will top-work with two varieties. Perhaps I will put Nanking and Kuling on two trees at one particular place. Two or three miles away I will put Kuling and Meiling on two others. At another place I will put Nanking and Meiling. I will get reciprocal pollination, because the chestnut is necessarily cross-pollinating.[15] I can then plant seedlings from both parents, each pollinated by the other. Then by grafting those varieties onto those seedlings stocks I can find out whether there is any reason to go into the work of developing seed orchards of two varieties whereby Meiling pollinated by Kuling may produce the best, most vigorous, most uniform seedlings on which Kuling can be propagated. And by propagating Kuling on such seedlings—the seedlings of such inheritance—we may get 100 per cent of good grafts.

The industry needs a lot of help, and I think it is a matter of time until those things are worked out, but it is going to take time and money and plenty of good effort to work out that problem. I think it probably should be worked out.

Mr. Bush: I don't like the word "incompatibility", and I hardly believe in it, and I presume most of you know that. I have Chinese on European stock, and it has been there for 20 years or more, grafted high. I have Chinese on Japanese grafted under the ground. I think a good deal of our damage is done from wind, from cold, and from sun on the graft just above the ground. I suspect that grafting at that point is what is the matter with many trees in the TVA plantings and others that had low survival. Of late years when I did the grafting (in the last five or six years) I cut the stock underneath the ground and stuck the graft under the ground and seemingly I got far better results. Some of those graft failures showed up. I laid that largely to mechanical damage, and again with the Japanese, particularly, I laid it on the time when the sap comes up. Call it what you will, but the timing of the growth of the two trees is different and we had trouble there. I have grafted some very widely different kinds of chestnuts on the tops of other chestnuts, and am getting them to grow. When we see the break start, we take a twig from below and break and put it above, cut through the cambium and nail it on and they will heal over and the defect disappears. So, again, it seems to be mechanical.

Mr. McDaniel: I believe from observations on a number of trees, particularly Dr. Richards' in West Tennessee, that a large part of our so-called incompatibility in this State is due to winter injury to the stock. So what Dr. Richards meant, evidently, was that he was rather successful in getting a "take" from last summer's propagation but the stock then failed below the union this spring. I saw his trees, and they had the typical discoloration of bark and the dying of various bark areas—these girdling the whole tree in a number of instances. [See Richards' paper in this report.] I would agree in general with what Mr. Bush has just said, but there are certain other instances in which we think the only word for what we see is "incompatibility."

Mr. Slate: What are the prospects of planting those low-grafted trees rather deep?

Mr. Bush: I think that if the roots started to die the grafted tree would start a root above the graft. The sap is going up from the root. It will go down and the root will start above the graft and go out above the graft, thus getting the tree on its own root.

Mr. Stoke: Since we got onto grafting, do you mind if I say a word? Here is a four-branch, top-worked specimen that I chopped off and brought with me. This first tree limb was still alive and had nuts on it, the second was dying and a third dead. This fourth union was still alive, but it was badly damaged, too. That's Illinois 31 -4 on Japanese. Here is another graft of Illinois 31 -4 on Japanese in a small tree, and if that's poor union, I am no grafter!

Mr. Hardy: Mr. Stoke, may I ask you this: Is this [small graft] on the same tree as this? [Indicating larger tree first referred to.]

Mr. Stoke: No. Those four grafts, you see, all went bad. This one is in perfect condition. But I am having a hard time keeping that Illinois 31 -4 alive. I had a union on mollissima three inches in diameter and as perfect as this, two years ago. Last year it began to bulge at the point of union. The top wasn't feeding back to the root, and this year it is in bad condition,—foliage very small and it put on a very full crop of burs which will never mature, and it's going to pass out. It is about four inches in diameter now.

Last year to try to beat this thing I cut out the crown of a small mollissima at the below-ground level and put in several grafts of this same Illinois 31 -4, and I got a nice growth, at least four feet high. When I dug it up to transplant it—it was right in my garden—I found I had a large callus more than an inch and a half in diameter at the union but no roots. I reset it, and I haven't ventured to see whether it was all right or not. This spring I tried again.

I have four little trees, one as high as my head, the others smaller. I grafted each one on branch roots just as they lay in the ground. Didn't dig them up and they grew nicely, and along in July I went around and spaded them deeply and thought perhaps that would produce roots. About a week ago I examined one. I have a magnificent callus but no roots yet above the union. What the ultimate results will be I don't know.

With that particular hybrid I want to try one more thing. I want to grow seedlings of the European chestnut, cut them below the ground, graft Illinois 31 -4 on the root and it may make a union that will not fail, because the European is a very robust grower, and by being grafted under the ground the stock will be away from blight organisms.

[Editor's Note: Mr. C. A. Reed is naming this variety (Ill. 31-4) "Colby" in honor of the originator, Dr. Arthur S. Colby.]

Mr. Hirschi: I would like to say I put on hybrids similar to that Illinois 31 -4 and they grew the first year, and just made a bulky knot right at the point of union and died the second year.

Mr. McDaniel: What was that combination?

Mr. Hirschi: That was mollissima stock.

Now, speaking about the varieties—this is in Oklahoma—I have tried practically all the older varieties and I have tried some Abundance grafts this last year. I have some Abundance grafts that are two years old that are producing. They have the most vigorous growth of anything, and in our climate we have to have vigor.

I grafted a lot of the Abundance scions on Hobson seedlings. I started out to grow an orchard from Hobson seedlings, and I found out that out of 50 splice grafts of Abundance that I put in Hobson seedlings in 1948, forty-eight grew, and they were put on rather late, in April. That's a little late for us. I have the idea—I don't know whether I am right or not—that if the Abundance proves out as our best variety, we can grow seed for stock of the Abundance and then graft the Abundance back on the seedling from Abundance. If there is so much to this incompatibility, I should overcome it by doing that very thing.

Personally I think it is a crime that thousands of trees—almost millions—are being put out by nurserymen as seedling trees, and if you will note in their price lists they have "6 to 12 inches" and "12 to 18 inches", "2 to 3 feet" and "3 to 4 feet." I venture to say that those are probably all the same age. How would you like to plant some of those 12-inch trees? Somebody is going to get hurt!

