MR. MACHOVINA: After spraying for shuck maggot with DDT do you encourage the presence of mites?

MR. BAKER: It's very possible that you might. That has happened where DDT has been used. With some of our work with chestnut weevils, mites seem to be a little more abundant where we used DDT. We have had reports of this happening in California where they used DDT on walnuts. So it is a possibility, and that's why I brought into the paper a little information on the control of mites.

Session closed at 4:15 o'clock, p.m.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: Hyphantria cunea (Drury).]

[Footnote 4: Datana integerrima G. & R.]

[Footnote 5: Clastoptera achatina Germ.]

[Footnote 6: Phylloxera devastatrix Perg.]

[Footnote 7: Oncideres cingulata (Say).]

[Footnote 8: Curculio auriger Casey.]

[Footnote 9: C. proboscideus F.]

[Footnote 10: Curculio caryae (Horn).]

[Footnote 11: Conotrachelus juglandis Lee.]

[Footnote 12: Conotrachelus retentus Say.]

[Footnote 13: Conotrachelus affinis Boh.]

[Footnote 14: Conotrachelus aratus Germ.]

[Footnote 15: Rhagoletis suavis Loew.]

[Footnote 16: Melissopus latiferreanus (Wlsm.)]

[Footnote 17: Phytoptus avellanae Nal.]



TUESDAY EVENING BANQUET SESSION

We will now have the report of the Resolutions Committee.

MR. DAVIDSON: "To Royal Oakes, Chairman of the Program Committee, and to J. Ford Wilkinson, the City of Rockport and its hospitable people, the Northern Nut Growers Association extends its grateful greetings to you and to your loyal helpers, mentioning only a few; that is, Mrs. Negus, Mr. and Mrs. Sly, Mr. Richard Best, a group of people who say little and who do much, our very hearty thanks to you and to your helpers. We have had a splendid meeting, good attendance, good fellowship and tomorrow a good field trip.

"RESOLUTION: The sincere and grateful appreciation of this Association is hereby tendered to J. C. McDaniel, who has so faithfully and fruitfully served it as Secretary for five years. Your creation of new avenues of service, such as The Nutshell is sufficient evidence of your resourcefulness in a difficult and most important office.

"RESOLUTION: Be it resolved, that this Association instruct its Secretary to communicate the following action to the responsible agencies of Federal and State authorities in all areas where the oak wilt disease is present or threatens:

"'The oak wilt disease threatens severe damage to our eastern and southern oaks and Chinese chestnut trees. Recently reported spread of the disease in Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania indicates a very serious and critical situation. All state and federal authorities are urged to take prompt and appropriate action before it is too late.'"

All NNGA members are asked to write to their state and federal senators and representatives urging immediate preventive measures against the spread and for the eradication of the oak wilt disease. Please write those letters. They are important.

"To Dr. Deming, greetings and congratulations from your Association on the occasion of your 90th birthday, September 1, 1952. May your years continue to be golden and happy. May our organization deserve in the future the gifts of inspiration and accomplishment that you have had so large a part in giving it in the past."

"To Dr. J. Russell Smith: The Northern Nut Growers assembled at Rockport send greetings and best wishes to you. We miss you this year and hope to see you at Rochester, New York, next year."

"To Mildred Jones Langdoc. Mildred: We have missed you at our meeting. Your absence is noted by all who know you. May the illness in your home be short. May we see you and your family in Rochester in 1953."

"RESOLUTION: On behalf of the members of the Northern Nut Growers Association the Secretary is asked to send our affectionate greetings to two well-loved, absent members, Mrs. C. A. Reed and Mrs. G. A. Zimmerman: 'Best wishes to you both for speedy recovery of good health and with our hope to see you next year.'"

PRESIDENT MacDANIELS: Is it your pleasure to adopt these resolutions all at once, or do you wish to separate them? I take it that you wish to adopt them, all at the same time, and to that end a motion to accept the report of the Resolutions Committee and to adopt the resolutions and to send the greetings would be appropriate.

The report of the resolutions committee was accepted unanimously.

MR. MCDANIEL: Before this meeting convened we planned a bud wood exchange at the convention. Mr. Gerardi and I brought some buds, and Mr. Richard brought a few of the Rhodes heartnut. We have persimmons, some buds of the new Crandall apple, and a few sticks of Chinese and hybrid chestnuts. They are for anyone who would like to experiment with them.

PRESIDENT MacDANIELS: Next year at Rochester we are going to have opportunity for putting on a considerable exhibit of nuts, and I think that it would be much to the advantage of the Association, if we could have an outstanding exhibit there where there is a good chance to have a large number of people see the exhibits and become interested. To that end I think that all of us who have nut trees bearing this fall, should save some samples with extra care; that is, clean them up, make them look attractive and have them on hand ready for the exhibit next fall.

A good sample for exhibit should be about 10 or a dozen for black walnuts and the Persian walnuts and perhaps 20 to 25 for the hickories and the smaller nuts, the hazel, particularly. I think that we have a good chance next year to forward the cause of the Association, and certainly having these exhibits will be much to our advantage.

At this time, towards the end of our session, it is our usual custom to elect our next year's officers. Before going on with that election, I would just like to say that I personally, as president of the Association during this year, wish to thank all of the other officers who have worked with me. It has been a pleasure to work with them and with the committee chairmen, and I think the meeting here at Rockport and the work during the year attest to their effective service.

The Nominations Committee report. For president next year, Mr. R. B. Best; for vice-president, George Salzer of Rochester, New York; for Treasurer, Carl Prell of South Bend, Indiana, who continues in the office; and for Secretary Mr. Spencer Chase of Norris, Tennessee.

The slate presented was elected unanimously.

A nominating committee consisting of Max Hardy, Gilbert Becker, George Slate, Dr. William Rohrbacker, and Ford Wilkinson was unanimously elected for 1953.

PRESIDENT MacDANIELS: I will now call upon our newly elected president to come forward. It is usual at these meetings for the retiring president to present the gavel to the incoming president, and here it is. This gavel is made of pecan wood presented to the Association by Mr. T. P. Littlepage, who was born in this locality. I hope you will have as much fun and pleasure as president of the Association as I have had. It's all yours.

MR. WILKINSON: That gavel was made from the wood of a pecan tree. Mr. T. P. Littlepage planted the nut when he was 14 years old on a piece of land that he inherited as a boy. I cut the wood and sent it to him in Washington to have the gavel made of it.



Chestnut Breeding

Report for 1951-1952

ARTHUR H. GRAVES[18] and HANS NIENSTAEDT, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, New Haven, Conn.

Weather Conditions

Two serious enemies of the chestnut, if we disregard parasitic organisms, are drought and extreme cold. The winter of 1950-51 was unusually mild—scarcely cold enough to freeze the ground. The precipitation was plentiful during the winter months so that the water table was sufficient to tide over a slightly dry June and a much more serious drought in September and early October. But the latter dry period came when the nuts were matured, or nearly so.

The winter of 1951-52 was again mild except for a short cold spell at the end of January, with plentiful precipitation up to the first week of June, and then a long drought with the driest July since 1944. However, the heavy rainfall of August, 8.69 inches,[19] made amends for this, and with the normal rainfall of 3.48 inches of September, prepared the trees to endure the long drought of October and early November. This serious drought,[20] which resulted in disastrous forest fires filling the air with smoke over much of the New England States, came late, however, after the nuts were nearly matured, some of the early kinds being ripe as early as the first week in September.

The excessive heat of July, in which month occurred the greatest number of days on record with a maximum temperature of 90 degrees or above, was probably the chief cause of somewhat smaller results from our cross pollination work. There is evidence, indeed, that for effective fertilization, considerable heat is needed, but not the extreme temperatures that occurred during this period.

In spite of the mild winter of 1951-52, the attacks of Cryptodiaporthe castanea (Tul.) Wehmeyer caused considerable twig blight, especially on our crosses of Castanea mollissimax seguini. This is not surprising since C. seguini comes from a warmer region in China, but why these attacks should occur during a mild winter is a puzzle. Evidently other factors, such as the drought of the preceding fall, entered in.

Hybridization in 1951 and 1952

A total of 2400 hybrid nuts was harvested in the 1951 season and 1690 in 1952. This compares with the 1259 nuts reported for 1950. The increased production over past years can in part be ascribed to a concentration of the efforts on a fewer number of different crosses; while 103 were made in 1950, the total was 77 in 1951 and 80 in 1952. The pollinations followed the same general program in the two seasons, the emphasis being on the Chinese x (Japanese x American) hybrids. This is our most promising timber tree hybrid, and it seems worthwhile to test it on a somewhat larger scale under forest conditions. Therefore, some of the best early crosses have been repeated, new parent trees are being tried and selected hybrids intercrossed. Back-crosses to the native chestnut with the CxJA hybrids were made in an attempt to improve the form of the hybrid.

Another cross which has attained some importance in the last years is the hybrid between Japanese chestnut (forest type, from U.S.D.A.) and S-8, the latter being a hybrid between Japanese chestnut and C. pumila, the common chinquapin. This cross has a high degree of resistance and a sufficiently good form to make it a possible timber tree (Fig. 1). It is also a fairly good nut bearer with nuts which ripen early, perhaps due to the influence of the chinquapin parent (Fig. 2). Selected individuals of this hybrid were intercrossed, and some crossing with the native chestnut was done.

In the last two seasons the total harvest from some older Chinese trees (26 yrs.) was recorded. The best tree yielded 25.0 lbs. in 1951 and 28.2 lbs. in 1952; on other trees the yield varied between 15 to 22 lbs. The average size of the nuts varies considerably from year to year on the same tree. On one Japanese tree the average weight per nut was 5.6 g. in 1951 and 14.5 g. in 1952; on a Chinese tree the same values were 7.7 g. and 15.1 g. Other trees showed a 20-40 per cent increase in the average weight per nut in 1952 over 1951. This seems to indicate a marked influence of the climatic conditions during the latter part of the growing season on the weight of the nuts. A long-term study of this relationship might yield some interesting results.



