I have growing on my ground in western New York, near Rochester, several
hundred trees or bushes, 6 to 8 years old, about 20 varieties, most of
them German varieties, a few from France, and a few from England. They
have been bearing nuts the last four seasons, and all have reached
maturity perfectly. The smaller and medium sized nuts appeared to bear a
little better than the larger varieties. The varieties received from
France have, so far, not done well with me, as the German varieties.
They are poor bearers. In the fall of 1917, I gathered from each 5 to 6
year old tree, of the German variety, about a pound and a quarter of the
medium sized nuts, while hardly a pound from the larger fruited
varieties (same sized plants) ripened well. I was then under the
impression that the hazel not only could but should be planted in large
numbers for commercial purpose. In the fall of 1918 my crop of nuts was
very much less, and I had expected even a better harvest than in 1917,
which certainly was discouraging to me. The plants themselves were
growing beautifully, but most of the staminate blossoms or catkins were
frozen, and, consequently, very little pollenizing was accomplished, and
very little fruit the result. Such and possibly other occurrences, from
time to time we may expect and look for, and should be ready to
investigate thoroughly, before we can advocate or recommend the planting
of the hazel extensively.

It really seems strange that while the hazel generally is at home in the
northern latitudes, it should partly freeze when the thermometer reaches
say about 12 to 18 degrees below zero, and, as I had never noticed that
before, it then occurred to me that possibly another reason could be
found, why so many of the catkins were frozen.

Through my investigation in the spring of 1918, I have come to the
conclusion that the unusually wet season in our vicinity of western New
York throughout 1917 caused the hazel plants to grow until the real cold
weather was upon them, which gave the wood a very poor chance to ripen,
particularly the terminal buds, where a great many of the catkins had
formed, and caused not only them to freeze but also a certain part of
the wood. Only the lower and more protected catkins came through the
winter alright and caused what little pollenizing was done, hence the
very light harvest in the fall of 1918.

Should the results of my investigation prove true, and the continuance
of the wet weather prove the main cause of freezing so many catkins,
then it seems to me there is nothing to be alarmed about, and the
planting of the European hazel, at least in this vicinity, for
commercial purposes could be conscientiously recommended, and should be
done, the sooner the better. We do not expect our apple or pear orchards
to bear an abundant crop every year, and we should not expect it of our
hazel orchards. Something will occasionally happen to them as well as to
other crops, otherwise we run no risk whatever.

My trees or bushes, several hundred in number, planted in 1912 and
later, have stood all kinds of weather, extreme cold, very hot,
continuous wet, and still are growing most beautifully at the present
time. They gave a very satisfactory crop of nuts this last fall, 1919,
in spite of severe freezing weather on April 25th and 26th when the
mercury dropped to 12 to 15 degrees, and all hazel bushes in full bloom.
At the present time the prospect for a good crop of nuts next season is
certainly very bright.

Neither fungus, blight, or other diseases of any kind, or troublesome
insects have so far been detected. In planting the hazel for commercial
purposes, I should recommend 12 feet distance between the plants each
way, as they require abundant sun and air. At the same time, there is an
opportunity to use the land between the rows for several years to come,
as low growing crops like potatoes, strawberries, beans, beets, carrots,
etc., could be grown there to great advantage, and the cultivation of
these crops would be amply sufficient for the hazel plants.

Now the selection of varieties to be planted for the commercial hazel
orchard is a very important part of the undertaking, and should be well
considered. To plant several varieties is absolutely necessary on
account of pollenizing, as staminate and pistillate flowers, though on
the same plant, do not always appear together in proper condition on all
plants; in fact it has been proven in my orchard that sometimes plants
bring forth a great many pistillate blossoms and not a single staminate
one on them, and still a good crop of nuts were grown on them. Here the
pollination must have taken place with the pollen from other nearby
plants conveyed to them by wind or insects. One particular plant of the
zellernut type grown in one of my city lots during the last season was
very well filled with pistillate blossoms and not one catkin on it, and
still it ripened a fairly good crop of perfect nuts, where the nearest
plants filled with staminate blossoms was at least 30 feet from it. Here
it is shown and proven that a number of varieties is a necessity.

But what varieties we shall choose, will undoubtedly be an open question
for some time to come, and, no doubt, a great deal of experimental work
will have to be done to finally select the right varieties for the
different localities, the variation of temperature and location has very
much to do with the proper selection of varieties. I have among my
varieties some I could recommend and again others that are not at all
satisfactory, at least not so far, and it requires more close
observation before the very best of them can be picked out or selected.

Our next operation in the hazel will be the pruning. Here I should say
above all things: "_Keep the suckers away._" Hazel bushes are naturally
inclined to produce a great many suckers, which should be thoroughly
removed as soon as they appear; it will stop when the plants grow older.
Besides the suckers, all weak and unnecessary wood should be removed
entirely, not cut back. Our aim should be to try and get as near as
possible low standard trees, with trunk say 10 to 15 inches high and the
tree itself not to exceed 15 to 18 feet in height with the center kept
open all the time. To accomplish this, I should suggest the removing of
all crowding limbs from the center, regardless of their being
fruit-bearing limbs, which to determine is mostly guess-work at the
best. In order to keep the plants within 15 to 18 feet in height, the
terminal shoots also should be removed or reduced as the case may be,
beginning at the time of planting until the desired height is reached.
After that, one or more of the old limbs may from time to time be
removed, as there always will be enough young branches to take their
places. Such pruning in my orchard, so far, has proved sufficient, as
blight has never made its appearance in my nursery.

I will not be able to say much about blight. I have known trees in our
city, 4 or 5 varieties, for more than 30 years, bearing more or less
fruit year after year, and have never noticed any blight or anything
wrong with them. Should blight appear, I should remove all affected
limbs to the sound and healthy wood, as we would do to our pear and
quince trees when blight appears among them. I do not believe that
properly treated hazel bushes will ever suffer much from blight, at
least not in our vicinity. Neither do I believe that any more pruning
than I have outlined is required or necessary to our hazel plants.

The next subject about which I wish to say a few words is the
propagation of hazel plants. There seems to be quite a difference of
opinion as to the mode of propagating them; some advocate grafting,
others layering, again others from suckers only. Grafting I believe
myself, will produce a finer plant and the operation of doing so seems
quite successful, but a great many varieties produce so many suckers
that the graft is liable to be choked or crowded out if not constantly
watched, and it should not be expected of the average person to know the
difference between the graft and the wild shoot, and consequently, in a
comparative short time, he would have a wild or common hazel. For that
reason grafted plants should not be used for the trade until our people
get better acquainted with hazel plants. I, therefore, should recommend
layering, thereby having the plants on their own roots, which would
prove more satisfactory everywhere. That grafted plants bear fruit
sooner than layers, does not always hold good; it may be so with some
varieties, but not with all of them. I have some three year old grafted
plants and no fruit as yet, where I had plenty of layers in the nursery
rows two years old well fruited.

It is true that plants grafted on seedlings of the _Corylus avellana_
will not produce as many suckers, as plants grafted on layers of the
avellana type, but they will produce enough to confuse the average
person, as the foliage of some varieties are so nearly alike, that it
actually requires an expert to tell the difference. I, therefore, under
the existing circumstances, should advise the propagating of hazel
plants by layers only, until our people get better acquainted with the
hazel proposition in general. Why propagation by suckers only should be
preferred by some people, I fail to see, as they are practically the
same as layers, plants on their own roots from a parent plant, only that
layers are produced a little more scientifically and suckers more
naturally; otherwise they are identically the same thing.

When I referred to propagating, I should perhaps have mentioned the
growing of hazel plants from seeds, that is from the nut, but I did not
think it necessary. I will, however, say that plants raised from seed
should never be planted for fruit bearing unless they are grafted or
budded, as it has been fully and positively proven that plants raised
from seed, even if the very finest nuts of our European hybrids are
planted, will not produce nuts as good as those planted, but will almost
invariably go back to the original type, the _Corylus avellana_. It is
alright to raise plants from seeds for the sake of getting stock to
graft or bud on, but, as to variety, the seedlings are unreliable.

Before coming to a close, I would like to say a few words about the
fertilizing of the ground for hazel orchards and what experience I have
had in this matter, as I believe this would be of interest to all. It is
a well-known fact that hazel plants grow well and will thrive in almost
any kind of soil, as long as it is not too wet or too heavy, but from
time to time a little manure worked in is very beneficial both to old
and young plants, but care and judgment should be exercised, so as not
to overdo it. I have growing in one of my city lots with very fertile
soil, several bearing hazel plants, 7 to 8 years old, different
varieties. These plants grow so immensely that it plainly shows, they
are growing at the expense of the fruit, not only that the quantity of
nuts gathered from a plant there is considerably less than of same sized
plants grown on ordinary farmland, but the quality also is very much
below. My best nuts are all grown on ordinary farmland and the greatest
quantity has always been obtained from the farm where only very little
fertilizing or manuring had been done. For the growing of young plants
for commercial purposes, for the trade, I should recommend liberal
manuring at all times. (Applause.)

QUESTION: Is the hazel a long lived tree?

MR. VOLLERTSEN: I have known trees for almost forty years that
are bearing good fruit year after year, although not always a good crop.
They don't seem to grow so rapidly at that age as when younger.

DR. MORRIS: Hazels seem to graft pretty well on each other. I
think the tree hazel is going to be our most successful stock for
grafting. However, I have grafted on the _Corylus avellana_. The tree
hazel does not put out any suckers.

QUESTION: Does the hazel find its way into the market
commercially?

MR. VOLLERTSEN: I would almost think so. I have had lots of
inquiries for them from storekeepers. It seems to me there are a great
many imported around here. Our American hazels are not so very good.
There may be here and there a fairly good one, but I have not found any
really good ones worth propagating. I think if we would do more
scientific work we could get very good nuts. There is no question that
they are perfectly hardy and will stand almost any climate.

MR. JONES: Some of your varieties are hybrids aren't they?

MR. VOLLERTSEN: They are all hybrids. I have a few of the real,
original _avellana_ type I think got there by accident.

PRESIDENT REED: I believe the next paper is one the secretary
has from Mr. A. H. Graves.

DISEASE RESISTANCE IN THE AMERICAN CHESTNUT[1]

ARTHUR H. GRAVES

(Read by the Secretary)

Your secretary, Mr. Bixby, has asked me to tell you about the native
chestnut trees in the vicinity of New York City which I have found to be
resistant to the destructive bark disease. I commenced the search for
such trees in the summer of 1918, at the suggestion of Dr. Haven
Metcalf, of the laboratory of Forest Pathology, Bureau of Plant
Industry. During the campaign in Pennsylvania against the bark disease,
scouts had been on the lookout for immune or resistant trees, but
without result. As far as I am aware, no systematic organized search had
been made for such individuals.

It was our plan to commence the search in the region of New York City,
because this area is probably the oldest center of infection in the
United States. Apparently this is the port of entry where the
undesirable immigrants (Japanese or Chinese chestnuts) passed through
quarantine and were allowed to disembark carrying their terrible scourge
with them unnoticed. According to Metcalf and Collins,[2] this was
probably as early as 1893. This was why we selected this area to begin
on, for here the disease has had a longer opportunity to run its course
than anywhere else, and, consequently, has had ample time (more than a
quarter of a century) to call out the non-resistant trees. Those
remaining, if any could be found, might be suspected, _a priori_, of
being resistant.

As the work progressed, I soon realized that it would be most difficult,
or perhaps impossible, to locate resistant or immune trees in a region
not so long exposed to infection; for, in such a region, one would have
to inoculate all individuals suspected of possessing resistant
qualities, in order to ascertain whether their healthy condition was
actually due to resistant qualities or simply the result of a chance
escape of infection. We therefore decided to restrict the work, for the
present at least, entirely to a definite area about New York City. This
area includes all of the territory within a radius of about 16 miles
from New York City Hall, and therefore comprised in a general way,
Greater New York and the adjacent parts of New Jersey.

RESULTS OF THE SURVEY

First I made a thorough canvas of Staten Island, doing the work on foot,
aided by the trolley and the Staten Island R. R., and often guided by
that genial naturalist and lover of Staten Island, Dr. Arthur Hollick of
the Staten Island Institute of Arts and Sciences, I made a careful
survey of the whole 64 square miles of which the island is composed.
After two weeks of this kind of work, I began to get fairly well
discouraged, not so much because of lack of results which, it is true,
were entirely negative, but more on account of the appearance of the
dead chestnuts. For where it was not entirely cut out, the bare,
weathered poles showed that they had been dead for many years. The only
encouraging feature was the finding of large quantities of healthy
seedlings, from 7 years of age upward, to which I will refer later.

The Palisade region along the Hudson has been notable in the past for
its chestnut forests. I next attacked this, making as thorough a search
as possible from Hoboken to a little north of Alpine, N. J., which is a
small place on the Hudson opposite Yonkers. Here also the vast forests
of dead poles weathered gray with time, bore silent witness to the
completeness of the destruction.