Mr. Bush: I'd like to say that you can propagate the Chinese chestnut by layering if you want to, and that will put it on its own. Put a wedge on it or girdle it and keep it damp through the summer.

Pres. Davidson: I think Dr. MacDaniels' question is still not answered. I do think that if a nurseryman sells a seedling he ought to definitely say that it is a seedling and not merely that it is a "blight-resistant chestnut," or something of that sort. He should actually tell the public what he is selling.

Now, then, there seem to be reasons why in some instances a man is justified in planting seedlings when it comes to Chinese chestnuts, but when it comes to the black walnut or filbert or some of these other things, they are still selling seedlings without labelling them as such. I think we should be on record against that practice, because it takes us five or six years, or ten years sometimes, to find out that we have been gypped, and it is so easy to gyp the public when you can't find out about it any sooner than that.

Mr. O'Rourke: I quite agree with Mr. Davidson that the nurserymen should state that a seedling is a seedling when it is a seedling. And I am sure Mr. Hirschi will corroborate that the American Association of Nurserymen is exerting all the influence they can to that end. Is that right, Mr. Hirschi?

Mr. Hirschi: Yes.

Mr. Bregger: I would like to ask, if planters for some years yet will have to rely on seedlings, is there a chance that from certain parents or certain varieties we can get a larger percentage of good seedlings than from others? How much has it been studied and is there a known result from the parent trees in the percent of what their seedlings can do?

Dr. Crane: I wish I could answer that one. It is a matter of time, to find out the seedling characteristics reproduced by a certain descendant. But we know that there is a difference in uniformity of trees in the way they grow, but as far as bearing is concerned, and the type of nut produced, we haven't had enough time yet.

It's just like this: We have made selections for rootstocks in which we have selected trees that were good, strong and vigorous—the most vigorously growing trees that we have known about, and yet at the same time produced a small nut or medium-sized nut that we could use for the production of rootstocks. And we have made progress on that, and we have demonstrated that there is a very marked difference between the graftability or budability of seedlings from certain parent trees. We have demonstrated that some varieties are much easier to propagate than are others. But as for the proper combinations of stock and scion, we still haven't got enough data to recommend any. We know that there are differences, but it is going to take quite a long while, at least four or five years or more, before we know.

Now, there is just one other thing that comes up on propagation. We have found that if you bench-graft and make the graft into the transition zone between root and top just like the old method that the apple propagator used when he piece-root grafted and then plant deep, you can get a hundred per cent of the grafts to grow. In such cases the scion may root and the top will be on its own roots.

Well, there are a lot of these tricks to learn as time goes on. I don't think that we should worry too much about this graft union problem. We know that this Carr variety is a bear-cat. It is the one that gave us so much trouble. When we tried to propagate that one we had a real, nasty cat by the tail. But on the other hand, in answer to Dr. MacDaniels' question if we go out to Dr. J. Russell Smith's plantings up at Round Hill (Virginia), we can see a lot of the oldest grafted trees that I know of anywhere in the country, and the unions are just as smooth and just as slick as anyone would want to see. They are not 20 years old; I don't think there was ever a mollissima chestnut grafted 20 years ago. The first grafting that I know of was about 15 years ago, maybe 18.

Mr. Stoke: In 1932.

Mr. R. C. Moore: Thomas Jefferson grafted European chestnuts.

Dr. Crane: No, I am talking about Chinese chestnuts. We didn't get in any Chinese chestnuts until 1906. We have this problem of incompatibility or graft union trouble, in apples, but do you hear anybody hollering about it? We have it in peaches, plums and cherries. One of the most important diseases they have out in the Pacific Northwest and California on Persian walnuts, is what is called "black line disease." We mustn't get excited about graft union failure. That has been used, in my opinion, by a lot of people, to discourage the propagating of grafted chestnuts. There are thousands of people in the United States who are spending good money for seedling trees, and some of them are going to get stung. We in the Northern Nut Growers Association are going to have this thing backfire on us, just as true as I tell you. I know there are some nurserymen today that are planting unknown chestnut seeds, and they are selling the trees as Chinese chestnut. They are planting seed out of mixed orchards, too, that have C. seguinii and C. henryi and C. crenata trees in them. The C. crenata Japanese has been introduced in the United States for over 70 years and it has never made the grade.

You know, there has been many a thing that has been promoted in the United States—big for a few days and then she backfired, and then it took the industry 50 or a hundred years to recover. You can sell people gold bricks once, but you can't sell them gold bricks all the time!

Mr. McCollum: Last year after Mr. Hemming's speech—you know, he is the nurseryman who sells seedlings over on the Eastern Shore—I asked him if he had been selling those long enough to have heard from customers. "Yes," he said he had, "all satisfied." Now, I don't know anything about that.

Dr. Moss: I am not an expert. They say an expert is someone who, the more he studies, knows less about practically nothing at all. That's a good deal my shape. I planted before the war Chinese seed in Kentucky and a good many of those put on burs in the nursery row. I gave them away in the community. Out of the whole bunch, some of them 20 feet tall, I know of one outstanding nut in that bunch and it's off by itself, apparently a self-pollinizer[16], and puts out a crop of good nuts.

Dr. Cross: I should like to ask Dr. Crane if it would not be possible to investigate the situation in China rather than wait to work this out. Certainly, the Chinese have sufficient knowledge of grafting and propagation to have been working on this long ago, and since these came from there, let's look into that phase of it.

Dr. Crane: I did investigate the situation in China when I was there. Unfortunately in China, although it is one of our oldest countries and longest civilizations, they don't do much grafting. They grow their trees from seed, but they have certain seed trees that they select their seed from, and within a community, within a valley, you will have a certain type of chestnut. They call them varieties. They are not varieties. That's the situation. Most all of them are different, but they have accomplished the fixing of certain characteristics.

Now, in South China the nuts are larger in size, they are stronger growing trees than they are in the North. I think that we will find that that's the situation in this country. The Chinese chestnut is one that does have a high heat requirement, just like pecan, and grown under conditions where they have high heat they are bigger in size and make more growth and probably they come into bearing sooner.