Grafting

A considerable amount of grafting has been done since 1949 and the results have been good. Two year old Chinese transplants are usually used as rootstocks and all grafting is done in the field. The best results have been obtained where the rootstock plant was transplanted one year prior to the grafting. The simple splicegraft, or the bark or rind graft are used, depending on the size of the scion compared to that of the rootstock, the latter technique being used when the stock is considerably larger than the scion. There is some evidence of incompatibility; thus, scions from Chinese trees, or hybrids that show a dominance of Chinese characters, give a higher percentage of takes when grafted on Chinese rootstocks than scions from the native chestnut, or from hybrids between Japanese and native chestnut. Some indications of incompatibility between European and Chinese chestnut in grafts have also been encountered where scions received through the cooperation of Dr. C. Schad, Centre de Recherches agronomiques du Massif Central, France, and Count F. M. Knuth, Knuthenborg, Denmark, were used, but in some cases these grafts were successful. Topworking, using the veneer crown graft, has been quite successful as long as sufficient sap drawers are left on the stock (Fig. 3).

Inarching

The senior writer has already explained in detail (2) the simple method by which blighted chestnut trees can be restored to health and vigor by cutting out blighted areas in the bark, painting them over, and inarching or ingrafting one or more basal shoots into the healthy bark above the lesion. We do this work from mid-April to mid-May, and make a systematic canvas of all the trees in all our plantations, inarching all those where if is necessary or might be advantageous. Each operation requires only a few minutes. Last year we put in many hundreds of inarches, altogether, which later showed nearly 100% "take".

Owners of chestnut orchards should take advantage of this method of keeping valuable nut-bearing trees, although with cankered areas, in healthy, vigorous condition.

We believe that, in cutting out the diseased bark, it is advisable to cut out also a few of the outer annual rings of wood (of course tangentially), especially if the canker is one of long-standing, since we know that the fungus eventually penetrates the outer rings of wood. Since that is true, the canker might enlarge later on from this same source of infection. Further it may also be possible for spores or bits of mycelium to be transported upward in the sap stream and cause new infections higher up in the tree. A thorough painting of the cut surfaces should go far toward remedying this situation.

One can usually judge the extent of damage caused by the blight by the number and vitality of the basal shoots, a large number of basal shoots indicating a heavy attack. However, if the roots have been severely injured, perhaps by short-tailed mice, as sometimes happens, no basal shoots appear, in which case the tree is doomed.

If no blight is present, but one or more basal shoots appear (sometimes due to shrubby ancestors), it is advisable to inarch these as an insurance against possible trouble in the future.

This inarching process has not received the attention it deserves. There is absolutely no reason why, if this method is followed, there should be any death from blight in resistant hybrids or in Japanese or Chinese chestnuts, barring, of course, cases where roots are attacked by mice (or Phytophthora in warmer regions). Those of our trees in Connecticut which have been blighted have continued in health and nut-bearing ever since we began the inarching method in 1937 (Fig. 4). If the inarches become blighted, they can themselves be inarched, as shown.



Research on Blight Resistance



A study has been made of the factors that cause the Chinese and Japanese chestnut to be resistant to the Endothia canker, and a close correlation was found between the tannin content of the bark and the relative resistance of the three species, i.e., Chinese, Japanese and American chestnut. The total tannin concentration in the bark of the Asiatic species is only slightly higher than in the American, and native trees can be found with as high a concentration as is found in the Asiatic. A similar overlap in resistance does not occur and it is therefore clear that the total tannin concentration as such cannot account for resistance. There is, however, good evidence that the tannins in the Asiatic species, as a result of the way in which they are bound to other colloids in the cells, are more soluble than in the American species. This, of course, would have a marked bearing on the effectiveness with which the tannins could check the spread of the parasite. Furthermore, it has been found that the types of tannins in the three species differ. In the American and Japanese species they are a mixture of catechol and pyrogallol tannins, while they appear to be pure pyrogallol tannins in the Chinese species. Considering the specificity of the enzyme systems of fungi it is quite possible that different tannins show different degrees of toxicity to a certain fungus. The following hypothesis has been suggested to explain the relative resistance of the three species: In the American chestnut bark the concentration of the available toxic tannin never reaches a level where it can stop the advancing parasite. The tannins in the Japanese species, although of the same type as in the native tree, are more soluble and reach a level toxic to the fungus. In the Chinese trees all the tannins of the bark belong to the toxic pyrogallol groups, and this, combined with their high solubility, results in the high degree of resistance in this species (4).

The information available at present regarding the formation of tannins in plants is not conclusive. In some plants, apparently, they are formed in the leaves, and the presence of carbon dioxide and light is required; in other plants the tannin concentration can increase when the plants are grown in darkness (5). A more general formation of tannin in tissues with a high metabolic rate throughout the plant has also been suggested (3).

It would be important to know the centers of origin of the tannins in the chestnut, their translocation, and whether they are translocated through or over graft-unions. In other words, will a susceptible scion when grafted on a resistant rootstock become more resistant because antibiotic substances formed in the roots of the resistant rootstock are translocated into the scion?

From a number of older grafts of non-resistant Japanese-American hybrid scions on Japanese or Chinese rootstocks it appears that this indeed might be the case. These grafts, some of which are 16 years old, appear to be more resistant than the original hybrid tree, even if not as resistant as the rootstock.

This would indicate the possibility that the antibiotic substances are produced in the roots and translocated into the scion. However, the possibility still remains that the compounds are formed also in the leaves and translocated to the base of the tree. To clarify this whole problem an experiment with Chinese-American grafts in different combinations is under way. Preliminary results show that antibiotic substances are formed in upper parts of the plants, but that they are not translocated downward across the graft union. Thus it was found that Chinese branches grafted on two year old American seedlings remained resistant, without the American seedlings showing any increase in resistance. In future experiments the upward translocation will be studied in detail on grafts of American scions on Chinese seedlings.

Some Abnormal Conditions

1. Sterility

Sterility occurs quite commonly in interspecific hybrids either because the chromosomes fail to pair in meiosis or because the parent genes when brought together in the hybrid interact in some way deleterious to the formation of sex-cells. Furthermore, cytoplasmic sterility is likely to occur in a wide cross.

Sterility has been encountered in several instances in American x Chinese and Japanese x American hybrids. In most cases it is a case of pollen abortion only; either anthers fail to develop completely as shown in Fig. 5, B, or the anthers develop but are much reduced in size and contain no functioning germ cells.

Pollen sterility is not sporadic in a given individual: it is uniform throughout the flowering branches. The individual flowers are arranged on the catkin axis as in the normal flowers (Fig. 5). But when the flowers open, a hand lens reveals 3-5 tiny, membranous perianth-segments for each tiny flower, whitish in color, and more or less connected at their bases. A minute rounded mass appears in the center of the flower, perhaps primordia of abortive stamens, but this does not develop further. The catkin begins to take on a brownish color and at length the whole catkin, in case it is staminate, drops off. If it is androgynous, the staminate part drops off, or withers.

These male sterile trees appear to have a normal, sometimes excessive, development of the females, and are quite prolific nut producers. Information on the occurrence of female sterility in the hybrid trees is incomplete, but the indications are that at least partial sterility is frequent.



2. Triploid Hybrid

In 1934 we produced a cross of Chinese and American chestnut which proved to be unusual in several respects. The leaves are enormous—9 inches to 1 foot in length, and 4 or 5 inches in width. The hybrid is not particularly blight resistant but more so than its American parent. It died back from the blight about 1940 and the present tree has developed as a shoot from the old roots. The growth is rapid and vigorous. The flowers appear normal, but we have never been able to make a cross with its pollen, nor to effect fertilization of its pistillate flowers. It may be triploid, that is, with 3 sets of chromosomes instead of the normal double set, and this would account for its barrenness.

In the spring of 1952 some of the vigorous shoots of this tree were successfully grafted on shoots from an old stump of Chinese chestnut, using the veneer crown graft method. The scions had not been taken when dormant, but were transferred directly from the tree to the stock in late April. This grafting was done in order to impart greater resistance, if possible, to the CA hybrid by means of the roots of the Chinese stock.

3. Systemic Defect

Since the early 1930's we have seen occasional individuals with abnormal foliage—somewhat mottled, usually curled and often misshapen. Thinking that a virus might be the cause of this trouble the senior author tried grafting some of the shoots on to healthy stocks. The grafts were in no case successful because the scions were too weak. Finally he succeeded in grafting a branch from an affected tree on to a branch of a normal individual. The only result was an increased vigor of the healthy branch. This year he rubbed juices from leaves of such an abnormal individual on to wounded healthy leaves, without result. Moreover, such sick individuals, although growing for years close to healthy trees, have never communicated the malady to their neighbors. Growth is comparatively slow, and there is much dying back or dying out of the slender branchlets.

The evidence indicates that this is not a virus trouble, but a systemic defect, probably caused by chromosome aberration or gene abnormality. It is significant that this trouble occurs only in hybrids. Such trees never flower. We have known four such cases, two of which are now dead. Similar types appear in other species as inherited deviations from normal.

Insect Injuries

A heavy attack from the spring canker worms developed in 1951, but spraying with DDT on May 24th prevented serious damage. No outbreak of canker worms appeared in the spring of 1952. The Japanese beetle has been very little in evidence. The principal bad actors are the mites, Paratetranychus bicolor. Although barely visible to the naked eye, the effect they produce of whitening the leaves is conspicuous, especially on the Chinese chestnut and its hybrids. These insects overwinter in egg form on the surface of the bark. Last winter they were so numerous on some of the trees that the bark had taken on a red color—especially on smooth-barked trunks just below a branch. An application of "Scalecide" on April 21, while the trees were still dormant, followed by two heavy applications of "Aramite" (6-7 lbs. per acre) on June 13th and 27th, gave good control for the rest of the summer. Spraying with DDT for weevils was done on August 18th and September 3rd in 1952 with good results.