About the middle of July while ferrying across the Hudson, I noticed
north of the landing at Dyckman St., what appeared to be chestnut trees
in bloom. On investigation, I found these to be living native chestnuts,
of the peculiar strip type I shall describe later, and proceeding
further north from this, where the Harlem enters the Hudson. I was led
into a forest where I found at least 40 living chestnuts, some of which
were in good condition, and one particularly was leafy nearly to the
top. (Fig. 1) Naturally, one would immediately suspect that somehow
these trees had escaped infection, but this could not possibly be the
case, for mixed in with them on all sides were bare, weathered trunks
showing signs of old worn cankers, proving incontestibly that the fungus
had been present here also for a long period. Shortly afterward, Dr.
Olive, of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, informed me that he had seen
living chestnuts near Hollis, L. I., and at Valley Stream, L. I., and at
each of these places I found a group similar to that near the Harlem.

These, in brief, are the high spots of the survey from the point of view
of the scientist. In addition, I covered adjacent region of New Jersey
to the west, including the Watchung Mt. range about Plainfield and the
Oranges; the Bronx and Van Cortland Park and the country to Yonkers and
the north, and to the northeast of New Rochelle. Long Island, as far as
Hempstead, was also included. Altogether I travelled about 1200 miles on
foot, not counting the distance traversed on trolleys and railroads.
Always armed with opera glasses, I was careful not to use them when
anyone was looking, for on the second day of the survey I had been
arrested on the charge of being a German spy! I was also arrested on
board a train in New Jersey for looking earnestly at a topographic map,
then sharply out of the car window and noting what I had seen (dead
chestnut trees) on said map. The carrying of a botanist's tin can
(containing fungi, not bombs) was also an additional implicating
circumstance on the latter occasion.

What then were the results of the survey? They may be stated briefly as
follows:

1. No immune trees were found.

2. For the most part the older trees (from 20 years upward) were
entirely dead, and had been so for a long period, as attested by the
bare trunks, weathered a characteristic gray color which only time can
produce.

3. However, large numbers of seedlings and young saplings were located,
both healthy and diseased.

4. _The most important result was the finding of three well defined
colonies of living mature trees; all of which, by virtue of characters
to be presently described, are offering more or less resistance to the
disease._

SEEDLING TREES

It is well known that seedlings and young saplings are naturally immune
for a certain period, which varies in extent from 8 to 15 years beyond
germination of the seed beginning, of course with the first formation of
the seedling. Such immunity depends, however, not on any inherent
characteristic, but on the fact that at this period the bark is usually
smooth, sound, and free from wounds of any sort where Endothia spores
and mycelium might enter. Of course, when wounded from any cause
whatever during this period of youth, this immunity ends, so that the
condition might perhaps be termed physical, in contrast to physiological
immunity.

As I have already said, large numbers of seedlings, for the most part
still unattacked, were found in many places in the area surveyed. There
are of course no grounds for believing that such seedlings, descended as
they are from non-resistant trees, are physiologically immune. Where
they are free from disease, this exemption is due merely to the physical
immunity I have just mentioned. Since they therefore represent
non-resistant stock, they were used for comparative inoculation work,
which will be referred to later.

I may as well say here as anywhere, that by resistance, I do not mean
total resistance, for that would be immunity. There are, of course,
degrees of resistance, in the plant world just as in the animal world.
One person may resist a cold germ or the influenza bacillus better than
another, that is, it will cause him only a little discomfort. Another
person may not be affected at all, that is, he is totally resistant or
immune. I say this because I have misunderstood when I have used the
term resistance. The trees in the New York region show all grades of
resistance, from individuals where the fungus makes very little headway
in the bark, to cases where it grows almost as fast as in the average
non-resistant tree.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE RESISTANT TREES

What now are the characteristics of these resistant trees? How are we
going to know one when we see it? I have outlined the leading features
as follows:

1. BARK. In the case of this particular disease, it is obvious
that the character of the bark is the most important feature since this
fungus is primarily parasitic in the living cortex. In other words, the
character of resistance must necessarily depend on the living cells of
the cortex. Now, careful observation of the resistant trees reveals a
most striking feature of the bark, namely its tendency to heal, by means
of a callus growth around the margins of the lesions, whether large or
small; and it is very apparent that this callus growth wards off the
advance of the fungus for a time at least. When the callus growth is
once formed, the fungus of the original canker encroaches on it very
slowly, or often not at all. Inoculations in the callused margins of
cankers showed usually only slight growth of the fungus after two
months' time in the summer, or in some cases no growth at all. Several
layers of wood could be counted underneath these callused margins--often
6 or 7--before reaching the annual ring exposed at the surface of the
canker. This of course, shows unquestionably that the callus had
remained healthy at that location for that period of time.

2. EXTENSION OF THE CALLUS TISSUE.--In many cases the callus
tissue is of considerably greater extent than the normal area one would
expect around a wound. It may even occur that the whole inner bark
around the trunk is of a callused nature, without any open cankers
showing at all. For example in a tree of which I have a photograph here
(Figs. 2 and 4), the outer bark is sloughing off, revealing callused
bark underneath of entirely different appearance, which no one would
recognize as chestnut bark. This particular tree photographed represents
an extreme in this respect. It seemed as if the whole tree was getting a
new kind of bark, and yet this same character appears in all of the
highly resistant trees. On cutting into this new callused inner bark it
was found plentifully dotted with tiny _Endothia_ lesions, which
however, never penetrated deeply. (Fig 4). Close to the cambium the
white inner bark is quite healthy, generally for a thickness of 5-7 mm.
That the mycelium in the small lesions was unquestionably the _Endothia_
mycelium, was shown by the appearance of the mycelium, and the presence
of the _Endothia_ pustules in many of the spots. That these were not
late infections, but only slowly growing small lesions, was shown by
inoculations in such bark, which revealed scarcely any growth after two
months.

[Illustration: FIG. 1

One of the most resistant trees, the smaller tree near the center of the
photograph, near the Harlem River, Boro of Manhattan, New York City.]

[Illustration: FIG. 2

A very strikingly resistant tree at Valley Stream, Long Island, showing
peculiar inner bark. The outer bark is sloughing off.]

[Illustration: FIG. 3

One of the "strip" trees in the forest in the Boro of Manhattan, New
York City.]

[Illustration: FIG. 4

Showing the character of the inner bark of the Valley Stream tree (Fig.
2). At one place, near the center of the photograph, the bark has been
shaved showing the small lesions caused by the fungus.]

3. THE WHITE SECRETION.--The most striking peculiarity of the
callus tissue, is its abundant content of a thickish, milky, white
substance. This came to light immediately when I cut into the callus,
and it showed up very clearly when I shaved off the outer layers of dead
cork tissue. The white material is not evenly distributed through the
irregular grain of the wound tissue, but is particularly abundant in
small spots or pockets which are especially conspicuous in the callused
margin of the lesion. Soon after exposure to the air the cut bark, and
particularly the white substance, redden rapidly, indicating oxidation.
This peculiarity is of course true of all chestnut bark, yet here the
reddening seems to be deeper and more rapid than the normal. No chemical
analysis has yet been made of this substance, but there is
sufficient other evidence at hand to warrant a tentative statement
that it is very rich in tannin or tannin compounds, and that possibly
the quality of resistance is bound up with the nature of this material.

4. THE STRIP CONDITION.--Some of the trees showed the living
bark restricted to a narrow, flattened, rope-like strip running up the
trunk to one or a very few branches (Plate 1, Fig. 3). In these cases
all of the bark was of the callus nature, rich in the resistant
substance, and plentifully besprinkled with small Endothia lesions,
while underneath were a number of layers of functioning wood. The rest
of the trunk was bare, weathered gray, with traces on its surface of old
cankers, and evidently dead for a long period. This type of tree was so
commonly found that I have called it the strip tree.

INOCULATIONS

The very fact that these trees are now alive in this New York region is
pretty good proof of their resistance. But of course the most conclusive
test is by inoculation with the fungus in question. If the fungus grows
slowly in these trees as compared with its growth on non-resistant
stock, then no one can deny that they are resistant. I will not bore you
with figures of tables, I will only give you the results. The average
growth of the fungus in 289 inoculations on the resistant trees was
about 1/3 as fast as on non-resistant stock, and taking the rate of
growth on those trees which are especially resistant it is about 1/4 as
fast as on the non-resistant stock. For non-resistant stock the
seedlings on Staten Island were inoculated, and the growth on these
tallied very closely with growth in non-resistant trees inoculated by
Anderson and Rankin.[3]

Another very striking result brought out by the inoculation work was
that of the 158 inoculations on branches and basal shoots of the
resistant trees, only nine had been girdled after one month's growth,
while in the same time 16 out of the 32 non-resistant Staten Island
trees were girdled. At the end of the second month, the results were
still more striking. Then, in the Staten Island trees, 22 out of 32 were
girdled, while in the inoculations on the basal shoots and branches of
resistant stock only 22 out of the 153 resulted in girdling. This
striking difference was not due to smaller diameters of the Staten
Island trees, for particular pains were taken to have them approximately
equal to the branches and shoots inoculated in the resistant trees.

SUMMARY OF EVIDENCES OF RESISTANCE

We may summarize the evidences of resistance as follows:

1. The results of the inoculation tests show that the fungus grows in
these trees on the average from 1/4 to 1/3 as fast as in ordinary
chestnut.

2. The occurrence of the trees in a neighborhood long subjected to the
disease, and their presence among the trees of individuals long since
dead.

3. Indications of the long period the disease has been present in the
trees themselves; such as bare weathered tops, and healed cankers.

4. Peculiarities of the bark; such as extensive development of the
callus tissue, and the presence of a peculiar substance or white
secretion which is particularly conspicuous in cases of marked
resistance.

IS THE DISEASE RESISTANCE HERE AN HEREDITARY CHARACTER?

As to whether this disease resistance is an inherent character and will
be transmitted from generation to generation, or is only the result of
particularly favorable environmental conditions such as soil, light or
moisture, is a point of great practical importance. I believe that
further work will prove that the resistance is heritable, for the
following reasons:

1. The resistance is not due to a particularly favorable environment of
the trees, for the three groups grow in very different soils and under
varying conditions of light and moisture.

2. The finding of the trees in colonies points to a genetic variation.
At first I was unable to account for the grouping of the trees, for I
had expected to find immune or resistant trees singly, here and there.
But if we adopt the hypothesis of a heritable protoplasmic
variation--something in their "blood," so to speak, the explanation is
easy. We know that chestnut fruits or nuts do not travel far, like the
seeds of willow, poplar, maple or ash, and therefore, in any given stand
of chestnut, if we could go back from generation to generation into
earlier time, most probably the majority of the trees would be found to
have arisen from a common ancestor, although of course a few outsiders
would have found their way into the group, carried by squirrels or other
animals.

3. In a considerable number of cases all the members of the same group
of coppice trunks from an old stump show a similar degree of resistance.
To attribute such a condition as due merely to chance, occurring as
often as it does, would be placing a pretty large burden on chance; and
since the coppice trunks are all off-shoots of the same plant, the
condition is what one would expect were the resistant quality in
inherent character. A correspondence of degree of resistance was also
noted, in the inoculations made on branches, trunk, and basal shoots of
the same individual tree.

Experimental work is being carried on at Washington to test out the
truth of this hypothesis, i. e. to see whether or not the disease
resistance is really heritable. The work is being carried on in
connection with the propagation of other resistant stock, Chinese,
Japanese, etc.; and, as soon as the department is sure of the product,
the results will be distributed to nut growers and others who are
interested.

In the meantime we can all help by being on the lookout for resistant
native trees. I believe they will be found in many places besides the
New York region.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Illustration for this paper will be found opposite page 64.

[2] Metcalf, Haven & Collins, J. Franklin. The Control of the Chestnut
Bark Disease. Farmer's Bulletin--467, 1911, P. 5.

[3] Anderson, P. J. & Rankin, W. H., Endothia canker of chestnut.
Cornell Univ. Agri. Expt. Sta. Bulletin 347, 1914.

EVENING SESSION

SANITARIUM GYMNASIUM, at 8:00 P.M.