But I didn't see anything grafted in China, and I was all over the country from the most northern parts to the most southern parts where chestnuts are produced. I could make a lot of observations myself, but I had to talk through interpreters, and sometimes you couldn't tell what the interpreter meant. But as near as I could tell, they were all seedlings. When he would tell me there was such-and-such a variety, I would ask him what it meant in English. He didn't know. When I found how they were propagated I found they planted the seed. When I found where they got the seed it was from a certain seed tree.

So we have within the valleys what they call varieties, but they are not varieties, only seedlings grown from certain seed trees.

Now, with the Japanese, on the other hand, the situation is different, because they propagated by budding and by grafting. I got a number of the Japanese publications of propagation methods and their stocks, and so forth, translated into English, and their problems are just the same as we are going through right here now. They propagate true varieties by asexual methods, but the Chinese do not to any extent at all.

Dr. Cross: Have the Russians got any?

A Member: That's the question I ask. Do we have any seed trees in this country that are better than other seed trees?

Mr. Porter: Could the gentleman tell us whether the Chinese graft any chestnuts.

Dr. Crane: Yes, they do so, I was told.

Mr. Porter: Well, the industry spends a lot of money, so do other people, and so on, in a proper way to investigate that. Why don't you find out where in that country they have been doing it?

Dr. Crane: I didn't see any grafted chestnut trees over there.

A Member: You said they grafted, and then you say, "I didn't see any."

Dr. Crane: That's quite right, and I talked to their best horticultural authorities that they have. Practically all of it is produced by seed and not by budding or grafting. It is just exactly as I said with the Persian walnut. China has no varieties of Persian walnuts, although sometimes you will find some farmer that will bud or graft his trees.

Mr. Porter: They graft up on the limb?

Dr. Crane: Yes, sir. Once in a while you will find one. They have a few real horticulturists. I met one man over there that would compare very favorably with Liberty Hyde Bailey.

Mr. Stoke: Dr. MacDaniels asked for concrete evidence. He wanted to know where there was an orchard with 20-year-old grafted Chinese chestnut trees. They haven't been planted that long, but I would like to give him concrete evidence in my own experience.

In 1932 I got scions from the Department, got what ultimately became known as the Hobson, from Jasper, Georgia. I grafted a tree in my front yard which is still bearing nicely, and in fact I have got two grafts on that tree about four feet from the ground, and it is very nice with perfect union. At the same time I grafted a Carr right at the side of my house that also has a perfect union about the same height from the ground. I grafted a scion sent me by Dr. Morris as Morris' best (which was pretty poor), and it is still living. At the present time I have perhaps five Carr trees that will average six inches or more in diameter. The oldest is the one by the side, of the house. The rest of them were grafted about 1935. One out of those five, when it got to be about six inches in diameter, in fact, about three years ago, it went bad. It is girdled and dead. It was grafted about as high as this table from the ground. The others are sound, and you'd find it very difficult to find where they were grafted.

I have Hobson, perhaps a dozen trees anywhere from six to 16 years old, and I have not had a failure on a Hobson that really was once healed over properly and got to bearing, not one. That's concrete evidence, Doctor, and that's all I wish to say.

Rev. Taylor (Alpine, Tenn.): Mr. Gravatt was about to answer a question about our seed trees, wasn't he?

Mr. Gravatt: Would you repeat that question?

Rev. Taylor: Are some seed trees better than others in the high per cent of good seedlings they produce?

Mr. Gravatt: Well, McKay has done some work and published it to show that on seedlings of certain trees you get higher percentage of bud takes than on others.

Mr. Chase: I think the question is a little confused. I think what you are after is, are there parent seed trees from which seed can be planted that would produce a good quality of seedlings.

Rev. Taylor: Yes, of good productive seedlings. No grafting to it.

Mr. Chase: I think that was answered. Apparently there are.

Rev. Taylor: Apparently there are in China, as Dr. Crane brought up.

Mr. Chase: He further brought up that those things are in the process of being tested here now, and he hopes for some information in—what was that?

Mr. Gravatt: We had Professor Beattie over in Japan, China, and Korea for two or three years, and he found in Japan that there were certain selections there, certain grafted varieties that they used for seed stock. We imported those into this country. We were getting ready to go ahead with the Japs. We also brought in a hundred varieties of Japanese chestnuts. But the Japanese varieties didn't do well here. What would produce well over in Japan didn't produce well here. But a number of those scions that we grafted in 1932 and 1933 are still living. We have had very good success with top-working chestnuts in our orchards. We have some grafts there of pure Chinese chestnuts top-worked on some worthless Japanese. Some of those have been there for 12 and 14 years, with perfect unions. But we do receive a number of reports of trees dying from blight and various other and sundry other causes and when we examine them quite frequently these have died back to where the trees had been grafted.

Rev. Taylor: I could enlarge on that question just a little bit to tie in with what Mr. O'Rourke said. If the nurserymen are going to propagate seedling trees for the trade for some time yet, where should they be advised to obtain their seed to get the best possible seedling trees?

Mr. Gravatt: In a lot of our regional distributions we sent out mixtures. In other places we would send out related seedlings, as "MY," "MZ," or "MAX," to different individuals. We have advised all nurseryman, all of our cooperators, to eliminate the Japanese; eliminate the hybrids. It gets down to pure Chinese. We have also advised again and again to take out the more worthless trees and propagate seed from the beat. But there are a lot of hybrid seeds with mixed parentage going into nursery trees.

Mr. McDaniel: How many people are going to take out trees now when they can sell the seeds for at least 50 cents or maybe even $2.00 a pound?

Mr. Gravatt: That's it. However, you take any of those Chinese trees over there at the Eastern Shore Nurseries, for example—nuts from all 19 of them have been sent over here, and they are all good eating. I have been over a lot of the seedlings of Hemming's trees. Mr. Hemming has several hundred at his own place. I have been over other orchard plantings. There is lot of variability among those seedlings. They are not as uniform as the parent tree, for some reason. Why, I don't know.

Mr. Chase: Mr. Howell, as a nurseryman, has propagated the Chinese chestnut tree. Would you care to make a few comments? Mr. Howell has Howell's Nursery in Knoxville and at Sweetwater, Tennessee, and I believe has some of Mr. Gravatt's early seedling trees and has produced a great quantity of seedlings.