Cooperative Hybrid Chestnut Plantations

In 1947 the first hybrid chestnut plantation under forest conditions was made in cooperation with the U.S.D.A. Bureau of Plant Industry, Division of Forest Pathology. The plantations are made in order to test the hybrids under normal forest conditions and different climatic conditions. In general, each plantation consists of about 100 trees, 50 U.S.D.A. hybrids and 50 Connecticut hybrids. The trees are planted at a 10' by 10' spacing, and the overstory is girdled at the time of planting in order to give the plants better light conditions without causing an abrupt change in the microclimate of the forest floor—a method developed by Dr. J. D. Diller of the Division of Forest Pathology (1). Ten plantations at 9 locations have been established since 1947. These are listed below:

No. of Plots Location Year Established —————————————————————————————————- 1 Edward Childs Estate, Norfolk, Conn. 1947 1 Tennessee Valley Authority, Norris, Tenn. 1947 1 Table Rock State Park, Pickens, S.C. 1948 1 Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio 1948 1 Upper Perkiomen Valley Park, Green Lane, Pa. 1949 1 So. Ill. Univ. Fish & Wildlife Service, Cartersville, Ill. 1949 1 Russ State Forest, Decatur, Mich. 1951 2 Nathan Hale State Forest, Coventry, Conn. 1951 1 Ouichata Nat'l. Forest, Hot Springs, Ark. 1952 —————————————————————————————————-

Connecticut State Ownership of Sleeping Giant Plantations

On April 11, 1951, at a meeting at the "Little Red House", Sleeping Giant Mountain, the lands on the Sleeping Giant Mountain, Hamden, Connecticut, about 10 acres, on which about 1500 chestnut trees are now growing, including nearly every chestnut species known to science, and many valuable, blight resistant hybrids, were formally deeded over to the State of Connecticut by their owner, the senior writer of this report. The meeting was attended by officials of the Sleeping Giant Park Association, the Connecticut State Park and Forest Commission, The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, and the Yale School of Forestry. The transfer to the State was made with the understanding that The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station would continue the chestnut breeding work. The whole region is now undergoing a fairly rapid housing development, and in the ordinary course of mortal events this plantation would have been divided into building lots within the next few decades. The State ownership will obviate this, and The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station sponsorship will assure a continuation of the breeding work.

Literature Cited

1. Diller, J. D. Growing chestnuts for timber. 37th Ann. Rept. of Northern Nut Grower's Assn. for 1946. 66-68. 1947. 2. Graves, Arthur Harmount. A method of controlling the chestnut blight on partially resistant species and hybrids of Castanea. 41st Ann. Rept. of Northern Nut Growers Assn. 1950. 149-151. 1951. 3. Hauser, Willibald. Zur Physiologie des Gerbstoffes in der Pflanzenzelle. III. Protoplasma 27:125-130. 1936-37. 4. Nienstaedt, Hans. Tannin as a factor in the resistance of chestnut, castanea spp., to the chestnut blight fungus, Endothia parasitica. Phytopathology 43:32-38. 1953. 5. Nierenstein, M. The natural organic tannins. J. & A. Churchill.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 18: Also of The Division of Forest Pathology, U.S.D.A., Plant Industry Station, Beltsville, Maryland.]

[Footnote 19: Records furnished by the U.S. Weather Bureau at New Haven, Conn.]

[Footnote 20: October, 1952, was among the six driest Octobers on record. These were: 1879, 1892, 1897, 1916 and 1924. From U.S. Weather Report, New York City.]



Effect of Vermiculite in Inducing Fibrous Roots on Tap-Rooting Tree Seedlings

HERBERT C. BARRETT[21] and TORU ARISUMI[22]

When seedlings of nut trees and other tap-rooted species are transplanted from nursery to orchard, the percentage of survival in often quite low. Perhaps the chief reason for this failure is the marked and pronounced tendency of most tap-rooted plants to produce little or no fibrous, branched roots in lieu of the long, straight, and seldom branched tap roots.

The common practice of undercutting seedlings during the dormant season to induce a branched root system requires additional labor, and often results in reduced growth and vigor during the following season. The use of hardware cloth or other close-meshed wire is effective, but this method also has the disadvantage of being relatively expensive for the nurseryman.

Preliminary work carried on during the past two years has shown that with certain nut trees and other tap-rooted plants, it is possible to induce fibrous roots by growing such seedlings in vermiculite. The methods and results of this work are presented in this paper.

Material and Methods

Seeds of black walnut (Juglans nigra), Persian walnut (Juglans regia), Chinese chestnut (Castanea mollissima), pignut hickory (Carya glabra), shellbark hickory (Carya laciniosa), shagbark hickory (Carya ovata), pecan (Carya illin), pawpaw (Asimina triloba), and three persimmons (Diospyros kaki, D. lotus, and D. virginiana) were stratified in moist sawdust for three months at a temperature range of 35 to 40 degrees F. After this period of stratification the seeds of each species were divided into three lots and planted in flats 25 x 26 x 6 inches containing one of the following media: (1) sharp sand of the type used in potting soil, (2) potting soil, and (3) vermiculite. Seeds were kept moist with ordinary tap water and allowed to germinate and grow in the greenhouse. When the seedlings had grown two or three true leaves, they were carefully removed from the medium and examined for the type of root system developed.

Results

In the first eight species listed in Table 1, the differences between branched and tap-rooted seedlings were quite pronounced. The few tap-rooted seedlings growing in vermiculite medium showed some laterals and were less strongly tap-rooted than those in soil or sand. Pawpaws in soil and sand media were practically devoid of laterals, and their fibrous root system in vermiculite was not as pronounced as with the walnuts, hickories, and pecans. Of the species studied, the persimmons



Table 1.

Sand Soil Vermiculite

Species Number of plants Tap rooted Fibrous Tap Fibrous Tap Fibrous

Black Walnut 20 3 24 2 0 39 Persian Walnut 15 2 13 1 0 15 Chinese Chestnut 35 6 32 7 3 37 Pignut Hickory 19 0 22 0 3 16 Shellbark Hickory 9 0 8 0 0 13 Shagbark Hickory 27 0 25 0 2 28 Pecan 21 0 23 0 0 15 Pawpaw 102 0 140 0 20 85 D. kaki 6 2 5 3 0 10 D. lotus 20 11 18 7 0 30 D. Virginia 16 0 20 0 0 14

showed the least tendency to produce tap-rooted seedlings. Typical branched or fibrous-rooted seedlings grown in vermiculite are illustrated in Figure 1.



Summary

The chief difficulty encountered in transplanting several nut tree and other commonly tap-rooted seedlings is thought to be due to the lack of a branched root system. The methods and results of a fairly simple technique of inducing fibrous roots, that of growing seedlings in vermiculite, have been presented.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 21: First Assistant in Plant Breeding, University of Illinois, Department of Horticulture.]

[Footnote 22: Formerly Half-time Assistant in Plant Breeding, University of Illinois, Department of Horticulture.]



Eastern Black Walnut Survey, 1951

H. F. STOKE, Roanoke, Va.

The Northern Nut Growers Association, at its 1950 Annual Meeting, adopted a resolution directing that a survey covering the eastern American black walnut, Juglans nigra be conducted during the ensuing year, and that the services of the State and regional Vice-presidents be utilized in making the survey.

In carrying out this mandate fifty questionaires were sent out, and 37 replies were received. Of these, 33 were from the States, including the District of Columbia, three were from Canada, including British Columbia, Ontario and Prince Edward Island, respectively, and one was from Belgium.

From these replies, as compiled, it is apparent that the natural range of the American black walnut may be defined approximately as follows:

Beginning at the Atlantic seaboard at Massachusetts Bay curving slightly northward then westward across northeastern New York to Toronto and on westward across lower Ontario, Lake Huron, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, in which state the line curves south-westward, crossing about the northwest corner of Iowa. From this point the line runs approximately south across the eastern parts of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. As the line approaches the Gulf of Mexico it turns eastward, crossing the southern parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, back again to the Atlantic.

The natural range of the black walnut may be said to have been limited on the north by winter cold, on the west by lack of sufficient rainfall and on the south by a winter climate too mild for the required dormant rest period. Where these limitations are removed the American black walnut appears to do well far out of its natural range.

In its native state it seemed to thrive best along water-ways and in hollows among the hills and mountains, though it was also to be found on the uplands wherever the soil was fertile and other conditions favorable. The overflow of streams undoubtedly did much to distribute and plant the seed, aided always by the ubiquitous squirrel.

Twenty-nine of the States reported the trees as thrifty and bearing well-filled nuts. Eastern Maryland reported the trees as thrifty but the nut crop light. Michigan reports the nuts as having been well filled formerly, but poor in recent years. West Virginia makes a similar report, and attributes poor crops to the presence of anthracnose, a fungus disease of the leaves causing early defoliation.

The nut crop of the wild trees appears to be ungathered to a large extent, taking the country as a whole.

Eleven states report whole husked nuts being marketed in a limited way and six report the marketing of home-produced kernels. Prices for the whole nuts are quoted as low as $2.00 per bushel, with a top of $5.00 per bushel for Kansas-produced named varieties.

Accurate statistics as to whole nut and kernel production are not available.

Tennessee reports black walnut cracking plants, as follows: One each at Lebanon and Morristown, and three located at Nashville.

A West Virginia report estimates the State's kernel production at $200,000 per annum. A cracking plant in St. Louis is reported as processing 1-1/2 million pounds of whole nuts annually, for which it pays 5-1/2 cents per pound. Other cracking plants reported are one at Stanford, Kentucky, one at Broadway, Virginia and one or two in West Virginia, location unstated. No statement was received as to the amount of business done by these. A new one is starting operations at Henderson, Kentucky in 1951.

Production of black walnut kernels as a home industry has languished since the Federal ruling that the kernels must be pasteurized as soon as produced. Most of such kernels are now consumed locally, so as not to run afoul of inter-state regulations. No epidemic has, as yet, been traced to such local use.

A question designed to disclose what named varieties give the best results in the various localities was not very effective. Replies usually came in the form of lists of varieties being planted with little definite indication as to the ones that have proven superior.

As might be expected, Thomas led the list by being mentioned 15 times. Elmer Myers was listed 9 times, Stabler 6, Ohio 6, Mintle 3, Snyder 2, (New York and Tenn.), Sifford 2, (Kentucky and Kansas), and the following one each: Adams, Grundy, Korn (Michigan); Rohwer, Vandersloot (Kansas); Sparrow, Victoria, Homeland (North Carolina); Ten Eyck (New Jersey); Creitz (Virginia); and Impit (British Columbia).

A study of the geographical distribution of the preferred varieties fails to produce any significant conclusions as to the varieties best adapted to any specific state. Doubtless Thomas heads the list because it has had the longest and largest distribution. A New York state survey gave Thomas the preference 9 times, Snyder 7, Myers 4, Ohio 2, and one each to several other varieties. A similar survey in New Jersey gave Thomas preference 2, Stabler 2, Ten Eyck 1 and Ohio 1.