President Reed in Chair

DR. J. H. KELLOGG: Ladies and Gentlemen: Battle Creek has the
honor today and tomorrow to entertain the Northern Nut Growers'
Association. This association with other associations having similar
purposes, is undertaking to do, it seems to me, one of the most
important things that can be done for the American people--to show us
how we can get our nitrogen, our protein, and our fats without the
livestock industry which is wasting at least nine-tenths of the grain,
or in fact at least nineteen-twentieths of all our foodstuffs. The great
cause of the high cost of living at the present time is that the pigs
and the cattle are eating up our corn and other good things that we
ought to eat ourselves. If we had a sufficient area of land, perhaps
even the sides of our roadways and railways planted out to black walnuts
and other good nut trees, we would have all the protein and fat we
needed, perhaps as much as we are getting now, and more, and the cattle
industry might be entirely dismissed from consideration, and a great
deal of labor would be saved. I am sure that there is no place in the
whole United States where this Association could have a heartier welcome
than here in Battle Creek, or where people could be found who would
appreciate its labors any more. You are going to have a very interesting
program tonight. We are favored with visits from very distinguished
gentlemen from all over the United States, among others Dr. Robert T.
Morris, the nestor of American surgeons has come all the way from New
York to tell us about some wonderful discoveries he has made, and a
fatherless walnut tree he is cultivating, and other things that will be
of great interest to us all I am sure. I take pleasure in introducing to
you the president of this Association, Mr. W. C. Reed, of Vincennes,
Indiana. Mr. Reed.

PRESIDENT REED: We are simply continuing our program. This
afternoon we were in session at the Annex and moved over here this
evening so as to be able to present what we have here so we could
entertain more of you than we could over there to advantage. You know
that most all men have a hobby along some line or other, and those who
constitute our leaders, whom we have to look to, and along the line of
nut trees of different species and so on, we have learned to look to Dr.
Morris as one of the leaders. I have great pleasure in introducing to
you Dr. Robert T. Morris, of New York, who will address you on the
hickory.

NOTES ON THE HICKORIES

ROBERT T. MORRIS, M. D., NEW YORK CITY, N. Y.

When people speak of the "hickory" without qualification, they are apt
to have in mind some one kind of hickory which belonged to their boyhood
environment. All other kinds which they happened to know, were qualified
in some way, very much as the word "fish" in Boston stands for the
codfish only, other kinds of fish in the world being described by
qualifying names. In the northeast the hickory means the shagbark. In
Missouri it means the shellbark. Elsewhere the pignut and the mockernut
are called "hickory." Interest in the subject has increased so rapidly
of late years that we must all of us be more particular in our
descriptions and add qualifying names, speaking always of the shagbark
hickory, pecan hickory, or bitternut hickory as the case may be. Sargent
describes fifteen species of hickory and in addition a large number of
varieties by environment and by hybridization. There is a Mexican
hickory, making sixteen species for the North American continent, and
the late Mr. F. N. Meyer, Agricultural Explorer from Washington, has
found a hickory in China. Previous to this discovery, it was believed
that the hickories belonged to the North American continent only.

Botanists divide the hickories into two groups, Apocarya and Eucarya.
For convenience in every day conversation, it might be well for us to
speak of the "open-bud" group and the "closed bud" group. _Apocarya_ or
the "open bud" group, includes the pecan hickory, _Carya pecan_, the
bitternut hickory, _Carya cordiformis_, the bitter pecan, _Carya
texana_, the water hickory, _Carya aquatica_, the nutmeg hickory, _Carya
myristicaeformis_, and the Chinese hickory, _Carya cathayensis_. The
winter buds of this group will be seen on examination to show the
minute, snugly curled-up leaves which are ready to burst forth when the
springtime sun opens the fronds of the ferns which have forced their way
through the hard ground with clenched fists. The scale buds in the
open-bud group do not cover the tiny leaf forms completely.

In _Eucarya_, or the "closed-bud" group, stout scales close the bud
completely against the snow and ice of wintry days, so that we see
scales only when looking at the bud. The closed-bud hickories include
the shagbark, _Carya ovata_, the Carolina hickory, _Carya
Carolinae-septentrionalis_, the shellbark, _Carya laciniosa_, the
mockernut, _Carya alba_, the smooth-bark hickory, _Carya leiodermis_,
the pallid hickory, _Carya pallida_, the close-bark pignut, _Carya
glabra_, the loose-bark pignut, _Carya ovalis_, the Florida hickory,
_Carya Floridana_, the Buckley hickory, _Carya Buckleyi_, and the
Mexican hickory, _Carya Mexicana_.

Hickories which have nuts with a bitter pellicle, all belong to the
open-bud group. These are the bitternut, Texas hickory, and water
hickory. Hickories with scaly bark are found in both groups. In the
open-bud group, the trunk of the water hickory carries long loose bark
strips attached by one end, and in the closed-bud group, we find this
characteristic belonging to the shagbark, shellbark, Carolina hickory,
and to one of the pignuts, Carya ovalis. That takes us to another
occasion for a note. What do we mean by "pignut?" In the North, this
term is applied to Carya glabra and Carya ovalis. In the South, it is
applied to Carya cordiformis. A name so well established, will have to
be retained, but in our Association it will perhaps be best to have an
understanding about which one of the hickories the common name pignut
should belong. So long as it already covers two species in the North as
opposed to one in the South, there are already two votes to one in favor
of retaining the name pignut for Carya glabra and Carya ovalis. We may
describe these in plain language as the smooth-bark pignut and the
loose-bark pignut. The reason for choosing the name "loose" instead of
"scaly" is because we are pretty well agreed upon applying the name
"scalybark" to the Carolina hickory, the name "shagbark" to Carya ovata,
and the name shellbark to Carya laciniosa. The name bitternut may
safely be allowed to remain with Carya cordiformis because the other two
nuts with bitter pellicle already have distinctive names, Carya aquatica
being called water hickory and Carya texana being called bitter pecan.
By making fixed points in nomenclature in this way we may head off the
confusion which will become worse confounded as the interest in
hickories becomes rapidly enlarged, if our committee on nomenclature
does not take some decisive step.

Concerning Latin nomenclature, we have further troubles for settlement.
Hicoria is the oldest generic name and naturally should have priority
but the Vienna Congress of Botanists adopted Carya. So far so good (or
bad). Now comes our trouble in giving specific and varietal names. The
binomial is clearly applicable enough for species, Carya pecan, for
example, but when we come to varieties of the pecan there are two kinds
of varieties to be considered, those by environment and those by
hybridization. In cases of natural variation we are still within
accepted resources in nomenclature by saying for example, Carya pecan,
var, Stuartii. When naming hybrid varieties, however, I would suggest
that in advance of the abbreviation "var", we place the abbreviation
"hyb." thus reading for Brown's pecan, "Carya pecan, hyb. var. Brownii,"
instead of "Carya Brownii," which latter binomial would throw it among
the species. In view of the fact that we are to have in the future
hundreds of named hybrids, it seems to me that we must adopt some such
definite method for convenience promptly. This method of naming, relates
to convenience and is applied to the most evident parent. As a matter of
fact, in horticultural circles we are doing precisely that sort of
thing, speaking, for example, of "Brown's pecan" meaning a nut which we
recognize as being a hybrid, brought to attention by Brown but with the
pecan as parent most strongly in evidence.

When I was a boy, the only hickory nuts of any sort available, were
those collected from wild trees. The popular boy was one who knew of
some trees which furnished the best nuts and who did not keep the news
to himself. The squirrels knew the best nuts as well as the boys did and
they would go past many hickory trees along fences and groves in order
to congregate in the ones which had the nuts with the thinnest shells
and plumpest meats of best quality. In the early morning hours I have
seen several squirrels in one particularly good hickory nut tree and not
a single squirrel in a tree completely filled with nuts, though its
branches touches those of the first one. Men are quite as intelligent
as squirrels in some respects. Here and there attempts were made at
propagating fine hickory trees of various species by planting nuts. It
was not generally known at that time that the hickories were so
thoroughly crossed like the apples, that they would not reproduce true
to type from seed. Attempts were then made at grafting which were mostly
failures for many years. We are now on the verge of a great development
in hybridization or crossing of choice kinds of hickories and in
determining upon which stocks the different kinds of selected hickories
may be grown to best advantage. Hybrids between varieties of hickories
occur frequently in nature and hybrids between species of hickories
occur occasionally. A number of these accidental hybrids have been
discovered and some of them are now being propagated. For the most part
they do not represent the best quality of the best parent but it is a
notable fact that the bitterness of kinds with the bitter pellicle
appears to be a recessive character and disappears usually from hybrids
between species in which one parent has a bitter nut. Unfortunately, the
finer extractive which give character to the nut of the better parent
are prone to disappear also. This is in line with our experience in
mixing of characters along Mendelian lines. Given a sufficient number of
hybrids and we shall have here and there one with spectacular
characteristics of special value.

Now that horticulturists at the present moment are turning so freely
toward the idea of producing quantities of hybrids artificially, the
next generation will see hickory nuts which were not dreamed of in the
days when I was a boy. The crossing of hickories is not difficult work.
We simply remove the male flowers from branches carrying female flowers
before the male flowers have begun to shed their pollen. The female
flowers are then covered with oiled paper bags tied over them for
protection and when the danger from self pollination has passed, we take
off the bags and add a little pollen which we have kept for the
purpose--pollen from some trees bearing remarkably valuable nuts.

Nuts resulting from this cross pollination when planted, give us new
varieties of trees which never have been seen before by anybody and that
is so interesting that very many people will probably take up
hybridization as an incident in recreation. Some of the hybrids will
bear very early in their history and others very late. If one is
impatient to determine at once which ones are to be valuable, he can
hurry the process by grafting a number of cuttings from young seedling
trees into the tops of larger trees which are already bearing--labeling
each graft, so that he may keep track of the seedling stock from which
it came. It is possible to put one hundred or more seedlings in the top
of some stock tree at one time.

One reason for delay in propagation by grafting is because the hickories
like many other trees are slow in making repair of wounds. Grafts
usually perished before being accepted by the stock under grafting
methods that were in common use. The best step forward in grafting
method for hickories is one that I obtained from Mr. J. F. Jones,
Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He tells me that he obtained the method from
its originator, Mr. E. A. Riehl, Godfrey, Illinois. This consisted in
covering the entire graft, buds and all, with melted grafting wax and
including also all of the wound and wrapping of the stock. The buds make
their way through this grafting wax without any difficulty, but the
grafting wax used by Mr. Jones contained lamp black and that used by Mr.
Riehl consisted of a beeswax and rosin mixture. It was found that these
seemed to be applicable in the North but not farther south in the hotter
sun. Examining into the reasons for this, it seemed to me that in all
probability the black grafting wax used by Mr. Jones and the brown or
amber grafting wax used by Mr. Riehl, would naturally allow the heat
rays of the sun to pass through to the graft while halting the actinic
ray of light. The latter is extremely valuable for promoting the
activity of chlorophyl, which acts only in the presence of light and in
the best way in the best light. The heat rays might have certain
destructive qualities. With this theoretical idea of the situation in
mind, I employed melted paraffin in place of the grafting wax, covering
the scions completely as well as the wound in the stock and the
wrappings. This immediately proved to be a success. In fact, it appears
to have changed the entire subject of grafting nut trees in such a way
that any intelligent boy employing this method can now do better hickory
nut grafting than would have been possible at the hands of an expert two
years ago. The melted paraffin fills the interstices in which sap might
collect and ferment, but at the same time, hardening so quickly that it
does not introduce the danger of extension between points of contact
with scion and stock. The second point of value consists in allowing the
actinic ray in the sunlight to act upon the chlorophyl in bud and bark
of the scion and it does not attract the destructive heat ray. This is
perhaps the most important single point of value and due to the
transparency of the paraffin. Third, the paraffin coating, impervious to
air, maintains the sap tension equally in the course of fluctuation
between negative and positive pressures occurring between night and
day, and under varying conditions of light and temperature. This
maintenance of equalised sap tension, I believe to be important. The
paraffin is waterproof and prevents evaporation from the scion, which
otherwise is prone to dry out before granulation of the wound has taken
place in the hickories, as in other species which callus slowly. Fifth,
under the paraffin coating of stock and scion, the plant apparently does
not have that anxiety which would otherwise lead it to introduce the
protective feature of superization, the spreading of a corky layer over
the wound surface between stock and scion, thus introducing a mechanical
obstacle to union.

This method of grafting has extended the grafting season for nearly two
months, apparently. Formerly, I hurried to get all of the grafts in
while buds were bursting, in early May. During the season of 1919 I
grafted hickories up to August sixth experimentally. The last grafts
which caught well in a practical way were put in on July twenty-first.
After that the proportion of catches was small and the growth feeble.
Incidentally, it may be remarked that filberts grafted as late as August
sixth, did perfectly well. The scions employed were cut in late winter
and kept in the sawdust of my icehouse. I formerly supposed that ice
beneath the sawdust was important, but this year I could not get ice and
the scions kept just as well. In July, experiments were tried with
grafting directly from one tree to another, using wood of the season's
growth. This worked well with hazels, but not with hickories or walnuts,
only one out of many hickory grafts catching. That one, however, is
significant and I hope to work out principles which will allow of direct
grafting of hickories as readily as may be done with the hazels.