Mr. Bruce Howell: A good many years ago we got from the Department five trees, and they grew and have all borne good nuts, and all chestnuts we have propagated since have been grown from seed from those five trees, and most of them are pretty good. One is a small nut, and among more recent seedlings we have got two of them that don't bear at all, or haven't so far. Now, we have got a bunch of them where they were set several years ago in nursery rows. At each end of each row the trees there bear very nice nuts, and when you get out through that row, the crowded trees don't bear at all.

I think those seedlings and those trees practically all make fairly good nuts and some of them excellent. I have got some samples. About six years ago I got a pound of imported Japanese I planted. The third year they bore and they have done very well, and all of them are about the same size chestnuts. They are as good as any after they are roasted or boiled. That's about all. A good many years ago, I guess 30 years ago, I grafted Paragon chestnuts, and they did well until the blight.

Rev. Taylor: Does anybody else have this trouble? In North Central Tennessee we usually have a warm spell about the Middle of February, plowing time. We expect it every year. And then these Chinese chestnuts are the quickest trees to let the buds swell, and the bark softens up all the way to the ground on the young ones. Then we nearly always have a pretty hard freeze, afterward. So, for several years after our experimental planting was set out there they would get killed clear to the ground next year. Is that something others have the same experience with? How do you go at correcting that?

After our trees got to be three or four or five inches in diameter they didn't kill back that way. The bark seemed to be tougher.

Mr. McDaniel: That's very common experience in Tennessee and, I might say, in north Alabama.

Rev. Taylor: Nothing you can do about it?

Mr. McDaniel: On some sites it is not nearly so bad as it is in other locations. A northern or eastern slope with good elevation seems to be best.

Mr. Frye: I have had some trouble and maybe, had a good education about frost pockets. If you get them in high elevations you escape that. I had that trouble two years ago. I got some Chinese trees from Dr. Smith, set them out. They were his best seedlings, three of them, and they started beautifully. I transplanted them. Just about that time they got nipped off. Did that three times and failed to come out the third time.

Pres. Davidson: One other remedy for that that I remember reading about, I am not quite sure in which of our Reports—maybe Mr. Becker was the author, and that is this: He said that he cultivates until August after which he plants cover crops, and he sows cover crops that grow and they hold back this vegetative growth in the late part of the year, and it is really the late vegetative growth that causes the destruction. After he adopted that plan he had very much less winter killing in his plantation. That might be one way of helping the situation.

Mr. Hardy: We have had some killing. Usually in the second year or the first year after we get killing down to the ground, if we will keep the stock pruned back to one shoot that one will make sufficient growth, become hardy enough to withstand any cold, or perhaps sun scald. Also wrapping the trunks of the trees with newspaper helps to prevent the variations in temperature, which in our section is what causes the cold injury. We don't have sufficient cold to cause absolute low-temperature injury, but we do have sudden drops just as you do in Tennessee, apparently, and wrapping with paper does help iron out those changes.

Mr. McDaniel: Wouldn't you suggest the paper wrap in the summer as well as the winter and spring?

Mr. Hardy: Yes.

Mr. Stoke: It is not only the planter of the trees that has sorrows along that line, but the nurseryman does also. I had some nursery seedlings growing on flat land, and they looked all right, passed the winter. When I went out to graft them I found that on these small stocks anywhere from the size of a lead pencil to the size of a finger, the cambium was discolored. It wasn't black nut brown. Any attempts I made to graft those failed, and yet many of those same trees grew on. They were stunted somewhat for a year or two, and they left a brown ring at that annual growth.

I would say that the best guarantee against that kind of thing is to plant your chestnut orchards—and the nurseries—to plant on land that is well air drained. Select the same site as you would for peaches.

Mr. Chase: I will say that we should have allowed more time for discussion. However, we have used up our alloted time for this period. Supper is at six o'clock, and we are due back here at 7:30. I don't know how you folks feel about this little session, but I certainly did enjoy it.

[Footnote 14: —Goldsworthy and his associates published several items along this line in 1948 issues of Plant Disease Reporter. His October 15, 1948 item reported a similar result of 25% technical DDT (with 75% clay) inhibiting growth of seedling peach roots on 1-year budded Elberta trees. As low as 25 pound per acre application affected growth in quartz sand cultures, whereas with certain soils, no significant difference was noted until an 800 lb. per acre level of the DDT was reached. It was surmised that possibly some unknown constituent in the technical DDT was responsible for the suppression of new root growth, and consequent slowing down of top growth. In the case of Blakemore strawberries, and also with peaches, this effect has persisted for at least two crop years. Goldsworthy and Dunegan say, "How many other economic crop plants may be injured is unknown, but it appears certain that some caution is necessary in the promiscuous use of the chemical on ... plants, either as ... sprays or as soil additions...." In these experiments, of course, the DDT-containing material was in direct contact with all the roots. Spray residues ordinarily would be present only in the surface layer of the soil, and should have much less effect on tree roots in that case.—J. C. McDaniel.]

[Footnote 15: —Dr. McKay of the U. S. D. A. found one tree only about 2.5% fruitful to its own pollen.—Ed.]

[Footnote 16: —There is a possibility of pollination from American chestnut sprouts in his vicinity.—Ed.]

Let's adjourn.

(Whereupon, at 5:30 p. m. the meeting was adjourned, to reconvene at 7:30 o'clock p. m. of the same day.)

Evening Session

President Davidson: The meeting will come to order, please. We first have the pleasure of hearing from Dr. C. A. Moss of Williamsburg, Kentucky, on Greetings from a Kentucky Nut. Dr. Moss.



Greetings from a Kentucky Nut

DR. C. A. MOSS, Williamsburg, Kentucky

I am glad to see all of these beautiful ladies here this evening. We just had dinner, and I presume I should make an after-dinner speech. I have always wanted to attend a Northern Nut Growers Association convention. I am more or less of what you might call a convention addict and speak on any occasion on slight provocation. I attended a convention at Quebec earlier this year, and after that I went on to Rio de Janiero in South America and attended another convention, but this privilege of being able to attend the Northern Nut Growers Association tops all the rest.

I am reminded of the tale of the man who rushed into the sheriff's office in Texas, and his gun was smoking, and he says, "I have killed a man." The sheriff said, "Who did you kill?" "Oh," he says, "I don't know his name. He is one of these after-dinner speakers." "You are in the wrong room," the sheriff said. "Go back in the hallway three doors to the right to the bounty room. They pay $5 a head for those."