One New Jersey correspondent reported Ohio as "excellent", another listed Ten Eyck as "fair", and a third reported Thomas as "terrible".

One Kansas producer reports Thomas his best and Ohio his worst. Another Kansan reports the exact opposite.

Pennsylvania reports Ohio as best, Stabler as worst. Her neighbor to the east, New Jersey, rates Stabler highly, as does Ohio, immediately to the west.

The notable leaf-disease resistance of the Ohio variety is worthy of the consideration of planters in districts where early defoliation causes poor filling of the nuts.

For a late comer, the thin-shelled Myers makes a strong showing, which may be significant. It is worth watching.

Until there is wider planting and production of the named varieties, it will not be possible to name the varieties best adapted to any specific state or location, in the opinion of your reporter.

The possibilities of profit in planting black walnut orchards have not been determined.

From Pennsylvania comes the report that of the several black walnut orchards planted twenty-five years ago, only three are now being given care.

A ten-acre orchard at Wharton, Md. that, presumably, was being given special care, is reported as nearly all dead—"too much commercial fertilizer, or the wrong kind."

The report on several small West Virginia plantings is submitted as "inconclusive".

The main general interest at present appears to be the planting of the better walnuts on home grounds and on the farm. Twenty-four states reported such use, with varying degrees of interest.

Considering that the black walnut is our finest cabinet wood, and one of the best in the world, forestry planting may be truthfully said to be lagging deplorably.

The state of Pennsylvania has shown some interest and made some small plantings.

Ohio has done some planting. The Sunny Hill Coal Company of New Lexington, Ohio, is reported to have planted 5000 seedlings.

In Indiana Ford Wallick has reported the planting of 14 bu. of seed, the seedlings to be budded later to the Lamb curly walnut. Tennessee and West Virginia report small plantings.

Kansas reports some interest in planting walnuts on lands that have been destroyed for agricultural purposes by strip coal mining.

As a whole, the forestry plantings of the walnut of the future, as of the past, appear mainly dependent on the untiring squirrel.

There has never been an adequate supply of walnut timber since pioneer days when walnut logs were rolled together for burning in the clearing of land, or split for fence rails, nor is an adequate supply in sight for the future.

In producing districts buyers are always ready to pounce on the owner of any walnut tree of marketable size. Prices paid are usually much lower than the real value of the timber, partly because the stand is so scattering as to prevent the use of efficient means of logging and transportation.

Of all the agencies tending to destroy the black walnut, war is the most devastating. The superb qualities of the wood for the making of gun stocks causes the country to be combed more and more closely by buyers in each succeeding war.

However, from the standpoint of human interest, the picture is not wholly dark. It is perhaps too much to expect that private enterprise will enter into the long-time investment necessary for extensive forestry plantings, but the states can and should do so in connection with their park and forestry programs. As already indicated some few states are working in that direction.

Of perhaps more immediate concern and value are the possibilities of interesting the 4-H clubs and similar organizations of youth in making home and farm plantings. Refreshingly encouraging is the following excerpt from the report of the Arkansas state Vice-president, Mr. A. C. Hale, a vocational instructor of Camden, Arkansas.

"When a student comes into the class of vocational agriculture in the ninth grade I try to get him to plant some black walnuts so they will get big enough to graft while he is in high school. The use of this method is helpful in getting many trees started. By grafting one or more of the Persian walnuts, interest is also added."

"One way that has helped me get people started with a tree on the home grounds is to pot a few sprouted nuts and when a neighbor is sick take a seedling walnut instead of a flower. I usually go back to help with the transplanting of it."

Such practical methods, if widely used, would bring far more valuable results than any legislative program.

The Virginia Polytechnic Institute is showing some interest, and conducted a field clinic in top-working the walnut in the Shenandoah Valley area in the spring of 1951. County Agents have become interested, and a county-wide Black Walnut Contest will be held at Harrisonburg, Va., Nov. 9 and 10th of this year, in which VPI is collaborating. It is hoped this idea will spread.

On Prince Edward Island, just off the Canadian east coast, there does not appear to be enough summer heat to mature the nuts, though the tree is grown somewhat on home grounds.

In the fruit-growing sections of British Columbia the black walnut appears quite at home, trees of a diameter of from three to four feet being reported at Chilliwack, in the Fraser River valley. J. U. Gellattly also reports the walnut at Brooks and Medicine Hat, Alberta.

Confirmation of the ability of the black walnut to stand extremely low temperatures is to be found in a letter of Aug. 22, 1951 from W. R. Leslie, Superintendent, Dominion Experiment Station, Morden, Manitoba, as follows:

"Black walnut is doing fairly well in such places as the Provincial Horticultural Station, Brooks, Alberta, (P. D. Hargrave, Supt.), and at Portage la Prairie, Winnipeg and Morden, Manitoba. Apparently the black walnut enjoys a heavier soil than the butternut (or white walnut). The white has been more widely planted than the black. The Manchurian seems hardier than either and is the most rapid grower of the three Juglans on test here. However, the two natives usually give us a fairly abundant crop of nuts."

"Our source of black walnut was from around New Ulm, Minnesota; the butternut came from around Sault Ste. Marie, at the lower end of Lake Superior. I am not aware of either indigenous species being native closer than the points mentioned."

Belgium reports the black walnut as thriving in door-yards and along roadways, where the nuts are mentioned as a menace to traffic.

In conclusion it is urged that friends of conservation and a sound economy should lend their every effort to the extension of black walnut plantings. Some progress has been made since the days of pioneer plunder, but much remains to be done.

Thanks are extended to all those who have contributed to this survey.



Crath's Carpathian English Walnuts in Ontario

[23]P. C. CRATH, 129 Felbrigg Ave., Toronto 12, Ontario

Introduction

The English Walnut (Juglans regia) in England is known as Persian walnut. Some think that the nuts originated in Persia. The primeval forests of English walnut trees, which in many places cover the southern as well as northern slopes of the Caucasian Mountains show that Caucasia is the country of the origin of those trees.

But in the Western Carpathian Mountains in Europe geologists had excavated ancient walnuts in the salt rocks of the pits of Weliczka. In some places of the Eastern Carpathians walnuts could be found in a wild stage; and of course domesticated walnuts flourish in every Ukrainian orchard from the northern slopes of the Carpathians up to the southern banks of the Pripet River, and all over Ukraine as far as the Don. But there they could not be found in a wild form.

Walnuts in such countries as Italy, Spain, France are probably of Persian origin.

Since Canada was discovered by Cartier European settlers have many times tried to introduce the southern European walnuts in to the New World, but without success. Only in California, along the Ocean's shore, Europeans succeeded in acclimatizing some, as they think, "English Walnuts"; though in reality the California Walnuts are halfbreeds.

In Old Ontario the people enjoyed the local wild black walnuts, butternuts and hickory. Up to the present English Walnuts are imported into this Province.

When in 1917 I settled in Toronto and found that even in the southern part of the Province, so rich in different fruits, no English Walnuts grew there, I was amazed.

In my old home in the Ukraine walnut trees were as common as elms in Ontario. And I have found that the Southern Ontario climate is warmer than the climate of Kiev or Poltava regions in Ukraine.

It has seemed to me that English walnuts from the Carpathian region should thrive well around Toronto.

My Experiments

In my old home I have heard gardeners say: "Where apples grow, walnuts will grow there also." And around Toronto there I have seen nice apple orchards producing splendid fruits. The Ontario apple trees withstood winter colds well, and that fact encouraged me to try to plant English walnuts from Ukraine in the neighborhood of Toronto. At the end of the First World War Ukraine revolted against the Russian Empire and at the same time she was fighting for her independence with Poland.

At that time my father's family lived in the city of Stanyslaviv at the northern foot of the Carpathians. I asked my sister to send me as many local English walnut seeds by mail as she could. Giving such an order to my sister I expected that the nuts would arrive not later than the end of October, just in time to be planted before the freeze up. This was in 1921.

I remembered from my boyhood that planting of English walnut seeds was surrounded by some mystery. It seemed to me that people in Ukraine regarded it as a very difficult matter to cultivate walnut trees.

Being under such a notion myself I asked a horticulturist how long the germination power of a walnut seed would last. He told me that it could prevail in a fresh walnut not longer than a week. He advised me in order to prevent walnuts from drying to dip them in melted parawax. Following that information I wrote my sister to parawax the walnut seeds before sending them to Canada.

Owing to the Polish-Ukrainian war at that time the shipment of the walnut seeds got to Toronto not late in the Fall, as had been expected, but in February when the farm land around Toronto was frozen. And the worst of it was my sister did not parawax the nuts!

Being sure the kernels were dead I allowed the children to do what they pleased with them. But before they cracked the last one my wife advised me to plant a dozen of the nuts in our flower pots, as she said, "for fun". I did it. Other nuts the children destroyed, and in spite of my sorrow and anguish in two weeks the walnut sprouts came up in the pots. Everyone of them came up, proving that you do not need to protect walnut germination by dipping the nuts into melted parawax.

From the flower pots the walnut seedlings were transplanted that spring of 1922 into our city garden at 48 Peterboro Ave., Toronto.

At least a thousand of the kernels of several varieties were thus destroyed and I was obliged to wait until another fall when the Juglans regia nuts were sent again by my sister. They came also late in the winter and were dry as pepper.

In the spring of 1923 I took the walnut seeds of the second shipment to the farm of my friend Mr. M. Kozak located a couple of miles north of the Scarboro Golf Club. There I soaked them in water in a tub for five days and then planted in rows 1-1/2 ft. apart, row from row, and the nuts 6 inches apart nut from nut and two inches deep. In a couple of weeks nearly every nut produced a sapling. I kept them well cultivated the whole summer, and in the Fall the seedlings were from six to eight inches tall. The nuts on the Kozak farm were of different varieties; some were small, some large, some were round, some oblong, some paper-thin-shelled, some hard shelled; some varieties had sweet kernels, some had a little slightly bitter taste, some were flat. According to their variety the bark of the seedlings, some of them at least, was shiny brown, while other varieties had their bark shiny dark green, light gray, light green.