When a hickory graft is to be inserted into a small stock or branch, the
ordinary cleft graft does well. In stock recipients much larger than the
graft a side cleft of the width of the scion only is desirable, or
better yet the "split bark" method devised by Mr. E. A. Riehl. A
straight split is made in the bark of the end of the stock, and the
graft crowded down into this split so that it remains between bark and
wood finally. My own method for large stocks, is what I have called "the
slot bark method." This consists in turning down a width of stock bark
measuring the same as the scion in width. When the scion has been
inserted into this slot so made, the bark is turned up over it again and
fastened there. By this method I have put scions in the trunks of trees
nearly a foot in diameter and at any chosen point, sometimes several
feet below the ends of cut branches. One may cut off the top of a large
hickory tree and then peg the trunk full of scions by means of bark
slots.

Another important point in hickory propagation work consists in the
employment of the Spanish windlass for fastening graft and stock
together. The old time wrapping of twine or of raffia had to be released
in order to allow growth at the point of union of scion and stock. When
cord is used it cuts deeply into the new growth, and raffia, which is
placed on flat, will be burst open. In either case new wrapping is
required at a precarious time, according to old methods. The Spanish
windlass, which is used in surgery for controlling haemorrage, seemed to
me to be applicable for fastening scions in place. It consists in a
paraffined cord with ends tied in a firm knot but hanging loosely about
the graft and wound. A wooden skewer or any small lever, is then
inserted into the loose loop of cord and twisted about until the part of
the cord about the graft wound is so snug that it holds the scion in
place more firmly than it can be held by any other sort of wrapping. In
order to prevent the cord from cutting into the bark, two shields of
wood or metal an inch in length, are interposed between cord and bark.
The lever of the Spanish windlass is fastened with a cord or with a
galvanized nail in order to prevent the windlass from unwinding and the
whole covered with melted paraffin. This may remain in place for two
seasons without change, holding the scion firmly in place all of that
time and requiring no attention. The growing stock separates the two
shields very much as it might separate two stones in the field and
automatically unwinds the Spanish windlass by sheer force, just enough
to allow growth without any unloosening of its holding apparatus.

In hickory grafting, much experimental work remains to be done in the
choice of stocks for grafts of different species. Almost all of the
hickories that have been grafted upon the pecan hickory stock, seem to
do pretty well upon that stock, but the converse is not true. The pecan
apparently does not do well as a rule when grafted upon other hickory
stocks, even upon those of its cousins in the open-bud group. The
shagbark hickory, in my experience, has done best upon stocks of the
shagbark or mockernut or pignut. A number of years, however, are
required in some cases for determining that point. Shagbarks which I
have grafted upon bitternuts have sometimes made a remarkably good
start. Then at the end of three or four years they begin to slow up,
while shagbarks on shagbark stock, starting slowly at first, surpassed
the ones on bitternut stock finally.

In the spring of 1919, I topworked two trees standing near together and
of about the same size (thirty feet) with Beaver hybrid (a cross between
the bitternut and the shagbark). One of the trees was a bitternut and
the other a pignut. Almost everyone of the grafts of the Beaver grew
thriftily on the bitternut. Those on the pignut stock practically all
caught and made short growth and then began to wilt back. Finally, only
one shoot remained alive. This very striking object lesson will have
bearing in varying degrees in all of our hickory grafting. According to
my experience to date, hybrid hickories are grafted more readily than
are straight species or varieties. They seem to have lost family pride
and seem to take up with any friend offering economic support. In the
case just quoted, however, caprice was shown by the Beaver hybrid which
took eagerly to a host of the species of one of its parents. It refused
to thrive on the pignut which did not represent either one of its
parents although that same pignut stock would have been accepted by
shagbark scions--the shagbark representing the other parent of the
Beaver. This sort of experience throws open the entire subject in such a
large way as to show what possibilities of success and failure lie
before us in experimental work. The same method of grafting, the
paraffin windlass method, was employed for these two trees which were
neighbors.

Interesting experimental work is to be done in finding the extent to
which different species and varieties of hickories may be grown out of
their indigenous range. At Stamford, the bitter pecan from Texas,
appears to be perfectly hardy but it makes very slow growth--sometimes
less than an inch in a year. The Buckley hickory also from Texas, grows
thriftly at Stamford and so does the Carolina hickory Pecans from the
northern belt thrive at Merribrooke, but those from the southern belt
have such a long growing season, that their new wood is not yet
sufficiently well lignified to stand the winter well. Some of them pull
through a mild winter in fairly good order, but on the whole they do not
thrive.

The commercial side of hickory raising, is being worked out for the
pecan only at the present time. We may assume that several of the other
species of hickory adapted to growing in the north, will equal pecans in
importance, eventually. The reason for that is because some of the other
hickories stand quite as high as the pecan in food value and general
excellence. At the time of writing, low grade seedling shellbark nuts
from the West are selling in the retail market in New York for forty
cents a pound. I have seen better nuts of this species being loaded on
the cars in Ohio at fifty cents a bushel. The present New York price, to
be sure, represents a profiteering war price. Fine grades of shagbark
hickories and some of the hybrids will command prices equally high with
prices for best pecans in the market of to-morrow.

VOICE: Will it be practical to plant nuts, get young plants,
and then bud or graft them?

DR. MORRIS: Yes, that is what we do. It is practical to plant
nuts for the purpose of getting a stock, but not for the purpose of
getting nuts. But we plant them in the nursery rows, and then when they
are two years old, preferably (some like three-year-old trees), we graft
them over to good kinds in the nursery row; then they remain there for a
year or two, and are transferred or sold. We now have members of this
association who are experts in grafting nut trees who make that a
business. It is not generally known that we have in this country three
journals devoted wholly to the subject of nut culture. We have
nurserymen who make a specialty of grafted nut trees of the very best
sorts, so that one may perhaps take up this mode of farming more
profitably today than almost any other sort of farming. One gentleman in
Pennsylvania told me he made thirty thousand dollars on one crop of
chestnuts two years ago, cultivated chestnuts. He had thirty acres, and
no tree was yet fourteen years of age. His net profit beyond all
expenses was thirty thousand dollars that year. There are probably very
few professional men who make more than that a year. Many men are making
good, comfortable incomes out of their nut orchards. It is the best
insurance against the needs of old age, the best sort of life insurance.

VOICE: Do you use anything besides the hickory as stock for
grafting on?

DR. MORRIS: Yes, we have some experimenting to do in order to
learn which stock will best serve for a certain variety. We find that
one species or variety of hickory will accept other varieties of that
species well, but perhaps it will not accept another species. We do know
that certain kinds do remarkably well on certain stocks; but the entire
range of that subject has not as yet been worked out.

QUESTION: Does the stock you graft on have any effect on the
quality of the fruit?

DR. MORRIS: The stock on which you graft is supposed to have no
effect at all on the quality of the fruit. But there are some
exceptions. We learned that in orange grafting. A naval orange grafted
on the wild orange stock might be raggy, not full of juice; while when
grafted on the trifoliate orange stock might be heavy and full of juice.
So in that case the stock did have some influence upon the graft; and
there are other instances. But as a rule we assume that the stock has no
influence upon the graft in regard to the validity of character.

QUESTION: Are pecans a variety of hickory?

DR. MORRIS: Yes, pecans are hickories. The Indians gave it the
name of pekan. The French spelled it pecanne, so that has been spelled
as the pecan, without the necessary other part of its name, hickory. We
should always say pecan hickory--always.

DR. KELLOGG: Dr. Morris, how old hickories may be used for
grafting?

DR. MORRIS: I have experimented with trees up to fifty years of
age; but the most satisfactory work, perhaps, is done with trees that
are not more than fifteen or twenty years of age and three or four or
five inches in diameter. Those are the best trees to work with. If we
cut off the limbs of a very old tree and try to top work it, it means an
enormous amount of work on the part of the orchardist, more work than my
employees like to give it. But one may topwork a tree of almost any age,
preferably a tree less than twenty-five years of age; and by choice I
should say trees not more than ten years of age. We have experts in the
audience better qualified to speak on that subject than I am.

QUESTION: Do you prefer the melted paraffin to the
old-fashioned way of using bees wax?

DR. MORRIS: The old-fashioned beeswax had a certain color, and
the black wax with charcoal, with lampblack, both turned the light ray
and allowed the heat ray to enter so that the amber of the old resin
wax, and the black of the black wax both allowed damage to occur to the
tree, in the South particularly, in a hot climate early in the summer,
prevented our grafting in the summer because of the turning away of the
light ray that was wanted and the absorption of the heat ray that was
not wanted. The melted paraffin being perfectly transparent, allows the
light ray to set the chlorophyl into activity. All the life processes of
the tree are carried on under the influence of the green chlorophyl
grains, and these work only in the presence of light.

QUESTION: Can you successfully graft a pecan on the pignut?

QUESTION: What is the best stock to graft pecan on?

DR.MORRIS: Pecan stock, I think. I do not think we have
anything better. Mr. Reed and Mr. Jones are both experts in that field.
They have grafted hundreds of thousands of trees.

PRESIDENT REED: I think the pecan is the best. The hickory will
grow on the pecan very well, the shagbark hickory, but it will not do to
change it with any degree of success.

DR. MORRIS: The shagbarks will grow fairly well on pecans, but
the pecan not well on the shagbark. It is best I think to put shagbarks
on shagbark or shellbark. But they do well on pignut. I have got some
very good shagbarks on mockernut. On bitternut they grow fast, but at
the end of eight or ten years are inclined to slow up. Shagbark can be
put on, I suppose, ten other kinds of hickory, but the pecan can not.

QUESTION: How many grafts would be necessary on a nut tree
twelve inches in diameter?

DR. MORRIS: I should say you would probably have to put in
fifty. I would cut off the branches down to about two inches or an inch
and a half in diameter, and that might leave fifty stubs to graft. Graft
all of them, is one way to do it. Having done one that way, you will
then become familiar with the entire subject.

QUESTION: What is the best time of year?

DR. MORRIS: I don't know. Some time ago the American
Agriculturist said to its readers that there is disagreement about the
best time for pruning peach trees. Let us hear from all our readers. So
all of the readers wrote expressing their opinions, and the editor
said, "Summing up all of the opinions, the entire testimony in the case,
we have decided that the time to prune your peach tree is when your
knife is sharp." I had always supposed that the best time for grafting
was when the buds were first bursting in the spring, always held rigidly
to that, and at that time of the year was in a great hurry. I dropped
professional work and lost hundreds and even thousands of dollars in
order to see this work go ahead; it is more interesting than
professional work. And now this year, with this new method, I have
grafted right straight on up to the first of August, and everything
growing--deliberately, all through the summer. So that now, at the
present moment I do not know. A year ago I could have told you. When I
first graduated in medicine, I could answer any question in medicine.
After forty years of surgery, I am puzzled over a great many questions.
It is the same way regarding grafting.

QUESTION: In summer grafting do you remove the leaves from
scions?

DR. MORRIS: In summer grafting I have used for the most part
scions I have kept in the icebox in sawdust. I have formerly put in
twenty or thirty tons in my icehouse for my family to use during the
summer. Last winter we could not get any ice, and my scions were just as
good kept in the sawdust as if we had had ice; and I grafted those
scions in August and the grafts are living. I have also cut off the
leaves in grafting, but that is new and you can not depend on it,--stop
at one tree, cut off a piece of it, and put it on another tree and have
it grow. I have never done that until this year, and it does not succeed
in a very large percentage. It is not practical. It can be done--I have
proven that; but it is not practical. The best way is to use your scions
from last year that have been kept in cold storage in sawdust or leaves.

DR. KELLOGG: When should the scions be cut?

DR. MORRIS: There is some disagreement about that. Almost all
scions may suffer a little winter injury. Some men prefer to cut in the
early part of December before we have had any hard winter, then keep
them in cold storage during the entire year, moderately moist, or
protected in sand, leaves, or stratification. But I have always
preferred February myself, cutting them the last of February before the
buds begin to start, then put them in sawdust in the icehouse or cold
storage, or bury them under a thick layer of leaves. For budding you
transfer immediately. In fact, budding technically comes under the same
physiologic principles as grafting. In budding I do that work in my
place at Stamford, Conn., about the latter part of July or early August.

DR. KELLOGG: Do you use the same method in transferring buds?

DR. MORRIS: Yes, I fix them the same way as I do the graft and
cover everything with paraffin. I have even had a little short side
graft grow using this paraffin method, a graft two or three inches long.

DR. KELLOGG: Tell us about those fatherless walnuts.

DR. MORRIS: In the course of crossing the nut trees, we
supposed, as a matter of course, that we must always have the pollen
from one tree, or from a tree which bore the staminate or fertilizing
flowers, in order to develop nuts or fruit of any sort; but on one
occasion I covered a lot of Chinkapin female flowers with paper bags; I
didn't have pollen enough to go around and left the bags on because I
happened to be too lazy or too busy to pull them off. About a month
later when I did take them off I found a full set of chinkapin nuts
under those bags. They had received no pollen. That was an observation
of a good deal of interest. It may have been that they had gone on by
what we call parthenogenesis, and we had the children without the
father, had the female parent only, the fatherless chinkapin. It sounds
sad. I followed up the experiment with other nut trees, and found that
not infrequently we may develop fatherless nuts. The effect will be,
according to natural law, to intensify the characteristics of one
parent. The female which bears this fruit, this child, without a father,
will give to that child an intensification of her own characteristics.
That will be the effect of parthenogenesis. That may be continued
through several generations perhaps; we do not know. It is new, quite
new. (Applause).