My family fortunes, if there be any, were founded on nuts. My father when he was 16 years old was raised on Straight Creek near Pineville, Kentucky, some hundred miles away from Lexington, and they gathered up a wagonload of the old chestnuts, he and a hired man on my grandfather's place, and they took an ox team and took them to Lexington to peddle them out. It took them three weeks to make the return trip.

I come from Whitney County, Kentucky. It was named after old Colonel Whitney, the man who built the first brick house in Kentucky. It was in the fall of the year, and the mortar was freezing, and they mixed whiskey with their mortar to keep it from freezing.

When I get away from home they ask me if I am a Kentucky Colonel. That's one of the first things I hear, and I tell them that I am. And they want to know why they put that honor upon a small fellow like me, and I tell them it was on account of scientific research that I had done, that I had developed a new way of making egg-nog. I feed the chickens the whiskey mash and they lay bourbon-flavored eggs, and all you have to do is drop one in a glass of milk.

They always ask about the Kentucky Derby, and I tell them that the last I heard Mint Julep was coming in on the home stretch strong.

I am not qualified with all of these experts to get up here and talk about nuts. They say an expert is a fellow that learns more and more about less and less until he knows practically everything about nothing at all; and that's kind of my shape, sir.

Now, seriously, I have had this hobby of trying to grow nuts for a number of years. I grafted a golf club on a croquet post, and I got some wonderful golf balls. Before the war I ordered some Chinese chestnuts. I got in touch with Sakata and Company in Yokahama, and they finally came in. I didn't have any experience, and about all I had was some imagination, and I planted them out in the fall of the year like I planted any other nuts. I went out in the spring and investigated. There wasn't a darn one come up. The rats had beat me to them and eaten them all up.

I was a persistent cuss and ordered some the next year, and I put them up in fruit jars and figured I would plant them in the spring, and when the spring came they all had the dry rot.

So I ordered them the third year, and I made sacks out of fly screen wire and put those nuts outside, and in the spring they came up and I had a lot of nice sprouts about this high and put them in a seed bed with a board all the way around. My father is blind in one eye, couldn't tell a chestnut from a weed, and he pulled up the weeds and he pulled all the chestnuts up except one.

The fourth year I had better success, and I raised that year 400-and-some-odd chestnut seedlings, and I did more or less the Johnny Appleseed stuff with those. I gave those away in the community. I am, among other things, a banker, and I figured those would be as good as calendars, and I have not been able to follow the history of them. However, there is one of them I think is exceptional. It's a self-pollinator and is bearing heavy crops, and I intend to follow that particular tree up.

A genius, he is no better than any of the rest of us. All a genius is is a fellow that's got good digestion so he can eat enough to work long hours and good eyesight so he don't get tired.

So I was reading in a magazine about the Crath English walnut. They sent the Reverend Mr. Crath over to Poland before the war, and I got four pounds of those nuts he collected, and planted them. And every spring a cold spell would come along and get them before I could cut any grafts off of them. And I planted a Nebraska pecan and got some grafts from it, and my wife said that tree never did have a chance because I kept cutting the prunes off so they couldn't grow. I got several to growing, and then they didn't fill out the nuts.

I was talking to a good doctor here from Baltimore last night. We ate dinner, at the same table here, and I told him I didn't see but one thing wrong with this Northern Nut Growers Association: It needed a lot of young people in it, because if it didn't they were going to have to hold a reunion over at the cemetery.

I have done a lot of grafting, and I am not going into the details of that. I am going to say that I am glad to be here, I give you greetings from Kentucky, and I hope that I will meet you all again.

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President Davidson: That certainly was refreshing, Dr. Moss. We enjoyed it.

Next on the program is Dr. Aubrey Richards, Whiteville, Tennessee, who is not here. Nuts for West Tennessee is the subject of that paper, and Secretary MacDaniel will read it for us.



Nut Trees for West Tennessee

AUBREY RICHARDS, M.D., Whiteville, Tennessee

At the present time I am attempting to grow 14 grafted varieties of Chinese and Japanese chestnuts, plus numerous hybrids and seedlings, eight varieties of black walnut, 5 named Persian and 18 unnamed Carpathians, 5 heartnuts, 5 hickory and hickory hybrids, 12 pecans, and 7 hazels and filberts. The total number of trees, including all varieties, is well over three hundred. A few of the trees have been under my observation for 11 years on down to some that I have just acquired.

I shall not bore you with a list of unsatisfactory varieties nor with the ones that have not had sufficient observation in this section, but shall confine my remarks to less than two dozen varieties.

Pecans I shall touch only lightly, as they are a highly specialized crop only a little farther south. Stuart and Success are favorites here. Schley and Mahan are good if scab can be controlled. Sun scald on newly planted trees is our greatest problem, which I control by a paper wrap made by cutting two inch sections from a 36 inch roll of cheap felt-base wall paper. It gradually weathers away during the second summer. I wrap from the top down in a spiral, and when I reach the bottom, I place a hand full of earth on the end of the paper. No tying is required. In this way I have reduced the mortality rate of young nut trees greatly. I am also a strong believer in cover crops and mulching, for Tennessee weather is very temperamental.

Although we get ample rainfall per annum, it is often not well distributed, especially during mid-summer. During the winter we have several days of balmy spring weather with a drop to possibly below zero occuring overnight.

Thomas black walnut grows well here, but tends to over-bear, with many poorly filled nuts on alternate years. I counted an average of 8 nuts per lineal foot of bearing wood on one tree this season.

Snyder and Stambaugh are excellent nuts, setting about all they can mature.

Elmer Myers is a beautiful thin shelled nut, but so far a little shy in bearing. I believe this can be corrected if I can find another walnut that will shed pollen late enough to catch the Myers pistils. Homeland may be the one to do it. I have set some grafts of it with the Myers to see.

Carpathian D, and a variety of unknown origin from Haywood County are the only Persian walnuts I have fruited. This tree of unknown origin grows alone, is at least 50 years old, is three feet in diameter, has a spread of 40 feet, and is about the same in height. Some years it produces a heavy crop, others, nothing. To my knowledge, it has received no care in the past 20 years.