Now I have known how to produce walnut seedlings. Then another worry came—could the seedlings stand the Ontario winter? They had stood the winter of 1925-28 very well. Only the tops of those were spoiled, which were injured by buffalo tree hoppers.

It seemed that the regular Ontario caterpillars did not like the sap of the English walnut foliage. But the worst enemies of the Carpathians was the bacterial disease. The leaves and young shoots curled, turned black, being infested by the disease. In such a case the spraying is needed.

Acquaintance with the Vineland Government Experimental Farm

Somehow, but very soon after I started my experiments with English Carpathian Walnuts in Ontario, Mr. James Neilson, the nut specialist in the Government Experimental Farm, Vineland, Ont. discovered me. By him I was introduced to the late Mr. G. H. Corsan of Islington, Ont. who was known as a prominent nut grower in Ontario. In the year 1924, when we met the first time, Mr. Corsan already was interested in the culture of black walnuts and butternuts, in hickories, pecans, hicans and filberts. Soon I transferred my English Carpathian walnut nursery to Corsan's place at Islington. Mr. Corsan, with a great deal of enthusiasm broadcasted my Carpathians all over the American continent, but under different names: English Walnuts, Persian, Russian, Carpathian, etc. Soon we were joined by a third walnut enthusiast Mr. L. K. Davitt, a teacher in a Toronto High School.

Prof. C. T. Currelly the Founder and at that time the Director of the Royal Ontario Museum of Archeology in Toronto, also became interested in my walnut experiments. Then later on some other prominent Torontonians followed us and the Nut Growers Society of Ontario was organized.

Americans also became interested in the Carpathian walnuts. First among them was a graduate from Cornell University, a farmer near Ithaca, N. Y., Mr. Samuel Graham. Mr. George Slate of the Geneva Experiment Station was one of the first Americans who early got interested in the Carpathians.

There in the States is the Northern Nut Growers Association. Following Mr. Corsan I also became a member of the Association.

My Research in English Walnuts in Ukraine

From the year 1924 until 1936 I spent most of my time as a Presbyterian missionary in Western Ukraine, which was then under Polish occupation. From time to time I used to come to Canada on furlough. Every time, coming from Ukraine, I brought also a box or more of Carpathian English Walnuts for planting.

Then I liked to tell Dr. Palmer, the Director of the Vineland Government Experimental Farm about my research in walnuts in Ukraine.

In Western Ukraine my headquarters were in the city of Kolomyja, Province of Galicia, at the foot of the Eastern Carpathians. Thus I was in the center of the culture of the Carpathian walnuts.

Though my circuit was very large (Provinces of Galician and Volynia) and there was a time when I served 30 congregations, nevertheless I had a little time also to study the English Walnuts in their native environments.

Before starting the research in that country I decided for myself what in my conception should be the ideal English walnut. I have come to the conclusion that the nut should be of large size, thin shelled, its kernel well filled up, being of a pleasant sweet taste; inside of the nut there should be no partitions, thus allowing the kernel to roll out unbroken.

Then I printed questionnaire blanks for each individual nut tree to be examined. Beside the above mentioned questions I added:

What is the name and address of the owner of the tree, and its location?

How old, tall and thick the trunk of tree is?

How many pounds of the nuts the tree yielded that year?

In what kind of soil does it thrive?

What enemies attack it?

What fertilizer, or manure, has been used in the particular case, or none?

Is there in the nuts, leaves and bark any sign of cross-pollination?

Regarding the grafting and budding I found that the local nut-growers had not the slightest idea how to go about it. They also did not care to prevent their walnut trees from cross-pollination.

Soon I found that there in Galicia alone could be found several hundreds of varieties of Carpathian English walnuts. Anyway till 1935, I sent to Toronto 200 varieties of the Carpathians.

Some of those English Carpathian walnuts were 2-1/2 inches long, or five nuts to a foot; others were only one third of an inch. Some very small Carpathians produced nuts in clusters, like grapes. In some Carpathians it was possible to detect cross-pollination with Asiatic walnuts by their harder shells, by partitions, by the shape of nuts, by the construction of the leaves and their odor, and in some cases by the color of bark.

By kernels all the Carpathian halfbreeds are English walnuts, differing group from group by the taste. I remember that only in 1898 in the bourg of Loubni, and in 1933 in the City of Kolomyja I came across two trees which resembled our black walnut. In both towns some people used to live in America, and coming home they could bring with them some American nuts.

In the region around Kossiv I came across groves of American black walnuts and butternuts. Those trees were planted there by the Austrian Government 75 or so years ago. Of course they did not cause all the hybridizing I mentioned above. Maybe the Asiatic nuts were brought in Eastern Carpathians when the Tartar hordes crossed the mountains in the region of Pokouttia (Kossiv) in the year 1242.

Not far from Kossiv, westward, in the village of Kosmuch in the Carpathians 2500 feet above sea level I found English walnut trees of small size (15 feet tall, 6 inches thick) with light gray bark, producing 2 inch long nuts of speary shape, like our Canadian butternuts but of English Walnut shells and kernels. The kernels were tasty. There was no question but that they were halfbreeds, English plus Mongolian nuts.

There in Kosmuch, not far from the historical Tartar Passage, through which in 13th century Ghengis Khan hordes invaded the Danube plains, in winter the temperature falls to 45 degrees below zero. Owing to the hardiness of the strain and pleasant taste of the nuts I picked up about 10 pounds of them to be tried in colder parts of Ontario, (and some of them already are bearing north of Toronto and true to the type.)

I called the nuts Hutzulian Pointies, as they grow in Hutzulia the country of the Ukrainian Mountaineers.

The year 1936. My last trip to Western Ukraine

In Ontario farmers were slow to grasp the idea of cultivating my Carpathian English walnuts. Either they did not believe the English walnuts could thrive in this Province, or waited till my trees would start to bear. Nevertheless some thousand of my seedlings were planted here and there all over Ontario and smaller quantities in the Maritime Provinces, Manitoba and Alberta. The late Sir Wm. Mulock hired Mr. Corsan to graft with the Carpathian scions tops of many of his black walnut trees in Orillia, Ont. Fred Gaby, the engineer who built the Ontario Hydro, ordered through me from Ukraine 50 to 12 feet tall Carpathians of bearing age and planted them on 10 acres near Cooksville. Ont. Prof. Currelly has bought 25 acres near his estate west of Pt. Hope, Ont. for my use in experimental work. The late Col. McAlpyne planted one thousand of my yearlings on his estate at Fenelon Falls, Ont. Two young farmers, Papple Bros., in the Georgian Bay region also started an English Carpathian walnut orchard. In 1935 I moved my Carpathian walnut nursery from Islington to Prof. Currelly's estate, and Mr. L. K. Devitt sold his lot of the trees through the Dominion Seed Co., Georgetown, Ont.

In the States, Mr. Carl Weschoke, a manufacturer in St. Paul, Minn., who in the year 1935 was elected the President of the Northern Nut Growers Association, also got interested in Carpathians. His son-in-law about that time started a walnut nursery on their estate some 30 miles east of St. Paul. That 1936 year Mr. Weschoke sponsored my expedition to Northeastern Poland (Northwestern Ukraine) to find the geographical line north of which English walnuts do not thrive in Europe.

My expedition was successful. I discovered that northward from the Pripet River, which flows from west to east toward the Dneiper, English Walnuts could not be found. If I had come across there some English seedlings nearer to the Lithuanian boundary and the Baltic Sea shore, they would have been planted there recently and not before the year 1924.

Farther north, though there English walnuts do not thrive, around the Lake Peipus I came across filberts not as bushes but as large trees. Every fall peasants in that district go in the woods and bring bags of filberts for winter use.

Such filbert trees I found also in the Carpathian mountains near the Ukrainian settlement of Vizhnytza in the Province of Bukovina.

West of the town of Sarny and south of the Pripet I came across a grove of 18 ancient English walnut trees. In the year 1648 when Ukrainian Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytzky led a war against Poland those trees already were 70 years old, and they still were bearing in 1936 when I visited that region. Indeed their limbs were broken and they presented a sad sight, but they proved how long the Ukrainian English walnut could live. The seeds of those ancient trees I also shipped to Mr. Weschcke. Beside that I brought to my sponsors thousands of selected walnut seeds, seedlings and scions.

My English Carpathian walnut tree in the back yard of 48 Peterboro Ave. Toronto, Ont., being planted out there from the pot in the spring of 1922 started to produce nuts in 1929. The nuts were exactly to the type: oblong, pointy, inch and a half long, the shell semi-hard, partitions large, the kernel of pleasant taste. It started to produce female bloom when it was 4 years old, but till 1929 there were no catkins of male bloom.

The crop of the nuts, that year and following years was usually carried away by marauding black squirrels.

Other people who got from us the Carpathian English walnut seedlings reported that their plants also started to bear the seventh year or around that. But the Papple Bros. reported that they had a case when a seedling produced by them straight from the Carpathian walnut bore a nut in the second year of its life. On the other hand there were cases where some Carpathian English seedlings, as well as grafted ones, still produce no nuts though they are 15 years old and over.

I think the cause lies in the soil. On the gravelly hills over Ithaca, N. Y. Carpathian walnuts are slow to bear, even being grafted. The undersoil in the valleys 6 miles north of Pt. Hope, Ont. is not favorable, not only for English walnuts but even for native black walnuts, though very favorable to hickories.

On another hand, north-east of Toronto and near Unionville at the place called Hagerman Cornor on the farm of Mr. M. Artymko there is an orchard of 27 Crath's Carpathian English walnuts over 18 years old, each fruiting now every year. The trees are 25 feet tall, 5-6 inches thick, situated on a knoll of clay, well drained soil, lying open toward the northwest. When the trees were younger they were subject to attacks of the bacterial disease and their barks were cracked by frost. Now the trees are in nice shape, no trace of the bacterial disease injuries and the frost's scars disappearing. Some of those trees produced a bushel of the nuts each.

Among Artymko's trees there is a tree bearing the walnut of giant type, and the tree—Hutzulian Pointie. The success of the Artymko's farm lies probably in the soil and its high elevation.