PRESIDENT REED: The next topic is the Digestibility of Nuts, by
Mr. Cajorie, of Yale University.

THE NUTRITIVE VALUE OF NUTS

F. A. CAJORIE, YALE UNIVERSITY, NEW HAVEN, CONN.

Mr. President and members of the Northern Nut Growers' Association: It
was with great pleasure that I accepted the invitation of your
Association to be present at this convention and give a discussion of
nuts and nut production, from the point of view of their nutritive or
food value. During the last few years our knowledge of nutrition and the
parts that individual foods may play in the diet has been greatly
increased and in the light of the new discoveries, it is interesting and
valuable to view the place that nuts hold.

As you are well aware, nuts have been used as foods by the peoples of
the world. In many places nut products have made up a very appreciable
part of the diet. Chestnut flour is extensively used in Southern Europe.
Among the peasants of Tuscany, chestnut flour forms a considerable part
of the total diet. In this region, also ground acorns are made into
bread with cereal flours and in this form is a common food. The hazel or
filbert nut is also seen in the form of flour on the shores of the Black
Sea. Races living in the tropics have utilized the many varieties of
nuts indigenous to tropical climes such as the coconut, Brazil nuts,
Java almond, Paradise nut, candle nut and African cream nut. In the
Orient, the lichi, ginko and water chestnut, and in Italy and India the
varieties of the pine nut are used to considerable extent.

In America, with the exception of a few localities and among a limited
class of people, nuts have never made up a staple part of our dietaries,
rather they have been used as tasty supplements to otherwise complete
menus. That they are prized as adjuncts and are sought after is
strikingly shown when we see in our markets not only the products of our
native American nut trees, the hickory, walnut, butternut, chestnut,
pecan, beechnut and pinion, but the Brazil nut, filbert, English walnut,
peanut, coconut, all of which are derived from foreign countries or from
trees originally imported to America from other lands.

Analysis of nuts have shown them to be of two types, one rich in fats
and protein, the nitrogen containing component of our foods and the
other relatively rich in carbohydrates, or starches. With the exception
of the chestnut, and the coconut, most of our more common nuts belong to
this first class, and chemists have pointed out that in these nuts we
have a concentration of protein and fat seen in no other class of
foodstuffs. For example, the protein-fat rich nuts have a percentage of
protein varying between 15 and 30% and a fat content of 50-70%; compare
this with other foods that we think of as being concentrated; eggs, 12%
protein and 10% fat; cheese 28% protein, 37% fat; round steak, 20%
protein, 14% fat; and bread, 10% protein. This nutritive concentration
in nuts places them in a unique position among our natural food
products. Our cereals, meats, fruit and vegetables all contain more or
less water or refuse that reduces their concentration, while in nuts we
find a compact form of almost pure food.

We are dependent on foods for the source of energy that is necessary to
perform our work and maintain our body temperature much in the same way
that a steam engine is dependent on the fuel supplied it to perform the
mechanical tasks assigned to it, and this fuel value of foods in turn,
depends on the amount of protein, carbohydrate and fat, particularly the
latter, that are present in the foods. At once we see, in our
concentrated nuts, a tremendous source of energy, provided that we can
digest these nuts and make this energy available.

Despite the fact, as revealed by chemical analysis, that in nuts we have
a source of protein and fat in a concentration rarely seen in foods,
there have been relatively few experiments to actually determine the
digestibility. Prof Jaffa at the California Experiment Station was the
first to make a comprehensive investigation along these lines. He made
extensive digestion tests on men using most of the more common American
nuts. His results, as reported in a bulletin of the U. S. Department of
Agriculture, indicated that nuts when they made up a substantial portion
of the diet, were well digested by those who ate them and gave no
intestinal disturbance or discomfort.

Nuts have had a reputation for indigestibility that was wide spread, not
only among people in general, but also among physicians and dieticians,
and even Prof Jaffa's clear cut experiments failed to dispell this idea
of indigestibility that had been empirically assigned to nuts. A few
years ago, a rather extensive series of digestion experiments were
inaugurated at Yale University in an effort to settle this question of
the indigestibility of nuts and also to test out some of the commercial
nut products to find what effect roasting, boiling, and other processes
that nuts are subjected to, had to do with the digestibility. Through
the courtesy of Dr Kellogg of Battle Creek, it was possible to follow up
these experiments with a series here at Battle Creek. It is the result
of these tests that I wish to speak of today. One word regarding the
method which is the conventional one for such experiments. The amount of
food eaten by the individual or animal is weighed at each meal and the
composition determined by chemical analysis. The intestinal output is
collected, weighed and analysed. From the difference in any substance
such as protein in the food and the protein which appears in the body
refuse, the amount digested and absorbed or utilized by the body is
easily determined. For example; if 10gms. of nitrogen were eaten in the
food and one gm appears in the feces, we say that the coefficient of
digestibility of that nitrogen is 90%, that is 9 of the 10 gms. eaten
were absorbed by the body. The average of a great many such tests on
mixed diets has the following standard coefficient: protein 93%, fat
95%, and carbohydrates 98%.

Our digestion experiments show the following results: for protein
digestion of nuts, almond 89%, peanut 84%, pine nut 89%, Eng. walnut,
83%, Brazil 88%, and coconut 88%. In all cases the carbohydrate
coefficients are 98 or 99%, and in the case of the carbohydrate rich
chestnut, normal digestion took place after the nut was heated so as to
rupture the starch granules. In all of these cases the nut made up a
substantial part of each meal and was eaten in large amounts. The
experimental subject, experienced no digestive troubles or discomforture
whatsoever except in the case of the English walnut, which evidently
contains some irritating substance that causes diarrhea. Except for the
pecan which gave rather low utilization, the protein of nuts was
digested to a high degree that compares most favorably with our ordinary
foodstuffs.

How then explain the undoubted discomforture that many people experience
after eating nuts? I believe that the explanation rests on the fact that
our common American way of eating nuts, is not the rational way. We
would not consider topping off a heavy meal with eggs, meats or cereals
or to eat these in large quantities between meals realizing that we are
exposing ourselves to possible digestive discomfort. No more then, can
we expect to so eat nuts which are even more concentrated or "heavy"
than meat or eggs without occasional discomfort. Unpleasant results from
so eating does not condemn the nuts as indigestible, rather it condemns
our mode of using that nut. Further, we must recognize that the nut is a
hard, compact substance and that unless completely masticated, is not
readily penetrated by the digestive juices of the alimentary canal. This
was very well brought out in our experiment with dogs. The dog bolts his
food and where there were large fragments of the nut in the food, they
appeared almost unchanged in the feces, while if the nut is ground fine
before feeding, it was readily digested. Comparisons of nut butters and
nut pastes with the whole nut also brought out this point. The
completely commuted nut butters showed consistently higher degrees of
digestion than the whole nut.

With the exception of the starch rich chestnut, the heating of the nut
did not seem to effect the digestibility whether this heat was boiling,
steaming or roasting. The raw nut apparently is as well digested as the
heated products. No differences were found between nut butters whether
the process involved steaming or roasting of the nut. I am not speaking
of the enhancing of the flavor that heating may bring about, but only of
the digestibility.

Dr. Longworthy and his co-workers in the Dept. of Agriculture have
investigated in recent years the digestibility of many vegetable oils,
among them nut oils, and have found as high a percent of utilization
with these as with butter and our other common animal food fats.

I believe that we are fully justified in the conclusion that nuts and
nut products, if rationally used in our diets, are as digestible and
fully as valuable from a nutritional point of view as our other
foodstuffs.

While we can now definitely speak of the high digestibility of nuts, it
is necessary to consider other phases of the part played by foods in
nutrition. The fact that a food after being taken into the body can be
broken up by the digestive juices of the alimentary tract, and the
products absorbed, as we have found, to be the case with the nuts, is
not the end of the story of the function of that food.

About fifteen years ago, it was discovered that during the progress of
digestion, the protein materials are reduced by the digestive juices of
our stomachs and intestines to smaller chemical compounds, and that it
is these smaller fragments of the protein molecule that are absorbed
into the blood and are used to build up our muscles and tissues. These
fragments or "building stones" as they have been fancifully called, are
all of a distant class of chemical compounds known to chemists as amino
acids. Eighteen of these acids have been found as the products of
protein digestion.

We may conceive of our bodies as being continually supplied with a mass
of these 18 building stones from which it selects the kind and number
that it needs to repair the everyday wear and tear of the tissues and in
the case of the growing child builds new structures.

Since the date of this important discovery regarding the fate of
indigested protein, it has been found that with few exceptions, the body
is not able to manufacture these amino acids or to change one kind into
another, and must depend on the protein eaten, for a supply of the
various kinds that go to make up the body protein. Further it has been
found, that many of our commonly used food proteins do not contain all
18 of these amino acids components. In some foods one, two, and
sometimes more are lacking, or if present are in very small amounts. If
our diet contained only proteins of an inferior grade, we can picture
our body requiring building stones of various kinds to maintain the
structure of the body and unable to obtain them due to the poor quality
of the food, protein. Nutritional failure would be the result. The
proteins then must be of the right quality as well as present in the
proper quantities, to prevent mal-nutrition. Bearing in mind these
facts, it is necessary in studying a food such as our nuts, to determine
the kind of protein the individual nut contains as well as to know
whether or not it can be digested by the body.

During the past few years, it has been found that we must have in our
foods a certain amount of substances whose chemical nature is at present
unknown and to which the name of vitamines has been given. It is not my
purpose to discuss with you the many phases of vitamines and their
relation to nutrition, but I only wish to impress upon you the fact that
it is of the utmost importance for a dietary to contain these
substances; fully as important as that the protein, fat, carbohydrate,
and inorganic salt content shall be satisfactory. Lack of these
vitamines brings on various evidences of mal-nutrition. One vitamine
which is found in animal fats and the leaves of plants and is soluble
in, and associated with fats, is, for that reason, called fat soluble
vitamine. Another called the water soluble vitamine is widely
distributed in cereal seeds, vegetables, and legumes. The third, the
so-called antiscorbutic vitamine because of its action as preventative
and cure for scurvy, is found in certain fruits and vegetables.

We then ask the next question: Are nuts adequate as far as their
proteins contain these essential amino acids, and do nuts contain
vitamines? That is, is their biological value as satisfactory as their
digestibility?

Dr. Hoobler of Detroit, in a study of the diets of lactating mothers and
wet nurses, a year or so ago, compared the value of proteins from animal
and vegetable sources for the elaboration of milk. He found that a
mixture of the almond, English walnut, peanut and pecan, furnished
proteins that were equal to the animal food tried, and far superior to
other vegetable proteins. Here then is evidence that nuts provide the
necessary building stones to form milk that food par excellence for the
newly born individual. Drs. Mendel and Osborn, experimenting on white
rats have shown that the principle proteins of the Brazil nut will
maintain animals through the growing period. Bureau of Chemistry workers
and others have found similar results with the coconut and the peanut. I
have now, experiments underway at New Haven, on the biological value of
the filbert, English walnut, pine nut, almond, and pecan. While these
tests are yet incompleted, it can at least be said that to date there is
no evidence that the proteins of these nuts are in any way less
satisfactory than those of the peanut or Brazil nut that have been
thoroughly tested out.

As to the vitamine content, abundant quantities of water soluble
vitamine have been found in the peanut and the coconut. Experiments that
we have in progress as well as a series conducted here at Battle Creek
under Dr. Kellogg's direction give promise to increase this list of
vitamine containing nuts to include at least many of our common nuts.
Along with our vegetable oils in general, coconut oil and peanut oil
contain insufficient quantities of the fat soluble vitamine to maintain
growth in young animals. Whether the other nut oils will prove more
efficacious in this respect, is now under investigation. As far as I am
aware, the antiscorbutic properties of nuts have not been studied.

With the population of the world on a steady increase, it continually
becomes necessary for mankind to seek out new sources of food, and
utilize products that formerly had received little attention as possible
foods. Conditions that disturb normal food production and distribution,
such for example as were brought about by the world war, produce serious
food shortages in the world, and emphasize how close is the margin that
determines whether the peoples of the world have adequate quantities of
food or whether they are faced by shortages, and, in many cases, by
starvation. In this continual development of our food resources, nuts
stand out prominently as offering possibilities which are very great.
Not only do they represent a very concentrated form of food which is
highly digestible, but they possess a number of characteristic and
highly pleasing flavors that recommends them for use in all manner of
culinary procedures. The variety of uses to which nuts can be put in the
kitchen is amply demonstrated right here in Dr. Kellogg's sanitarium and
I feel sure that even he has not exhausted the possibilities of nuts in
the dietary. The forms of nut products on the market are steadily
increasing. The nut butters, nut pastes, nut margarines, meat
substitutes, and so forth, all point to the variety of ways that nuts
can be handled as foods.