My 18 Carpathians are all growing with varying vigor and resistance to leaf spot. None has shown winter injury.

Of all the heartnuts, Rhodes is my favorite. The nut does not appear to be as large as some, but the kernel is just as heavy, due to its compact shape which causes it to fall out when the nut is cracked. It is self-pollenizing and also a good pollenizer for all my other varieties, shedding pollen over a long period of time, although it is the latest of all in producing its pistils. It grows vigorously on black walnut stock.

Rush seems to be the best filbert for this section. Its catkins are usually hardy here.

Chestnut trees, like gray ghosts, still reach their naked arms high on many West Tennessee hillsides, and occasionally one finds a farmer splitting posts from their remains, for chestnut is an enduring wood. A few of these tenacious individuals are still sending up sprouts that may reach considerable size before they are again struck down.

I have had no serious trouble with blight in any of the named chestnut varieties, either Chinese or Japanese. I have lost some trees by its entrance into the seedling stock, but not many. My greatest headache has been sun-scald and winter killing, or to be more exact, "early spring" killing.

One of the juvenile characteristics of oriental chestnuts is the retention of their leaves all winter. They also grow in a rather sprangling way. This is a protective mechanism, and when we prune them to an upright form, or graft, this wood having lost its juvenile characteristics, we are inviting trouble unless we protect the trunk in some other way. I prefer to use a paper wrap as described under Pecans, as it is quickly done and is inexpensive. This also gives protection to immature callus cells at bud or graft union.

Of the older Chinese chestnut varieties in my hands, Hobson has excelled, with large chestnuts (34 to the pound in 1948.) Zimmerman also produces a good nut. Colossal (Hybrid) is very productive and produces the largest nuts of any chestnut that I have seen grown in Tennessee, but the quality of the raw nut is not equal to Hobson. It refuses to grow on Chinese stock, but thrives on Japanese. It is pollen sterile. I have several newer varieties under observation and although they are growing vigorously I have not had time to form an opinion on them.

* * * * *

President Davidson: The Reverend Bernard Taylor of Alpine, Tennessee, will next read a paper on The Marketing of Black Walnuts as a Community Project. Mr. Taylor.



Marketing Black Walnuts as a Community Project

THE REV. BERNARD TAYLOR, Alpine, Tennessee

The Rev. Mr. Taylor: I suppose that every community where black walnuts grow wild has a marketing of some kind, some kind of a plan of marketing, maybe just what every boy or every man who has some spare time or some of the womenfolks may do to make something out of the walnuts that are lying around.

In the community of Alpine, which is in Overton County, people used to go out on the ridge with wagons and bring home wagonloads of walnuts, and they would sell them either in the shell or they would crack them and sell them in pretty poor condition, however they could sell them. When we first began selling walnut kernels in Alpine we got 19 cents a pound for the kernels, and that was more than they were worth, I believe, because they were dirty, greasy, and they had mildew gobs in the bunches of kernels. So I don't know how the rolling stores that came around that way could make anything out of them trading them in at that price.

Then we began to study the Government bulletins on how to produce good walnut kernels, and there is a good bulletin on that; all of you are acquainted with it, probably. When we began to harvest those nuts and hull them as quickly as we could and wash them and dry them out thoroughly and then crack them before they got too dry, we organized what was called the Walnut Club. This Walnut Club mostly was composed of some of the women of the community who lived up in one little cove where the limestone outcroppings seem to favor the walnut and the air drainage or whatever it was seemed to favor the crop yields rather regularly. We don't have an every-year good walnut crop.

Well, these women got finally so that they could get 35 cents a pound for their walnut kernels, then 45 cents a pound. Then we found a good friend in Pennsylvania who would take those kernels, all we could send her, and put them up in little pound packages and sell them for whatever she could get and send us all the money. That's altogether contrary to Hoyle I guess.

You merchants, if there are some of you here, who are dealers in walnut kernels know that our people were just getting spoiled. Anytime now that a merchant says, "I will give you such-and-such a price for the walnuts and then I will sell them for such-and-such a price," he looks to them like a robber. They want to sell them for what the people pay who eat them. That isn't quite fair, maybe, but we got $1.39 a pound last year for all the kernels we could produce, and the year before it was $1.40, I believe, and it stays about that price.

That is about the story of the community project. It is a direct contact by way of a benevolent friend between people in the mountains in Tennessee and people in Pennsylvania who say that these kernels taste better than black walnut kernels in Pennsylvania taste. I don't know whether any Pennsylvanians here agree with that or not. I think they are wonderfully mild-flavored, a good many of them very light-colored kernels. Though Mr. Chase has made some beautiful exhibits of how the color changes depending on how long a time you leave them in the hull, we still have some that stay lighter than others. Some of them have rather gray-colored kernels.

There is one of those trees that Mrs. Ledbetter has, on her husband's farm. He was about to sell that tree for a log and a stump. They come along and grub the stumps out and sell the stumps and all for veneerwood. But she wouldn't let him sell it, and over the course of the last few years they sold enough kernels more than to pay for that walnut tree and it is still going to yield a good many years, probably better and better as time goes on.

I think that possibly the community angle of this is a little bit misrepresenting. It's not the entire community, but it is a little group of the community who are interested in the wild black walnut.

Last spring we were very fortunate in having some help in grafting some of the seedlings. This Mrs. Ledbetter's husband got interested in walnuts, and he planted a whole pasture with walnuts spaced every so often, and this spring we went there with the help of God and were able to graft those to Thomas black walnuts. They were just little seedlings, so we hope to go into the named black walnuts as time goes on.

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President Davidson: May I ask, Mr. Taylor, the people, of course, now comply with the Government regulations on pasteurization and so on?

Mr. Taylor: Never heard of it. You will have to tell me about that after a while, if you will, please.

President Davidson: Mr. Shadow, the County Agent of Decatur, Meigs County, Tennessee, will tell his experiences with tree crops in that county.



Experiences with Tree Crops in Meigs County, Tennessee

W. A. SHADOW, Meigs County Agent, Decatur, Tennessee

Mr. Shadow: Mr. Chairman and members of the Nut Growers Association: As President Davidson announced, I am an agricultural agent. About twelve years ago I thought it would be good to have a hobby, and since I was born and reared in the nursery world propagating fruit trees and ornamentals, and due to the fact that John Hershey came by one day and talked to me about the tree crops in the Tennessee Valley, it struck me just right, and I have made that my hobby.