There in Toronto Mr. T. H. Barrister, has in his backyard two Carpathian English Walnuts, producing nuts of the giant size—five nuts to a foot. The bacterial disease had touched them slightly, and the tree never has been sprayed.

We should expect that the Ontario Agricultural College at Guelph would find out what is the best soil for English walnuts and what fertilizer to be applied for them. Chicken wire fences should protect the walnut orchard from squirrels and the trees should be sprayed against bacterial disease.

About walnut trees bearing and fertilizer—let us return to their native abode in the Carpathians. There in the village of Peestynka I have come across a large English walnut tree 40 feet tall and about 36 years old which, as I was informed by the people there, never fruited till the First World War. During the war an Austrian horse squadron had put a stall around the tree. The horses well manured the soil around there and since that time the tree was bearing nuts regularly and abundantly when I saw it in 1936.

At Last Success!

The year 1951 should be regarded as the final establishing of the culture of the Carpathian English walnuts in Ontario. The three decades of experimentation have passed leaving a splendid result. The fact is established that the Carpathian English walnuts have become aclimatized in South Ontario. This fall I had an opportunity to examine my walnut trees at many points in the Province. Everywhere I have seen the tree bearing. In Toronto in many a backyard, in Thorold South, in Welland, in Port Colboren, in Islington, near Port Hope on Prof. Currelly's estate, around Scarboro, Ont. and so on, the Carpathians are in good shape and all are bearing.

The more the trees mature, the better they look. On the average they are 20 years old, 20 feet tall and 6 inches thick.

The summer of 1951 in Ontario was more cloudy than usual, and it caused the Carpathian walnuts in this Province to turn out smaller than their size, should be about one quarter smaller.

The people who knew Carpathian English walnut trees in Galicia agree that in Ontario the Carpathians grow more slowly than they do in their native land.

It is not in Ontario, but on the University Farm at Madison, Wisconsin, one of our Carpathian trees is nearly 40 feet tall and bearing. In Galicia I had seen many a Carpathian walnut tree as high as 60 feet.

Polish Government Interested in My Activity

During the time of my activities, in the town of Kessiv, there used to live a famous physician, Dr. Tarnawski. Outside of his clinics he was much interested in the welfare of the country. My activities could not be hidden from his sight. "What does that "American" see in our nuts? Are there in America no nuts?" he asked. Soon I was introduced to him. It was in the fall of 1934. He was not well and in bed at that time. He liked to talk with me about the walnut culture and wished to know why I was collecting the nuts, scions and seedlings for Canada. And then it seemed to him impossible that there in Ontario and the northeastern states English walnuts were not yet cultivated. Then I turned his attention to the fact that in Poland they know little about their own trees. My challenge awoke him to activity, and through his intervention Starosta, the county governor, planted the first twenty-five acres with walnut seedlings along the south side of the highway leading from Kessiv to the town of Kooty.

Dr. Tarnawski wrote also an article to a horticultural magazine on English walnuts on what he learned from me.

When in the fall of 1936 I was going back to my home in Toronto, Dr. Tarnawski wrote about me to the Department of Agriculture in Warsaw introducing me to the minister. I had an opportunity to give a talk on the Carpathian English walnuts in the presence of many horticulturists in the Government Experimental Farm at Skieerniewice near Warsaw.

Late in 1936 I came back to Canada and till the Second World War continued to cultivate the Carpathian walnuts and other horticultural material brought by me from Western Ukraine.

The Second War cut me off from my field in Europe.

A decade and a half has passed. The Carpathians have been acclimatized, have grown, and have been bearing nuts in Ontario. When such success has been achieved, it seems that there in Canada all the enterprise is forgotten. Of course, the Carpathian walnuts could not advertise themselves—they are "dumb critters."

In the States the situation with the Carpathians is entirely different. Interest in them is growing steadily, and as I said previously the American nurseries have already put the Carpathians on the broad market.

In 1950 at the annual meeting the Northern Nut Growers Association made me an Honorary Member of the Association.

In 1951 the Association held a contest and the "Crath" Carpathians won most of the prizes.

Culture of Crath's Carpathian English Walnut Trees

1. Propagation by seeds

Pick up the largest and heaviest nuts from a certain tree. Dry them in a windy place, but not in the sun. Gather the nuts into a jute bag and hang for the winter in a dry and cold place protected from squirrels.

Around May 14th put the nuts into a vessel with lukewarm water, soak about one week.

Prepare a bed of rich soil manured previously with horse manure. The land should not be of a wet kind. Plant the nuts in rows, 6 inches nut from nut, and two feet, row from row. Protect your nursery from squirrels.

In a week or two the nuts should come up.

Keep the nursery free from weeds. It will protect the seedling from the buffalo tree hoppers. If the signs of the bacterial disease are detected spray the seedlings at once.

For the first winter leave the seedlings as they are in the field. The next spring dig them up, every one. Cut off the leading root of each plant and transplant the seedlings again in rows a foot apart seedling from seedling and two feet row from row.

The amputation of the leading root causes the seedling to grow up instead of down and will make them start to bear nuts earlier.

In Europe instead of cutting off the walnut seedling's main roots they put under them a flat stone, or start in an earthen pot.

The next spring the walnut seedlings are ready for the permanent planting. Being permanently transplanted they should be cultivated at least two or three years.

Whitewash the walnut trunks in the late fall to protect bark from bursting by the winter sun. Put a screen around the trunks to protect them from mice and rabbits. Though, if a walnut is gnawed by rodents do nothing about it, the tree will produce a stalk—a new one—from the root.

2. Propagation by Grafting

Take Canadian black walnut seedling, one or two years old early in the spring, if you have a greenhouse and can graft them one inch above the root line, tie up with raffia, cover with melted parawax and put in boxes covering each row with light soil mixed with the moss. After 20th of May when the danger of frost is over transplant in your nursery.

The grafting of walnuts should be called a barking method. Cut off the upper part of the stock horizontally. Split the bark with your grafting knife as much as needed and lift up the bark as far as the wood and insert the scion. Tie up with raffia and do the rest as said previously.

The top grafting on the large Canadian black nuts gives good results also.

3. Budding

We bud the walnuts in the middle of August. Regular "T" cut has to be done, the bud put in and wrapped with raffia. Then it should be covered with parawax and left for a couple of weeks. After that time the budding should be examined and the raffia removed. If the leaf by the bud remains green it indicates that the grafting is successful.

The next spring, cut off the upper part of the stalk about two feet over the bud. You will tie up to it the budded shoot, which by the fall might be up to 6 feet high.

Spraying and cultivating is required as has been said above.

Owing to the fact that the budded plant in its first year continues to grow deep into fall and in many cases its upper part does not harden well, wrap the budding with straw for winter.

4. Harvesting

In the Carpathian Mountains when they gather the walnuts in the fall they mash them down with a very long and quite thin hazel sticks. Doing that they beat off the thin tops of the walnut branches. They say such an operation causes a better crop of the nuts next season.

5. Giant Walnuts and their problems

Some giant walnuts on the same tree have sometimes small kernels or withered ones. In the Carpathian Region they do not know what to do with such a problem.

It seems to me that we in Canada have to solve it. Maybe it is because of the bacterial disease, or it may be a lack of the proper fertilizer.

In Warsaw I have seen the giant walnuts sold not being dried.

6. Reforestation with the Carpathian Walnuts

Crath's Carpathian English walnuts could produce for Canada a very valuable forest and in shorter time than other trees do. We should always remember that in the Caucasian Mountains there are huge walnut forests. Some trees are of primeval age. Before the First World War English buyers often paid a Caucasian farmer from 5,000 to 10,000 rubles for a tree.

Walnut Wine

There in the Town of Kooty Mrs. Babiuk, a good wife of a local burgher told me about the walnut wine as follows:

"In my girlhood in this region there raged an awful epidemic of cholera. Many people died. But those who drank the wine made of green English Walnuts did not die."

The recipe that she gave me is as follows:

Take equal parts of walnuts in which the shells are not yet hardened, and the same quantity of sugar. Cut each green walnut in half a dozen parts, mix them with the sugar. In a couple of days the juice will be extracted by means of the sugar and ensuing fermentation which continues about one month. In two months it is ready to be consumed.

On my return to Canada I made wine from the Canadian black walnuts. The color of the wine was dark brown and quite pleasant. It stops stomach ache.

Also we should not forget the walnut oil and the use of walnuts in confectionary.

Walnut Candies

Take equal quantities of walnut kernels and honey. Mix. Boil, watching that the honey does not over-run. Mix with a wooden spoon. In half an hour cool to see if the honey has turned into taffy. If not, boil longer. When it is ready put upon a wooden board, with a spoon. When cooled the candy is ready.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 23: Mr. Crath died late December 1952]



Nut Tree Plantings in Southeastern Iowa

ALBERT B. FERGUSON, Center Point, Iowa

Last year on our return from the Nut Growers Assn. tour, Mr. Snyder and I stopped to see the Schlagenbusch Brothers and their nut plantings. We thought at the time that it would be profitable to the Association to have a report on their work. Mr. Snyder and I went down a month ago to visit them again.

Sidney and Carl Schlagenbusch live in the southeastern part of Iowa. The walnut orchard is on high land overlooking the Mississippi River bottom. The ground was formerly oak and hickory timber. Most of their other plantings are near the farm buildings which are just below the higher ground.

The first planting of the walnut orchard was made in 1928 and was completed 8 or 10 years later. It consisted of 205 trees. Later additions have been made. There are about 325 grafted trees in the orchard at present, most of them of bearing age. The trees are spaced 50 feet by 50 feet in staggered rows. Some of the branches are beginning to touch. The diameter of the larger trees is 18 inches. The orchard is in grass which is not grazed close. The larger portion of the orchard is the Thomas variety. They have a selection of their own which was first in the Iowa contest a few years ago. I thought it outstanding, but they consider it a little small.

The nuts are gathered in a wagon and run through a corn sheller, then cleaned in a device they made themselves. The nuts are then floated and dried. Over half of the crop is cracked and sold as kernels. They have been getting around a $1.20 per pound in Fort Madison. No crop to date has exceeded a thousand dollars in value.

They also have several hickories and hybrids. The shellbark variety, Wagoner, is outstanding—the best I've seen. It is large, thin shelled, cracks easily, and is of good quality. A small tree grafted on shagbark is bearing well. They have the common varieties of pecans, a few chestnuts, a few English walnuts, Japanese walnuts and hybrids. The Winkler Hazel has not been very productive with them.