The tremendous increase in the use of nut oils in the form of the oil
itself and as nut margarines within the last few years is a striking
example of the utilization on a large scale of relatively new food
products. The press cake which remains as a by-product of this oil
industry finds ready use as concentrates for cattle feeds. Many of our
ideas in the feeding of our domestic animals are undergoing development
along with the idea of human nutrition. Just recently, investigators at
the Wisconsin Experiment Station, reported that the well known "home
grown ration" for dairy cows that consist of cereals, silage and hay, is
not a large milk producing diet. Their recommendation is to supplement
this ration with protein concentrates. Nut meals recommend themselves
most highly as protein concentrates. It certainly is safe to say that
the day when the fruits of our nut bearing trees will be allowed to fall
ungathered from the trees, is at an end.

There are many problems that still call for an answer by the chemist and
dietitian. The nutritive value of the individual nuts should be firmly
established in all its phases. The causes that have made the use of
certain nuts unprofitable commercially, should be studied with the view
of correcting these stumbling blocks. For example, the freeing of the
horse-chestnut from its poisonous saponins and enable us to use this
starch rich nut as food is well within the range of possibility as
indicated by experiments conducted in Austria during the war. Why do nut
oils tend to become rancid easily and can this tendency be remedied? Is
the freeing of the acorn and its tannin and other objectionable
substances a practical consideration? What is the irritating principle
of the English walnut?

All these problems and many others wait solution. Research on nuts is in
progress in many places. It involves time consuming experiments that are
often times expensive. As a result, progress is slow, the amount of
research being limited by the financial factor. The value of the pecan
nut crop alone of the year 1918, was over 91 million dollars and the
value of the imports and exports of nuts and nut products during the
same year amounted to over 51 million dollars. If one one-hundredth of
one per cent of this sum should be devoted by those interested in the
development of our nut industry in this country for the study of the
nutritional and chemical properties of nuts, I feel sure that they would
be amply repaid for their investment.

PRESIDENT REED: I believe this will complete our program for
tonight. We have quite a full program for tomorrow morning. Mr. C. A.
Reed, nut culturist of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, is with us
and was to have been on the program tonight, but he has been busy all
day and was hardly ready for tonight's program, as he has been busy
getting the exhibit in order, and he will be on the program tomorrow
morning, and three or four others, among them Dr Kellogg, I believe, so
that there will be quite a full morning's program, and we will be glad
to have all of you come who can. We meet in the parlor of the Annex at
ten o'clock tomorrow morning. If any one desires to join the Association
and will speak to the secretary, he will give yow the necessary
information.

END OF TUESDAY EVENING SESSION

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1919, 10:00 A.M.

PRESIDENT W. C. REED IN THE CHAIR

PRESIDENT REED: Mr. O. C. Simonds of Chicago will talk to you
on "Nut Trees in Landscape work."

NUT TREES AND BUSHES IN LANDSCAPE WORK

O. C. SIMONDS, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

In considering material for landscape work the places that come to mind
where such work would be required are home grounds, highways, parks,
cemeteries, school grounds, city squares and woods. The highways would
include city streets, parkways, usually called boulevards, and country
roads.

All trees are beautiful and should serve in some place in landscape
work. Some_are more beautiful than others and where but few trees can be
used the more beautiful would naturally be chosen.

BLACK WALNUTS

Not long ago, a lawyer was talking to me about the beauty of black
walnuts. To his mind there is no tree more beautiful and from what he
said, he would use it almost to the exclusion of other trees. My own
judgment does not fully coincide with his although I consider a black
walnut a very attractive tree. It grows to a large size and is generally
healthy. Its shape is good and the foliage attractive in summer. The
leaves drop early and they are not especially attractive in autumn
coloring. Black walnuts are strong in appearance. They lack the
gracefulness of the elm and if I were making a list of trees in the
order of their appearance, placing the most beautiful first and the
least attractive last, I should place several trees ahead of the black
walnut, among them sugar maples, elms and several of the oaks. Perhaps
the black walnut would come about in the center of the list for most
locations. The list itself would vary for different situations and
climates. I should advise using black walnuts plentifully along the
highways, especially country roads, and somewhat sparingly in home
grounds and the other locations which I have named. By plentifully, I
do not mean to the exclusion of other trees, for, in some places, there
should be more elms and maples than black walnuts, but highways are so
extensive that many kinds of trees could be used in abundance to give
shade. In woods there are places where black walnuts could be used in
profusion.

The objections that one might raise to the use of black walnuts would
be, first, the comparatively short season of the leaves. These come out
rather late in the spring and drop early, probably these trees can not
be improved very much in this respect. Second, boys will sometimes throw
sticks at the trees to bring down the nuts. If a boy comes in home
grounds to do this, he will be considered a nuisance. Branches are
sometimes broken and the trees disfigured from this cause. Along
highways this objection might perhaps be lessened somewhat by planting
enough trees so that there would be more nuts than the boy would want,
or by improving the manner of the boy. Third, the trees are often
attacked by caterpillars. This objection can usually be obviated by
spraying or destroying the pests in other ways.

BUTTERNUTS

The remarks made about the black walnut would apply in many ways to the
butternut, its nearest relative. Butternuts have a range extending
further north and they are more subject to disease than the black
walnuts. Like the walnut, their leaves come out late and drop early.
They are subject to the attacks of boys. When healthy, they are
attractive in appearance and they deserve to be planted in most places
where trees are used for landscape effect, but in the list I suggested,
they would come below the black walnut.

HICKORIES

There is a time of the year when the shagbark, which produces such sweet
nuts, would be more attractive than any neighboring tree. It is when the
big buds swell and send out yellowish green leaves surrounded by large,
red bracts. At this time they are as showy and as beautiful as any
flowers. The bracts soon fall, but the leaves turn a rich green and are
attractive until early fall, when they are sometimes yellow, and
sometimes drop without any marked coloring. The trunk of the hickory is
unique in appearance as the bark separates from the tree in long
platelike strips which hang on at one end and give the scraggly
appearance from which the tree derives its name. All of the hickories
are attractive in appearance, but some of them drop their leaves early.
The hickories are difficult to transplant but this is nothing against
the beauty of the tree. An established tree is more valuable on this
account. In some places hickories are quite subject to disease or to the
attacks of borers. Like the walnuts, hickories which produce edible nuts
are subject to the attacks of boys, but, on account of the toughness of
the wood and the roughness of the bark, they are usually quite able to
withstand these attacks. Hickories are suitable for use in all landscape
work so far as their appearance is concerned. The fact that they are not
so used is due to the difficulty of transplanting them. In the fall when
a maple tree has colored up beautifully and a hickory near it has
dropped its leaves, we are apt to compare the two unfavorably to the
latter, but we should remember the appearance in summer and especially
when the leaves first unfold. Hickory trees are beautiful also when the
leaves are off, their branches making beautiful etchings against the sky
in winter. The pecan, which is the largest of all hickories, is an
exception to the general rule because it is planted quite extensively,
especially in the South. It is a beautiful tree and where it is hardy
there is no reason why it should not be used as a street tree, a tree in
home grounds, in parks, or any other place where deciduous trees are
needed. It is raised extensively in some nurseries, while the other
hickories are raised very sparingly, and some not at all.

THE BEECH

Some would consider the beech the most beautiful of all nut trees. Its
comparatively smooth, bluish-gray bark makes it a distinctive tree at
all seasons. Its branches, spreading straight out from the trunk, give
it an appearance of strength. Its fine branches form a specially
pleasing skyline, its sharp buds are trim and neat in appearance, its
leaves are beautiful in shape and texture. Their fall coloring, while
not as brilliant as that of the maples, is really beautiful, being
either yellow or a rich brown. The leaves are apt to hang on all winter,
especially on the younger growth, and then they often turn a straw
color. If a list of beautiful trees for February were to be made, I am
rather inclined to think that the beech would stand at the head of the
list. A young beech with its bluish-gray bark, its straw colored leaves,
and flecks of snow here and there, seems to me the most beautiful of all
deciduous trees in winter. The young leaves also are especially
attractive when they first appear and the blossoms are sometimes objects
of interest, although not showy in color.

HAZELNUTS

Often in old pastures one finds forlorn, scraggly looking bushes and is
told they are hazelnut bushes. One would not pick out bushes like these
to plant in his front yard, and yet, when given a chance, there is
scarcely a more attractive shrub than the hazel. It is one of the first
shrubs to blossom, the staminate flowers hanging in slender, graceful
yellowish-brown catkins, while the pistillate flowers are little points
of purplish-red protruding from the buds. These blossoms appear long
before the leaves. The latter, when fully developed, are beautiful in
outline and soft in texture and they have a rich coloring in the fall
including various shades of yellow and red. The hazel should certainly
be used extensively in landscape work. The nuts, with their leaflike
involucres, are attractive in appearance in August and September. In
connection with our own hazel one would naturally think of the filbert,
which is a European relative. The filbert is often planted for ornament.
There is a variety with purple leaves which some people admire.

THE OAKS

Of all our native trees, I think the oak excels in beauty of foliage. By
many oaks might not be considered nut trees, but nearly all of the
acorns are eaten by squirrels or other wild animals and so I think it
would be proper to mention oaks when speaking of nut trees in the
landscape. In the northern states we have two groups known as the white
oak group and the red oak group. The trees of the former have soft, dull
green leaves with rounded lobes, while those of the latter have shiny
leaves with lobes ending in points of filaments. The former mature their
acorns in one year, while the latter require two years to bring them to
maturity. The acorns of the white group are sweet, while those of the
red group are more or less bitter. The foliage of all oaks is attractive
when it first appears, the small leaves varying in color from almost
white through pink, yellow, and red to the deepest purple. Perhaps the
red oak excels all other trees in the beauty of its summer foliage and
its leaves are also richly colored in autumn. The Bur Oak, in addition
to having attractive foliage, has a rough, dark bark that gives it an
attractive appearance in winter. The white oak, especially when young,
holds many of its leaves in spring and these with their brown color,
give a warmth to the snowy landscape. One could make a most beautiful
park by planting nothing but oaks and they should rank with maples and
elms as street trees.

CHESTNUTS

There is a tree which a few years ago would have been considered along
with the oak in landscape work, but which now would not be thought of in
certain regions on account of a disease which has practically destroyed
it. This tree is the American chestnut. It grows to a large size, and if
it were not for this disease, would be worthy of a place in any park.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent without success in
endeavoring to exterminate the disease. Some of the introduced varieties
are apparently exempt from this disease, but only the future can tell
whether the chestnut will again become valuable in landscape work as
well as in the raising of food and lumber.

In designing landscapes, we think first of open spaces and then bound
these spaces with trees and shrubs having pleasing shapes and foliage.
The tops of these trees form the skyline and the lower growth a margin
of lawns, or perhaps of walks and drives. For these purposes the
beeches, hickories, hazels, walnuts and butternuts are all valuable,
their value being approximately in the order named.

HORSE CHESTNUTS AND BUCKEYES

There may be some question about including these in a list of nut trees.
I understand, however, that the seeds of all of these trees have been
used for feeding stock and perhaps some way may be found for making them
available as food for men and women. There is no question about their
usefulness for ornamental trees. In Europe, the horse chestnut has been
used extensively for park and boulevard planting and it is also largely
used in the United States. There are several varieties. The leaves
appear early, the blossoms coming out later. Our own buckeyes are
handsome in appearance and all are adapted for use in landscape work.

The arguments for and against the use of nut trees in landscape work
would be somewhat similar to such arguments regarding fruit trees. A
luscious fruit tree like the snow apple, would be omitted from the list
of trees for the park, not because it lacks beauty, but because its
fruit would lead to its destruction. Apple trees might, however, be very
appropriate for private grounds. They have sometimes given a name to a
home, as "The Orchard". The same is true of certain nut trees, "Walnut
Hill," and "Hickory Grove" being not uncommon. The hazel, too, is
frequently used in naming home grounds, streets or localities. A name
would not be used in this way unless the object bearing it was held in
esteem. I am glad there is an association to encourage the raising of
nut trees and I hope to see such trees used in this way extensively, for
the purpose of developing attractive scenery as well as for food
production.