You know, every man who has a job gets fed up on his job and needs to get out and play with himself, or something else, to forget his troubles. So I find in propagating nut trees, top-working them, if you will, top-working trees where I find them to named varieties, is very interesting to me.

John Hershey taught me the technique of grafting nut trees. I had grafted and budded in all kinds of ornamentals and fruits, but I needed training in nut trees. So in the spring of 1935, I guess, I grafted about a hundred Thomas black walnut on trees where I found them in the woodland. At the same time I grafted maybe a hundred Japanese persimmon of possibly a dozen varieties on the common native persimmon. I purchased three, four, maybe five Japanese persimmons and planted these trees in the spring of 1935. All these persimmons, maybe 60 or 70 of them, grew nicely. The Thomas grew very well, and the winter of 1939 or 1940, I don't recall just which, was rather severe. We had below-zero weather, and all of my persimmons were killed—I thought. The next year I found a persimmon tree up in the woods with maybe a peck of great big nice persimmons and later I found that that was a Fuyugaki persimmon. All the rest of mine were winter killed. Those that I purchased were winter killed the first year. I don't know why. I grafted the persimmon about 5 feet high. Those that were grafted at the ground I noticed winter killed the first year, and these that are grafted up about shoulder high seemed to live three or four years before they winter killed, and the one variety that survived as Mr. Kline and Mr. Chase, or someone, has told, is Fuyugaki, I believe. I have a Tamopan persimmon, a great big, nice persimmon about so big, but bitter as the dickens, and about the only thing I think it is good for is to look at. It is pretty. But the Fuyugaki is never bitter. It is very tasty even partially green, and as it ripens my lady thinks it is very good, and I think it is good, myself.

I have about two or three varieties of mulberries. I got them from Glen St. Mary Nurseries in Florida. They make awfully good pig feed and bird feed, and I don't mind eating them myself.

There are some honeylocust, Millwood and Calhoun. I purchased several seedlings of thornless honeylocust from some northwestern nursery and grafted them to Millwood and Calhoun. I also have four trees that are ten years old and they have never borne. Last year there was one tree of that hundred that bore heavily, and the rest of them are barren. It must be lack of pollenization, or something. I am not getting fruit from my honeylocust.

Someone asked me what I am going to do with all this stuff, and I said, "Well, the squirrels and I will have lots of fun anyhow, and the cows will eat the honeylocust if they ever bear."

I have two pecan trees that are bearing nicely. One is a Posey and the other is a Greenriver, bearing very nicely. They are about ten years old. I have some Schley and Delmas and Mahan, and they are not bearing. I don't know why. We are out of the realm of the southern pecan and too far south for the northern pecan, I am afraid.

My Persian walnut, heartnut and Japanese walnut think it is spring too quick, and every year they burst out and grow about so long, and then they fall down and die from freezing, and then they grow out, and this time of the year you look at them and you say, "That's a beautiful tree," But they freeze just enough to get the fruit each year.

Mr. McDaniel came by last spring a year ago and left with me a little scion of a Carpathian walnut, the Bayer selection. I wasn't present, but he left it with my lady and suggested to my lady that I would know what to do with it. I put it on a common black walnut grafted about so high, and it is ten feet high now growing nicely, but this spring I noticed that it, too, thought the spring was here before it was here. I don't know how it is going to bear. I may have to take it out on top of the hill and re-graft it on a high place where it has more air drainage.

Of the Chinese chestnut, I planted about a hundred, but I planted them in a cut-over woodland that was full of native chestnut sprouts. You know how the chestnut sprouts will do. They grow up and blight out and die down, and another sprout comes from the stump. They have been doing that for 30 years over in my part of the country. I planted these chestnuts purposely in that grove where there was lots of blight. Out of that hundred I have eight trees that are alive. The rest of them have died from blight. They are bearing very nicely, but I haven't learned how to care for those fruits so that they are good a long period of time. Someone just told me that you had someone on the program this morning who would tell us that. It is a very interesting subject for me.

And the Thomas walnut is a nice black walnut. The trees are a little bit peculiar about their bearing; sometimes they bear heavily and again they forget to bear. The Stabler doesn't bear at all for me. I just know they are Stablers because someone told me so. I have them labeled. I have Creitz black walnut. I got five from TVA four or five years ago, and they just literally bear themselves to death. They're about so high and bear every year, very nice nuts. I will have to pull the walnuts off long enough to make them grow up and make real trees. I think they are going to be all right.

Mr. Chairman, I am not an expert. I use my hobby to keep from bothering about the troubles that I have with other things, and when I get mad at a neighbor I go to playing on my trees, and it gets me well. I recommend it as a very soothing hobby.

Now, some day we will make a business out of tree crops when we in Tennessee get the bugs out of it and get them so we will have the right varieties to produce. I am not satisfied with the Thomas. Someone suggested it was a wonderful nut. I am not satisfied with it. We need a better walnut than the Thomas. But it's the best I have.

There is a native walnut I found in the valley near Watts Bar Dam. I named it Pineland. It is just a seedling. It is a most wonderful nut if it wasn't for its hard shell. It's hard as the dickens. It is a wonderful bearer, has borne every year for nine years. It happens to be in unusually good soil. But I have grafted a few up away from the river, and the grafted trees are bearing nicely. The trouble is it is hard, but it is a wonderful good kernel and it is a big nut.

Groups like this working with tree crops and nuts over a period of time will develop the right varieties, and if we can get some youngsters interested—and I am in my county getting some youngsters interested in grafting—and tell them not to expect too much but get a whole lot of satisfaction out of the fun of producing something, I think this will be the beginning. Or rather, you have been going a long time. This is a means of progress in tree crops that I am well pleased to take a part in. Mr. Chairman, I think that's about all that I have.

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President Davidson: I know we all wish we had more county agents like that, interested in trees and interested in young folks. Those two things should go together. I wish you would just sort of propagate that idea when you meet other county agents, won't you, Mr. Shadow?

Now, then, Mr. Frye of Pleasant Dale, West Virginia, will tell us something about Nut Hobbying in Eastern West Virginia.