They had several trees of Stabler, which were not satisfactory so they cut the trees off close to the ground and put 6 or 8 bark grafts in the stump. They saved the largest one as the main trunk and taking a graft or a large sprout from the opposite side of the stump, inarching it into the main trunk two or three feet up. This prevents the wind from blowing the graft off of the stump. It also makes it possible to utilize the strength of the roots from the opposite side of the stump. They had several trees worked this way which are now of good size.

In addition to caring for their large farm, nut orchard and a choice herd of Hereford cattle, Carl has found time to do some breeding work with Oriental poppies from which he has made some very choice selections. They have also worked with several other perennials. Sidney and Carl Schlagenbusch are true horticulturists by nature and are fine folks.

On the way home from this recent trip, we stopped to see Corliss Williams near Danville. His brother Wendell Williams, located the Winkler Hazel, before the first world war in which he served and never returned. We saw a Persian walnut, 25 or 30 years old, in Mr. Williams front yard. It was a U.S.D.A. introduction from Russia. It seems to be perfectly hardy, bears well and is of excellent quality. The shagbark hickories are plentiful in his locality. He has top-worked 200 or more, many of them to Burlington, which is productive and fills well with him.



Rockville as a Hickory Interstock

HERMAN LAST, Steamboat Rock, Iowa

As a nut-grower I am afraid I have been over-rated; I make my living tilling the soil and dabble in my nut grove only when I can find a few moments to spare—in fact all I know about nuts and nut-grafting, I owe to my good friend, Edgar Huen. I shall always remember that balmy May morning 25 years ago when Mr. Huen came over with a kit full of hickory scions, and suggested we go out in my pasture and do some grafting. In that bag were Stratford, Rockville, Des Moines, Marquette, Hagen and Monahan.

We grafted all that day—that is Mr. Huen did the grafting and I watched him. Today these trees are living monuments of our work.

The only tree of these varieties that has ever borne enough nuts to feed a squirrel is the Stratford.

Meanwhile I have been doing a little grafting myself. I acquired a few pecans for understocks but the only variety that was congenial with pecan as far as I knew was Rockville, but it produced no nuts—it was just a nice tree to look at.

One spring my brother-in-law who lives just across the line in Missouri sent me some shellbark scions from a tree in his pasture. I grafted these scions on a pecan and they took off like a house on fire. This variety proved to be a rugged individual and bore every year but the nuts were no good—all cavities like a true shellbark.

Then one spring morning I grafted some of these shellbark scions on Rockville; the grafts took and I soon noticed a transformation. The grafts had blended with the understock and the offspring was different from either parent. The best part of the new hybrid was that it bore abundantly and the nuts are of fine quality.

To those who have some young Rockville trees for top-working, I can furnish a limited amount of scionwood of this shellbark which I have named my Super X, it being so rugged and hardy.

To me the grafting of trees is a noble work. Someone has said that he who plants a tree is a true lover of his race and I don't know of anything that will live longer in the memory of our children and those who follow in our footsteps than a row of hickories laden with nuts.



A Fruitful Pair of Carpathian Walnut Varieties in Michigan

GILBERT BECKER, Climax, Mich.

I would like to tell you briefly my experience with the difficulties of Persian walnut pollination. It took 8 years before I got any nuts, although they had nutlets time and again! It was after I had Crath #1 bearing, that all proceeded to fruit, and then heavier every year, until 1951 when the freeze of November 1950 eliminated the nuts.

Crath #1 has done so well that I feel it well worthy of being a commercial prospect for us. The size and shape are so attractive. (The accuracy of the numbering was once questioned by Mr. Stoke, so I do not know if it is the same No. 1 that others have had from Crath. This was named by Prof. Nielson. It definitely is not Broadview, as Stoke at first thought.)

My Crath #1 had over four bushels of hulled and unhulled nuts (as they are picked up, after shaking) this fall. It was grafted on black walnut in 1938.

At my folks' place I planted a grafted Crath #1, and a Carpathian "D", side by side. There are no other Persian walnuts near, and they have always had nuts, since they started to bear. I feel that this is a proper combination. I do not know whether the blooming periods overlap.



Suggested Blooming Data to be Recorded for Nut Tree Varieties

J. C. MCDANIEL, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana, Ill.

Such experiences as Mr. Becker's (extracted from a letter to me) are well worth knowing, and we need similar information for several years and at different locations, for all the promising Persian seedlings and new varieties. I would suggest that all of us who have them flowering in our plantings (even if only one tree) make an effort in 1953 to record as much as possible of the phenological data on them. A form such as the following might be used, for flowering, fruiting, and related data.

Year: 19 Location: Data by: First freeze previous fall: (Date) Minimum temperature previous winter: deg.F. on (Date) Last killing frost this spring (Date)

- - - - - - - Variety Age Date First End Date Nuts Yield Remarks (or of from catkins of pistils harvested seedling tree new shedding shedding appear (date) No.) or growth (date) receptive graft scion - - - - - - - 1. - - - - - - - 2. - - - - - - - 3. - - - - - - -

Under "Remarks" could be recorded such information as the distance and direction to trees furnishing pollen in the period when a given variety has sticky appearing pistils, the abundance of pollen shed, apparent winter killing of catkins, etc. The list of items could be expanded, if desired, but it is thought that those included here are among the most important in determining the potential performances of varieties and variety combinations in specific climates. A compilation of such data for a period of about three years, supplemented with data on the nuts themselves, would be of very practical value as a basis for selecting varieties most promising to plant or propagate. The same data form would be applicable to other walnuts, hickories, pecans, and filberts, and perhaps to a lesser extent with chestnuts.



Note on Chinese Chestnuts

HARWOOD STEIGER, Redhook, N. Y.

My earliest Chinese chestnuts are ripening. Stoke Hybrid is earliest and the nuts are so attractive, too bad they are not better in quality. It is an exciting time here as there are always a few seedlings that are ripening for the first time. Honan, which ripens later, has been one of my best grafted trees. One of my seedlings has very large nuts, very early ripening, nuts are now falling, and it is prolific, nearly every burr has from two to three large to very large nuts. The quality seems good. We like the large nuts as they are easier to peel and we like them boiled and served as a vegetable. The boiled nuts keep well when frozen. I think this tree is superior to any of my grafted and named varieties.



Scott Healey—An Obituary

Scott Healey was born December 3, 1881, in Wheatley, Ontario, Canada, and came to Otsego, Michigan, in 1904. He married in 1908. Mr. Healey was a chiropractor for a number of years.

In 1921, Mr. Healey and his cousin, Lewis Healey, formed the Healey & Healey Lumber and Coal Company, in Otsego, which they operated together until a few years ago, when Mr. Healey retired due to ill health.

Mr. Healey was a director of the State Savings Bank in Otsego for many years. He was a member of the first Baptist Church in Otsego.

He became interested in nut culture while the late Professor James A. Neilson was nut specialist at the Michigan State College. Mr. Healey planted a nut orchard of about eighty grafted nut trees in 1933, which Professor Neilson helped him plan. Most of the trees were black walnut varieties, chiefly Thomas. However, there were some Ohio, Stabler, Allen, Crietz, Stambaugh, Ten Eyck, and Rohwer trees. There were also some filberts, several Chinese chestnuts, and some heartnuts he had raised from seed. One nice tree of the McCallister hican makes good shade, but has never borne any nuts. He did some topworking in a large black walnut tree in the backyard, where he got a Persian walnut to grow.

Mr. Healey was very much interested in nut culture, and had planned on having a nut grove for a hobby to keep him busy when he retired.

Mr. Healey joined the Northern Nut Growers Association in 1933. He and his wife attended the Battle Creek meeting one year later. They also attended the Rockport, Indiana meeting in 1935, and the one at Geneva, New York in 1936.—"The rest of the time he couldn't go or was in too poor health to go."

They sold their home, with the nut planting, to a young couple, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Lovett, in 1948, moved into Otsego; and retired.

Mr. Healey died, January 18th, 1952 at their winter home in Port Richey, Florida. Surviving are his wife, Mabel, and one son, Virgil.

GILBERT BECKER



A Letter from Dr. W. C. Deming, the Only Living Charter Member of the Association

Northern Nut Growers Association,

Dear Old Friends:

The 42nd Annual Report has recently come to me. Think of it, the 42nd Annual Report! How familiar to me are a great many of the names of the officers and members! I can even recall the very features of many of them. I am myself now ninety years old and practically house-bound. Though yesterday, a day almost like summer, I did take a taxi and a drive through the park amid the brilliant foliage, with Miss Dorothy Hapgood, who by the way is a member of our association a thing with which I may have had something to do. Recently I was in the Veterans Hospital at Newington for a couple of weeks. The doctors called it "polycythemia", the direct opposite of "anaemia", did 10 phlebotomies taking 5 pints of blood which they said they used for transfusions on ward patients, much to my gratification. I now have in, or had put in me, a dose, of radio-active phosphorus P32 which, they assure me will be getting in its good work for the next three months. Nothing like being up to date, even if valetudinarian.

You have made me Dean of the association. In the beginning Clarence Reed was always back of me with his abilities and vast fund of information. Although I believe I am, by virtue of my office, exempt from dues and entitled to the annual reports, I wish my five children to be at least once represented in the membership. I append their names and addresses:

Hawthorne, the eldest, is with the Gen. Electric Co. in New York. I don't know what he does but presume that with the other New York millionaires he is busy accumulating wealth. This hint may guide you in soliciting alms for the association some day. His home is in Hamilton Lane, Larien, Conn. But I don't know if he knows a nut from a lunatic. He has two kids, one now preparing for Korea. God preserve him.

Benton is already a member. He has a few acres in the town of Avon, Conn. where, among the rocks and the native rattlesnakes and copperheads he tells me he has Chinese chestnuts growing. Recently he got two of the copperheads. He is an energetic chap. He rises at 4 a.m. and drives the several miles into Hartford where he broadcasts from 7 to 8, for people's breakfasts, I suppose, and is released at 10 a.m. He has just contracted for a television program once a week in New Haven.