MR SIMONDS: When Mr. Bixby asked me to prepare a paper and come
here and read it, I wrote back I would prepare a paper and send to him
to read; and afterwards Mr. Reed came to see me, and knowing that he
would be here, I concluded I would come. I dictated a paper and
afterwards I found I had left out a few nut trees, and I want to speak
just a word regarding those before I read my paper. One of those is the
coconut palm. I was thinking more particularly of trees in this locality
when I dictated the paper; but the coconut tree aside from raising the
coconuts, I think is the most magnificent palm that we have. There are
other trees that some like better, but I think the coconut palm is the
most picturesque, the finest tree to plant. I prefer it to the other
large palms. It has great spreading leaves, sometimes fifteen or twenty
feet long, a feathery top, and the trunk is not quite straight, and I
like it a little better because it is not. Then here is the English
walnut. I did not speak in my paper about the English walnut, but there
is a tree that is a beautiful tree, and where it is hardy it should of
course be planted for ornament as well as for the nuts. And then there
is the almond which we do not have here as a nut tree, but which they
have in California, which has some attractions, and might be planted,
although it is really not so ornamental as some of the nut trees; still
it is worth planting. (Applause).

PRESIDENT REED: Are there any questions you would like to ask
Mr. Simonds while he is with us, or is there any discussion?

DR. MORRIS: There are two or three points for discussion. Mr.
Simonds does not think highly of the almond. I do for decorative
purposes. When I drive in my driveway at Stamford and face that
magnificent blaze of blazing clouds of almonds in the springtime, I
think it is something worth while; it is the hard shelled almond. It
will grow as far north as the peach does. The only trouble is they are a
little more subject to leaf blight and need a little more attention. But
where the peach will grow you can raise the almond profitably. Among the
hazel nuts the most beautiful of the entire series is the tree hazel
that grows about as large as the smaller oaks, and that is said to bear
twenty-five or thirty bushels of hazelnuts a year,--enormous crops. That
is perfectly hardy here, and the beauty of the tree is such that I
believe it to be a very important addition. I would like to hear Mr.
Jones' opinion on that point. I use it for grafting purposes for other
hazels. The Japanese walnuts, almost tropical in their rapid growth,
sometimes grow six feet in a year in rich ground, and with their great
sprays of leaves sometimes a yard in length, and the seedballs of the
heart nut variety give really a tropical appearance to the grounds where
the ground is rich enough. They will grow almost any place, but in rich
ground they are certainly very wonderful. Among the chestnuts, of
course, we have a number of hybrids now that resist blight very well;
and the little chinkapins for lawn bushes are very attractive. One of
our most beautiful chestnuts is splendid for a lawn specimen and is
evergreen in the South. When I was a boy I never had plums enough; so
one of my ambitions was to have plums enough so I could see some of them
rot on the ground. We can do the same thing with nut trees--have nuts
enough so the boys will be full and have nuts enough. It seems to me it
ought to be one of our ambitions to have so many nut trees along the
roadsides in the parks, etc., that the boys and the squirrels can not
use them all up.

MR. SIMONDS: I think the Doctor is right in some of his
criticisms. In fact, the almond is something like a peach, and I had not
prized it for use in landscape work so very much on account of certain
diseases which would be apt to affect it here if it were not taken care
of as we would take care of trees in an orchard. The hazel tree, of
course, would be attractive if it is hardy here. I have had doubts about
its being hardy because of its coming from southern Europe.

DR. MORRIS: It is hardy in all Canada. They have fine tree
hazels in the park at Rochester. They have there probably the largest
tree hazels in the country.

MR. C. A. REED: I would like to have more questions asked. I
feel as though I had accomplished a real achievement in getting Mr.
Simonds here. I was under him a short time a number of years ago and
learned something of his skill as a landscape gardener and the
reputation that he has; and I felt that we could not hope to have a
better authority on these points that he has discussed than we could in
Mr. Simonds; and it is something that is constantly coming up. The
Department of Agriculture have to consider that people want to know what
trees they can plant in the landscape; and I feel particularly glad to
have Mr. Simonds here.

DR. MORRIS: It seems to me we ought to talk more about the
nut-bearing pines in the landscape, because where you are planting pine
trees, you might as well plant the nut-bearing kind as the others; they
are just as beautiful, and you combine the Greek idea of beauty and
utility.

MR. SIMONDS: Certainly, that is a tree I have omitted, because
in this region we have not had any nuts.

DR. MORRIS: There are four pines that will bear nuts here--the
Korean pine, the pignolia or stone pine, the Italian stone pine and the
Swiss both. There are five nut bearing pine trees that are all market
trees for nuts, that I know will grow and bear here, including the lace
bark pine.

MR. SIMONDS: Are they raising nuts in Michigan on pines?

DR. MORRIS: No, but they might. Those five kinds would grow
here and bear nuts here, so they have a double value.

MR. SIMONDS: I think we ought to raise them. Of course they are
beautiful in the landscape.

DR. MORRIS: The whole idea of your paper is to approach the
Greek ideal--add utility to beauty.

MR. SIMONDS: That is what nature does. It makes beautiful
leaves, then uses the leaves for plant food.

MR. C. A. REED: I wonder, Dr. Morris, if you can tell where
these pines can be had.

DR. MORRIS: The Korean pine is from northeast Asia, and you can
get those from the original pine seed; the lace bark pine is from
northeastern Asia where the climate is like ours. The Swiss stone pine
and the Italian stone pine are from Switzerland and Italy and closely
related--both excellent trees. The fruit now you buy as the pignolia in
the markets. Both those are sold as pignolia nuts. It is a commercial
nut of Europe. The white barked pine you would get from the West. It has
a beautiful fine large nut, and you would get that from any Pacific
coast dealers in nut trees.

MR. SIMMONDS: Has that another name?

DR. MORRIS: I do not know of any other name for it. Wait: The
single leaved pine is one. That grows so far north on the Pacific, but
we do not know whether it will ripen its nuts here or not. It is
perfectly hardy here and would be a beautiful nut tree, grows well. The
single-leaved pine--that is _monophylla_. There are four or five pinons
that will live, but they do not grow fast enough to make it worth while
to raise them in Michigan. The Jeffrey bull pine is another one that
will grow here and bear fruit, with a beautiful blue-green foliage. The
Jeffrey bull pine is one of the most beautiful and thrifty pines. That
is the Jeffrey variety of ponderosa. The nut is very much larger than
the nut of the ordinary ponderosa. The nut of the ponderosa is small,
but the Indians use them and eat them, shell and all. When we come to
using the pines more freely for food purposes, we are going to do what
they do in Europe with some of the small seeded pines--crush them and
make a mass, squeeze the cream out from the nuts, dry it a little, and
that makes very fine rich cream; then the residue is given to the
chickens and pigs. There are in all about thirty pine trees now that are
used for market purposes where they fruit, and we will undoubtedly
increase that number. I do not doubt that fifty species of pine trees
will be planted for their fruit by two generations from now when we feel
the need more.

PRESIDENT REED: We will be glad to have questions from any one.
I think we get more from the discussions than we do from the papers.

VOICE: In regard to the hickory nut, the shagbark, back in
northeastern Ohio, four years ago we had quite serious trouble with
our hickories there along in the month of June, about the time we get
the common June bug, there was a large bug that looked like the June bug
that seemed to work at night mostly. We did not see them active in the
day time, but they ate the foliage entirely off the lower branches and
those limbs from which they ate the foliage died. In some cases, the
tree died. I would like to know if anyone knows anything about those.
That was new to me. I have had opportunity to answer all sorts of
questions about that. I have been asked I guess by a thousand different
people about that insect, and I have not been able to learn anything
about it.

MR. SIMONDS: I can not tell you.

SAME VOICE: One man told me when he knew I was coming here,
"For goodness sakes find out something about that if you can."

DR. MORRIS: It probably is the June bug, and turkeys and ducks
would solve the problem.

MR. C. A. REED: The only suggestion I would make is that in
Ohio you have one of the best posted authorities on nut insects there is
in the country. That is Prof. H. A. Gossard, at Wooster. If he can not
tell you about it, no one can.

MR. J. F. JONES: I think it is no doubt it is the ordinary May
beetle that is doing the mischief.

PRESIDENT REED: I might say we had quite a deluge of beetles
along that line in the nursery a year ago this last June, the first time
we have ever been bothered with them. They finally became so thick we
had to go through and shake the trees and shake them off. They looked
something like the May beetle, only smaller, hard shelled, and seemed to
come by the millions; but they only lasted a few days, and it was all
over, and we have never seen them since.

MR. C. A. REED: There is one more question I would like to ask
Mr. Simonds, and that is in regard to the proper distance for spacing
nut trees along avenues and in parks.

MR. SIMONDS: I think that in both of those situations it is
well to give the trees a natural appearance by grouping, and sometimes
they can be far apart, and sometimes I think there might be a group of
two or three close together, so that they would grow in one group. That
will give a more natural arrangement in parks, and we have room enough
along the sides of most of our highways to have the same effect there.
The policy to be pursued with regard to spacing nut trees along highways
would be the same that we would follow in planting any other trees, and
one of the most attractive streets I know is now in the city of Grand
Rapids; it used to be in the country when I lived there years ago; but
along the sides of that street there are native trees, mostly burr oaks,
and they have grown just as nature planted them. There will be a group
of two or three, then a space, may be a single tree, then there may be a
group of five or six; and that natural arrangement is really beautiful,
to me far more beautiful than a straight row of trees, uniform spaced.
On that same street sixty or seventy years ago my uncle planted where
there were no trees--it is a continuation of this street--rows of sugar
maples, and they grew and finally made splendid trees, and a great storm
came along and broke down two or three, and that was a source of great
regret to my uncle; but his son thinks, perhaps, it was a good thing,
because it opened a beautiful view out into the country. Now by grouping
trees we can save beautiful views. If we plant uniformly, we get
monotony. With this belt of burr oaks spaced as I have described, you
have variety on your sky line. Some trees are a little farther up than
others and catch the sunlight, and we get shade and light. That is the
way I should plant nut trees. If I were planting black walnuts or
butternuts I would group them, but see that the tree has in some
directions space enough to develop as far as it wishes.

MR. C. A. REED: Mr. Simonds is about to go. That is the reason
I precipitated this question at this point. It was asked with reference
to the law which these gentlemen, sitting at my right here, were
responsible in putting through in the legislature of this
State--provision for planting food trees along the highways; and it may
be before Mr. Simonds goes, they have something further to ask.

PRESIDENT REED: These questions are very important to draw out
information. Is there anything else you wish to ask before we leave this
topic? If not, we will call on C. A. Reed to present his paper next. It
was carried over from last night, I believe.

NUT CULTURE IN MICHIGAN

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

There is evidence on all sides that the people of Michigan are deeply
interested in nut culture. Some have invested in pecan lands in the Far
South; no doubt some own Persian (English) walnut, almond or filbert
orchards on the Pacific Coast; and others are at the point of planting
nut trees in Michigan. Everybody would go nutting in fall if he could.
Michigan leads all other northern states in what its institutions and
some of its people have done toward developing the nut industry.

Some thirty years ago the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad
Company showed its interest in nut production, when it planted many
miles of chestnut trees along its tracks running north from Adrian.
Between 1888 and 1892 there were planted on the grounds of the
sub-experiment station at South Haven, a number of pecan trees of Iowa
and Missouri seed, Japanese walnuts, a number of filbert plants and a
collection of almond varieties. At about the same time, Prof L. H.
Bailey set out half dozen pecans and Japanese walnut trees on the campus
of the Michigan Agricultural College. Later, Professor L. R. Taft added
several seedling Persian (English) walnut trees to the group.

In traveling over the southern part of Michigan, one cannot go far
without seeing signs of interest in nut trees. Everywhere the black
walnut has been spared or planted. In certain sections it is to be found
about practically every farm house or at least near enough by to furnish
the winter supply of the family nuts. The chestnut is less common in any
part of the state than is the black walnut, not appearing to any
considerable extent except in the lower southeastern corner. It has not
fared well in the state either as a native or planted tree. The Persian
or so-called English walnut has attracted considerable attention from
time to time, and under especially favorable surroundings one
occasionally finds thrifty specimen trees. The pecan, the Japanese
walnut, European hazel or more popularly called the "filbert" have all
been given limited trials at various times. Even the almond has had a
day in Michigan. Quite possibly the pistache has been through the same
experience; but if so, the fact is not generally known. That species is
from arid Asia and wholly unlikely to succeed in the latitude of
Michigan although a young tree of a Chinese species ornamental because
of its fine feathery foliage, green in summer but which takes on a
brilliant hue in fall is, or was the last we know, doing well on the
private grounds of Dr. Robert T. Morris, near Stamford, Conn.

Among the kinds of nut trees from which we can select varieties for
planting in Michigan, there are eleven or more distinct species. With
such a range as this, one might ask, why not go into nut growing in
Michigan on the same scale as in the growing of apples and peaches.
There are probably better reasons why this is not being done, but two
very good ones are that there are not enough available trees of good
varieties to plant more than a single orchard of respectable size in the
state; and the other; it would not pay to put good Michigan land to nut
trees of such varieties as are now available even though they could be
had.