Nut Hobbying in Eastern West Virginia

WILBERT M. FRYE, Pleasant Dale, West Virginia

Mr. Frye: After hearing such wonderful speeches as we have had, with your reading, Mr. McDaniel, I wish I could be all of us, but as it is, I am just myself. I don't know how many know where Pleasant Dale is, but anyhow, you know where Washington, D. C. is; I live just along U. S. 50 and my section is 103 miles west of Washington, D. C. That will locate where we are.

This section of the country is composed of a lot of long ridges with steep hills, narrow valleys, some of them very fertile. These valleys form bases where you will get the draft off these hills down into the valleys. You must keep all the fruit and most of the nut trees out of those places, or you have these frost spots that I have been telling some of you about.

As far back as people can remember that country has been covered with all kinds of nuts except the European (Persian or "English") walnuts, and the early people coming in there used these nuts for food, and the chestnut was their main one. Whenever a person clearing the land found a nice tree he would save it. Then he would show much pride in having a good tree, and it kept on going until there became a rivalry as to who had the best chestnut tree. Some had an orchard of them.

When the blight hit the country I had an orchard of chestnut trees. When I saw the first blight in the top of a tree I didn't like the looks. I kept noticing that. It kept on coming down the tree, and it killed the base. The total result was everybody lost their hobby trees, and then soon they changed to something else.

Now, when the blight took the chestnut out of the country the people began to pride themselves on the walnut, who had the best walnut, who had the best shagbark in the country.

Some distance from where I am is a two-acre grove, a wonderful grove of our larger nuts. Some places it is called kingnut and some places they call it under the name of this big one in the show room, shellbark. Anyhow, there were two acres there and real moist meadows, and every once in a while the frost would kill those nuts, and the next year they would have a wonderful crop. So the climate determines whether we have an annual crop or an intermittent crop on these trees.

Then I always liked to mess around with hobbies with nature. I became interested, got to wondering who did have the best of the best. Then I began to go out and visit all of these farms and ask them for a certain number of the best, and I began to send them around to Mr. Reed and Mr. Zarger and other people to take their word on it. And, of course, I have located some that cracked very well. But every once in a while somebody tells me they have got a better one yet, and the other day I ran across a fellow a hundred miles away—he happened to hear about me, and I have a neighbor who knows him—who has a black walnut that looks like a Persian walnut. So you see, I have a trip of a hundred miles to make to see what he's got. I wrote to him just before I left. I wrote to him to send me at least 20 of those nuts, and just as soon as this fellow sends me the nuts I would come up and see him and later on would try to get some grafting wood and send down to Mr. Zarger of the TVA group.

My job is not to keep them to myself but to put out the best. So we have those different nuts, and now it is time to consolidate the best in what we have and get them in the hands of the nut growers groups and those who will put them out and really make use of them. But first we want to see these best trees all over the country. Some of them are not as good for timber as the others, but I like to incorporate the timber with the nut production.

We talked about the black walnut earlier today. The speaker was not saying much about flavor. That's one thing we want to do in all of our nut work, get as good a flavor as we can. So why not get the best and go putting it out to give it to everybody. Why keep anything within ourselves? That's the main thing we can do.

A brother was talking a while ago about this nut job, a community nut job. Now, two years ago—I will have to use my dad, who is 82 years old, as a little reference—my dad cracked 83 pounds of black walnuts from just the best of them, you might say. Sold them at a price of $1.49 a pound. So that wasn't bad, was it? I thought that was right good.

Last year we didn't have a nut in there because we had a freeze on the 31st of May of around 26 deg. to 28 deg., depending on where you were and the location. But then in the fall on the 23rd of September we had another drop just when everything was in full growth, due to a dry spell and then a rain. But in the fall on the 23rd of September we had a drop down to 20, so that was what happened to all the remaining nuts in that country. They were just frozen like black mummies.

I had what they call the Texas Thinshell black walnut. I have one tree that is about eight or nine feet high, maybe ten feet high, had 45 nuts on it, nice big ones, and they just looked like mummies, and it made me heartsick, of course. I went out there and looked at the things, and they fell off the tree. I thought, "Well, I might just as well experiment. I will dig me a little trench here along the garden, I will put these in and see what happens." To my surprise 20 of them came up after being frozen. So that might be a question: Will things sprout or germinate without reaching maturity?[17] I don't know how much maturity they had. They certainly weren't in full growth when they were frozen. That's one thing we want to see.

My main aim is just to grow things, for hobby purposes and see just what will grow. Last year we had such a hectic year from that late spring freeze and early fall freeze it discouraged me here where I am, in this frost pocket at an elevation of 1,050 feet. And I said, "Now, on the hill about 4 miles away and 300 feet higher they have a wonderful place for peaches." I have a friend who lives up there, and he has so many peach trees missing in his old orchard. I said, "How about setting out some nut trees in your peach orchard?" Ho said, "Go to it." I set out a nut tree wherever there is a peach tree out. So that gave me a chance to see what they would do. Last spring I started that too late, but I set out 45 or 50 trees, filberts, Persian walnuts, pecans, chestnuts and persimmons, and I will just see what they will do.

And today my kind friend who gave a talk on the nut trees from down in Alabama gave me seed to plant. I expect to put a row of those out and see what they will do. The land I am planting them on at one time was just a great mass of chestnuts, and this friend there on one of those sections, of about three acres, had cut 35,000 feet of this dead timber after the chestnut blight killed them.

That blight was a terrible shock to us. One thing I did note when it came on, prior to the chestnut blight in that country there were these little chipmunks, which, everybody knows, eat chestnuts. You couldn't hear yourself think for the little chipmunks chipping all over the country. You know, they carried off all the nuts. You had to be smart to beat them to them. When the chestnuts disappeared, the chipmunks disappeared, and there were eight or ten years when you were lucky if you got to hear one. In the meantime those little fellows have changed. They died, a lot of them, but now they have learned to eat something else, and now they are coming back.

That little chipmunk always amused me, because I loved to go out and play with the squirrels and things like that. Anyhow, it's just pure hobby work, and as Mr. Shadow says you can get over a mad spell and get out close to nature, because in this nut work you can't get any closer to God's work than to get out and get something better. I think that's all I have to say.