Olcott is a consul in the U.S. Embassy in Tokio, transferred from a similar position in Siam. If there is something you want from Japan I guess he is your boy. Mention my name! He has a lovely wife and three children.

Una King, my elder daughter, whose husband was killed in an accident, interviews VIP's on the same radio station as brother Ben.

Joan Howe (Mrs. Paul) and her husband, who is in a bank in New York, live in my old home on Umpawaug Hill, Redding, Conn. She writes of having had a crop of black walnuts from one of the trees I planted. I've forgotten all the others there may be there. Nothing of value I guess. Joan has two daughters. Ben has a son and daughter.

That makes five children I'm responsible for and they have acknowledged the eleven grandchildren for me. I want you to make four of my children (Ben is already ensnare) members of the association, for which I will enclose a check for $12.00 (if I don't forget.) (The many typing mistakes of this letter are due mostly to the age of the machine, not mine.)

My two sisters who live in our old home in Litchfield and who are close behind me in years, recently sent me a handful of nice chestnuts, Chinese, from a tree 40 feet or more high in our backyard. They have to divide them, very unequally, with the squirrels. The only other noteworthy trees in our little place are a few papaws. Asimina triloba, too shaded to bear. This fruit might be worthy of a little attention from the nut growers. The dictionary speaks of several other species of papaw.

Any of you who have outgrown the labor of caring for nut trees might find interest in mycology in which I found diversion and edibles for a while. Only beware the deadly Amanita and others of that ilk.

I cannot adequately express to you my heartfelt joy at the prosperity of our association. For one thing the great increase in the membership, for another the birth of three branch state associations, but above all the success in the production of nuts. In my time we had mostly, if not entirely, the promising production of specimen nuts only. We had nothing like the Jacobs Persian walnut with its imposing spread and its production of 200 pounds of nuts in one season; Mr. Kyhl's orchard with its many varieties of Persian walnuts; his success in grafting and his reporting of a tree which bears three or four bushels of heartnuts yearly; Mr. Best's 5,000 grafted pecan trees; Mr. Hirshi's chestnuts; the splendid results of the Persian walnut contests; and the almost spectacular increase in the number of nurseries selling grafted nut trees of many varieties. These facts, and many that I have not mentioned, make it certain that nut growing is now a firmly established and surely increasing industry. You may be sure that these facts give me great delight.

Some years ago while I was in possession of a mind as good as it had been at any time, I did a little grafting of nut trees in a commercial way for people at their country places, and I had the nerve to charge them fifty dollars a day. What's more I got paid and never got kicked, nor did I hear mutterings or see scowls. But then, you see, there was no other grafter, of the kind, around my part of the country. Almost a monopoly and, of course, a wicked one. But here my mind goes blank. I can't recall what luck I had with the grafting, nor can I recall the name of a single one for whom I did such work.

I strongly advise every one of you to have a good book in which you keep personal and geographic records of all your work with nut growing. All the details are vividly in your mind now, but when you get to be ninety you may find them, as I do, faded away and all washed up. Please go on with the good work.

Some more good friends have just taken me for a round trip to Litchfield where my little sister, who is 84, has just partly circumvented the squirrels and by going out very early in the morning to the chestnut tree has succeeded in getting a good big double handful of chestnuts, nice big ones.

She also called to my attention a good-sized Persian walnut which she says I once grafted on a black walnut and this year was quite well covered with nuts which she says the squirrels cut off while green, and she says they were helped by one of the black plumaged birds. Some time ago she gave me one of the nuts and I tried to husk it with my knife. But it was too immature. They would have matured this fall, I think but for the pests.

William C. Deming



Sweepstakes Award in Ohio Black Walnut Contest

L. WALTER SHERMAN, Canfield, Ohio

This I believe, is the third report to the Northern Nut Growers Association concerning the black walnut contest held in Ohio in 1946. The first report was given soon after the close of the contest. During the year following the contest (1947), I visited each of the ten prize winning trees, photographing them, and getting as complete a case history of each as was possible.

This, the third report, concerns mainly the process used to determine the winner of the $50.00 sweepstakes award given in 1951 for the best performance of a black walnut tree for a five-year period. The owners of the ten prize-winning trees in the 1946 contest were asked to report the amount of crop harvested each year as well as to send in samples of the nuts for a cracking test.

Complete data were recorded each year from the samples just as they had been for the 1946 contest. The average weight of nut, recovery of kernel at first cracking, total kernel content, and per cent of kernel content were recorded.

From these data tables and charts were compiled to make a visual comparison between the various nuts. Walnuts other than the prize winners were not excluded from this five-year competition and quite a few were submitted. However, only one of them, the "Chamberlin" was of special merit and it was given a place on these charts. No samples or crop records were received from the Davidson (sixth prize) and the Jackson (tenth prize) nuts, and so they are not shown on all the charts. One sample from the 1949 crop of Penn walnuts was lost to a pilfering squirrel, and the 1949 data used on the chart for the Penn walnut was therefore the average of all other samples of this variety. The weight of total crop harvested in 1949, however, is actual.

Table No. 1 gives the average weight in grams of the sample nuts. The Duke, (first prize) was the largest nut of all, in 1945, averaging just over 27 grams; but the Orth, in 1948, averaged almost a gram more. The Kuhn, which was the smallest of the eight nuts in 1946 and again in 1950, was the largest nut in 1949, and its size in 1949 was exceeded only four times by any of the other nuts during the contest. The nuts were large in size during the off year when only a small crop was produced and they were small when there was a heavy crop.

In table No. 2 the weight in grams of the kernel recovered on first crack, secured without the aid of nut pick, is recorded. In this comparison the Duke, because of large size, might be expected to be an easy winner and it was in 1946 and in 1950; but in 1948, though second in average weight of nut for that year, it was in fifth place in recovery of kernel at first cracking.

Table No. 3 records the average weight in grams of the kernels. Here the Duke, due largely to its size, is a consistent winner in all three years it produced nuts. However, in 1949, a small crop year for the Kuhn, the nuts of this variety were large and contained more kernel than the Duke did in 1948 or in 1950.

The per cent of kernel in the nuts as recorded in table No. 4 is interesting. The Burson, which was the smallest nut in 1947, had the highest per cent of kernel and also had the highest total kernel content of any sample in that year. Evidently the per cent of kernel is higher in well-filled nuts and this is largely determined by the weather and available food supply late in the season.

A comparison of the numerical score of the various nuts, figured out according to the T.V.A. score system, is given in Table No. 5. By this system, no variety had a consistent high score, but each varied greatly from year to year.

The nut characters studied so far in charts 1 to 5 inclusive have varied so much from year to year that any judgment based on these characters for any one year could not be relied upon.

What characteristic of a black walnut, then, can be used in evaluating it? In table No. 6 the percentage of the total kernel that is recovered at first cracking is given. Oliver and Penn show considerable consistency in that they remain above 91 per cent in all samples, but look at the Kuhn. It was perfect in 1950 but in 1948 only 65 per cent of the kernel was recoverable in the first cracking and Duke was nearly as bad, varying from 69 to 98 per cent recovery.

After careful study of these six charts, I am sure you will have to admit that any judgment of a black walnut variety based on these characters only is none too dependable.

These are the nut characters that we have been using in our contest! Some further method of evaluation is needed! Individual nut characters alone are not enough. A good farmer is concerned in quality of his produce but quantity is of more importance for financial success. The Elberta peach well illustrates this. There are many peaches of better quality, but the Elberta peach is a prolific producer and this is one reason more Elberta peaches are raised than any other variety. Quality without quantity means little.

With this in mind, the $50.00 sweepstakes prize was offered for the tree with the best five-year record. The judges interpreted this to mean the most pound of kernels produced that were recovered on first crack. Going back over the records, we find some trees have been much more productive than others.

At first it would seem unfair to compare the crop from trees of different size and age, but this time luck was with the judges. Take a look at Table No. 7 which gives the ages and sizes of the trees. There is not too much difference in size or age to make reasonable comparisons possible. However, it should be clearly understood that only trees of the same age growing in the same orchard and receiving the same care can be accurately compared. The trees we are dealing with were in different localities, with vast differences in soil conditions, air drainage, climate, etc.

Table No. 7 gives the total production for the five-year period for each tree, in bushels, the total amount of kernel as well as the amount of kernel recovered at first cracking. Only five trees had produced over four bushels of nuts each during the five year period.

The Oliver tree produced 1.8 bushels and 25 pounds more kernels than the Penn tree. The Kuhn tree, though producing four bushels less nuts than the Penn tree, did produce 4.1 pounds more kernels, with the same amount recovered on first cracking from the nuts of each tree—almost a photo finish for second place.

The sweepstakes award of $50.00 was therefore given to Mrs. Oliver Shaffer, of Lucasville, Ohio, who sent in the Oliver entry.

Referring to the case histories of these trees as written up in 1947, you will find that the Oliver, Kuhn, Penn, and Orth trees were reported on favorable sites, while the Duke and Burson were on very unfavorable ones so that the above results are only what might have been expected. The Orth tree, however, is in a favorable location and better production could have been expected of it.

Table 1. Size, as Weight of Unshelled Walnuts (Approximate).

==================================================================== Grams 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 Average[24] per nut —————————————————————————————————— 28 Orth 27 Duke Duke 26 Penn Oliver Orth Duke Kuhn 25 Penn Orth Duke Duke Athens Penn Williamson Penn Penn 23 Orth Williamson Oliver Oliver Oliver Orth Williamson Kuhn Duke 22 Oliver Chamberlin Burson Williamson 21 Oliver Penn Athens Kuhn Burson Burson Burson Burson, Athens Burson Kuhn Athens 20 Athens Chamberlin Williamson 19 Kuhn 18 Chamberlin 17 16 Kuhn ———————————————————————————————————

Judges for the contest were C. W. Ellenwood and O. D. Diller of the Ohio Experiment Station and L. Walter Sherman, then with the Department of Agriculture, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 24: Average of five years for Duke, Oliver, Burson and Kuhn; four years for Penn, which was not cracked in 1949, but interpolated in charts.

Note: To save time and the expense of redrawing and reproduction, these seven tables are printed instead of Mr. Sherman's graphic charts. With a ruler and pencil, lines can be drawn through the "D's of Duke", and so forth, to give an approximation of the original graphs.—Editor.]