If nut trees can't be had and wouldn't pay if they could then why
publish an article on "Nuts for Michigan Planting," is probably what
will run through the minds of most readers of these lines. It is
certainly a logical question, but there are at least ten reasons why nut
trees should be planted in Michigan.

1. The forests of Michigan have reached the point of depletion such that
for the sake of future generations, trees of some kind other than fruit
must be planted.

2. While planting, we may as well select those capable of performing
more than a single service; in other words, trees of maximum possible
use. Oaks, poplars, ashes, pines, elms, etc., all have their places, but
not one in the group can produce anything of food value to humankind.

3. Nut trees of most kinds, rightly used, are valuable for timber
purposes and are very effective in the landscape.

4. Members of the walnut family including the hickories are especially
appropriate along the highways and city streets. They are sturdy,
long-lived and not easily damaged by storms or neighbor's boys.

5. Nuts are among the very best of the meat substitutes. They contain
much of the same food elements as do meats, although in different
proportions. Some contain starch and to that extent can be used as are
the cereals and Irish potatoes. Nuts are the only vegetable product
grown in Michigan, which in raw condition afford a complete and fairly
well balanced food for human beings. Every pound of nut food that can be
raised from a tree along the street or in the fence corner on the farm
is clear gain, and that much added to our national food supply.

6. Nuts are rapidly assuming importance as factors in the lists of
American foods.

7. Many species of nut trees are adapted to some parts of Michigan. By
planting the best that are now available, and by constantly being on the
lookout for better sorts, superior varieties will be certain to develop
in a short while, the same as has been the case with all older orchard
fruits and farm crops.

8. Whoever intelligently plants nut trees performs a distinct public
service. He will receive the gratitude of more than the present
generation.

9. Among all kinds of trees, none are more appropriate for memorial
purposes to the men who did not come back from France, than is the black
walnut. That species itself took a valiant part in warfare. It furnished
material for gunstocks the same as in previous wars, but in the World
War it rendered what was considered by eminent authority, a greater
service in supplying propellors for aeroplanes. The shells of the nuts
contributed their part toward the making of carbon for gas masks, and no
one knows the extent to which walnut kernels made up the delicacies sent
from home to the boys in the trenches. With such a service record as
this, the black walnut is entitled to a memorial of its own. Its value
as a timber tree, as an ornamental, and as a food producer, together
with its great range of adaptability from North to South and East to
West, should justly entitle it to recognition as a National tree.

10. Michigan has a law providing for the planting of nut trees along its
highways. Thus, the state has officially put its approval on the idea
and has become a leader in the encouragement of this great kind of
economy and thrift. It has taken a step toward conservation in a
direction which is highly developed in certain parts of Europe. The
product is sold to the highest bidder and the income used in the upkeep
of the road system. In that manner the roadways of those sections take
care of themselves. In this country millions of dollars of state and
federal moneys are being used this year, (ending June 30, 1921), in the
construction and upkeep of public roads.

Desirable as it would be to accomplish these ends, it could not all be
done at once. Even though there were an abundance of available trees of
tried kinds, it would take a long time to plant them and to care for
them until they might become of profitable bearing age, also public
opinion would need to be remolded in order to insure their care and
protection. Still it can and will be done. The movement is already on;
the Michigan law began to operate soon after being passed, and the
Division of Forestry at the Agricultural College is raising the trees
for planting. Public opinion regarding the care of the trees and their
product will take care of itself when the value of the trees and their
products becomes apparent. Both in California and in Oregon not only nut
but fruit orchards and vineyards, grow beside the roadways with no
protection other than that of public opinion; and what has been done in
one part of the country can be done in others as well.

The eleven species referred to as being available for Michigan use are
as follows: The almond, beechnut, butternut, chestnut, filbert, (hazel),
pecan, shagbark hickory, shellbark hickory, black walnut, Japanese
walnut, and the Persian or so-called English walnut.

Taking these up in order we will consider first the

ALMOND

Except as an ornamental, the almond does not offer a great deal for use
in Michigan. It is sometimes said to be as hardy as the peach, but only
as this refers to the tree and not to the fruit, is it true. Certain
hardshell almonds edible, yet so inferior to the improved varieties as
to have practically no market value, do sometimes succeed in lower
Michigan but their value is limited to their beauty when in bloom and to
the production of a low grade product. In form and general appearance
these almonds are much like peach pits. Very often they contain much of
the same bitter taste of Prussic acid common to the kernel of the
ordinary peach. They are interesting to observe while growing especially
as they begin to ripen. The covering outside the seed is thin and
leathery and while ripening, splits and peels outward in curious
fashion.

Perhaps the only recognized variety of almond of this class which is
known to have fruited in the East is the Ridenhower from southern
Illinois. Trees can be had from some of the nurserymen.

THE BEECH

One of Michigan's noblest, hardiest, and most often abused trees is the
American beech. It is common from north to south. No tree is more
handsome and none, unless possibly it be the white birch, is so often
defaced. Dr. Robt. T. Morris, of New York City, reminds us that
according to the scriptures, man, genus _Homo_, is a finished product
made by and in the image of the Creator. A safe assumption is that the
scriptural reference is not to the creature whose initials appear on the
trunk of a beech or whose knife has removed bark from white birch. His
genus is not _Homo_, and he is not scripturally recorded.

The beech is not directly important as a nut bearing tree, but
indirectly it is as the nuts are rarely harvested. Indirectly it is of
great value. No food is better for turkeys and hogs than are beechnuts.
A bushel of beechnuts that can be used in this way replace at least a
bushel of corn. The difference in cost of production should make
beechnuts worth several times as much as corn.

In Europe a valuable oil used as a drug and for salads is expressed from
beechnuts. Possibly individual trees could be found somewhere in
Michigan which produce nuts large enough, good enough, and in quantity
enough to justify their recognition and propagation as named varieties.

No matter whether distinct varieties appear or not, the beech is well
worthy of planting in many places about both the farm and the city lot.

BUTTERNUT

A member of the walnut family known also as "long walnut" and as "white
walnut" is the true butternut. It has a smaller range of adaptability
than does the black walnut but is found considerably farther north. On
the Atlantic coast, its native range extends into Nova Scotia. In parts
of New York State and New England, it is one of the most common species.
It is well known in Michigan where, to many people it is the favorite of
all nuts. The tree is less durable and long-lived than is the black
walnut. It is less well suited for use in the landscape and its timber
value is probably the least of any native walnut.

Within very recent years one or two promising varieties have been
introduced by the nurserymen. The first and only one now available is
the Aiken from New Hampshire. The nut cracks well and the kernels are of
pleasant flavor, but as a variety it has not been tested long enough to
determine its adaptability to conditions in other states nor the extent
to which budded trees will be productive.

CHESTNUT

Perhaps the greatest, of all tree tragedies is represented by the
chestnut. Once a dominant species in many parts of the East, it is now
merely a wreck of its former self. In whole states along the Atlantic
Seaboard, it has been wiped out by a fungus disease introduced from
Japan some 25 years ago. Pennsylvania allows no chestnut trees to be
shipped outside its limits for fear of further spreading this disease.
So far as known chestnut trees from west of the Wabash River are free
from infection. From Illinois, there have recently been introduced
several varieties of chestnut supposedly of pure American parentage
which are quite the equal in size of the European sorts but which have
the sweet flavor of true American strains. In protected places in the
southern part of the Lower Peninsula these chestnuts should be well
worthy of trial. They are, indeed, splendid chestnuts. The principal
varieties are the Rochester, Progress, Fuller and Boone. The last is not
related to the others; but is the result of an artificial cross between
the American sweet chestnut and the Japan Giant.

HICKORY

Next to, or perhaps equal to the black walnut, the hickories are among
the best known of Michigan's nut trees. Belonging to the same family as
do the walnuts, they require much the same soil for their best
development. They are slower of growth and even harder to bud and graft
or to successfully transplant. Nevertheless, some of hickories bear
splendid nuts in liberal quantities. Quite a number of good varieties
have been named and a few propagated. They are mainly of the shagbark
species although some are shellbarks, some pignuts, and a few hybrids.
The true shellbark is not found in Michigan and would probably not
succeed there as well as do others. In character of growth, the
shellbark is much like the shagbark but the nuts are much larger, and
the shells extremely thick. Among the good shagbarks there are the
Swaim, Weiker, Kentucky, Manahan, Taylor and Vest.

True hickories ordinarily do not attain important habits of bearing
until from 15 to 25 years of age.

PECAN

The pecan is easily the favorite and most important nut of American
origin. Contrary to current ideas, it is not an introduced species nor
are the best pecans grown in California. The pecan has become one of the
leading nuts of this country by rapid but natural processes. In the
forests, it is indigenous as far north as the southern part of Indiana,
and in western Illinois it is found at the latitude of Chicago. Seedling
trees at South Haven and on the campus of Michigan Agricultural College
have borne occasional crops but the climate of Michigan is too severe
for pecans to bear regularly. The trees of northern origin should do
well enough over much of lower Michigan to be worthy of planting. Good
varieties are the Major, Greenriver, Niblack, Indiana, Busseron and
Posey.

BLACK WALNUT

Already the black walnut had been referred to in this article. In its
further behalf may be said that like the pecan it is one of America's
most rapid growing valuable trees. It does not grow with the speed of a
poplar, a willow, or a linden. Neither does any other tree of value or
longevity. Two 6-year-old trees of the eastern black walnut grown in the
Wiliamette Valley of Western Oregon, bore approximately a peck of nuts
apiece, in 1919, when they were photographed by the writer. In good soil
and under favorable conditions of growth, it will be seen that the black
walnut is not always slow in developing but that it is sometimes a rapid
grower.

Three varieties of black walnut are now available from the nurserymen.
They are the Thomas from Pennsylvania, the Ohio from some 20 miles south
of Toledo, and the Stabler from Howard County, Maryland 15 or 20 miles
outside the District of Columbia. All are prolific, precocious and of
superior cracking quality. The Thomas was discovered and first
propagated some 30 years ago. The young grafted trees show a tendency to
begin bearing in the nursery rows.

At the present time, the black walnut is regarded as being of greater
promise for planting in the northern states than is any other species
either native or introduced.

THE JAPANESE WALNUT

To a considerable extent this species has been confused with the Persian
walnut, although the two are quite unlike. This is a dwarfish species
with dull green rough leaflets often as many as 15 or 17 per leaf, which
often bears nuts in clusters of a dozen or more. While green the outer
hulls of the nuts are rough, and somewhat sticky.

The Persian walnut is a standard-sized upright growing tree with bright
green leaflets, usually 5 to 7 per leaf, and smooth, round nut hulls
which split open and shed the nuts automatically.

The Japanese walnuts hybridize freely with other species of walnuts and
produce nuts of all types; not infrequently crosses of this kind
resemble butternuts so closely as to be practically indistinguishable
from them.

True Japanese walnuts have a range in form of two distinct types. The
better known is of guinea egg shape; the other, often known as the
heartnut, is of distinct heart shape. Neither is large; the former is of
about the size of a guinea egg or smaller; the latter is still smaller.
Both are like the black walnut in being encased in a rough outer husk,
which upon maturing shrivels and adheres to the surface of the nut. The
shells are thinner than are those of the black walnut, but thicker than
are those of the Persian walnut. When well matured, the shell of the
heartnut tends to open slightly at the apex, after which it can be
readily split in half with a knife blade. The flavor of the kernel is
much like that of the American butternut.

The Japanese walnut is ordinarily hardy wherever the black succeeds. It
is by no means uncommon in Michigan where it is especially appropriate
for family planting. For the present, seedling trees will have to be
relied upon almost wholly, as very few varieties have been propagated.
So far as the writer is informed, the only named variety available from
a northern nursery is the Lancaster introduced by J. F. Jones, a
nurseryman at Lancaster, Pa.

PERSIAN WALNUT

Perhaps no species of nut tree has attracted as great attention in
Michigan as has the Persian walnut. Under some conditions it does well
for a time in the eastern or northeastern states, but on the whole its
performance is distinctly erratic. Commercially speaking, it is of
importance in this country only on the Pacific coast. Trees on the
campus at Michigan Agricultural College and at many private places in
the central part of the state, have come to little. Usually they grow
well in summer only to freeze back nearly as much in winter. In Saranac
County, eastern Michigan, close to Lake Huron there are a few young
orchards that are in good condition, but a half mile back from the lake
the results are discouraging. The same is true next to Lake Michigan
from Grand Rapids south to the Indiana line.

The only recommendations that can be made relative to planting the
Persian walnut in Michigan are, that it be planted very cautiously in
any part of the state and except under very favored circumstances it be
not at all in the middle of the state.

Do not undertake to grow the trees by planting the nuts or by buying
seedlings. The most desirable trees are those of hardy varieties, budded
on the black walnut as a stock a foot or more above ground.

THE FILBERT

The filbert has been one of our tantalizing species of nut trees. In
England, trees grow to ages of from one to two hundred years, bearing