say that, as President of the National Nut Growers Association, he is
well acquainted with these things. I commend him to you and promise that
whatever he may have to say to you is worthy of your very careful
consideration. I have the honor to belong to the association of which he
is the president, and know it is seldom we have an opportunity to hear
men like him.
COL. VAN DUZEE: Gentlemen, I am going to side step this argument for I
do not think it worth while taking up the time. We are here for other
purposes. Personal experiences are not the general rule because each
one's experience differs from that of others. We might all tell our
personal experiences and after we were all through we would not have
accomplished anything. I want to take you back to the point from which
we started this, in order to know what we are talking about. To
illustrate what I want to say to you, we can take the root pasture of a
tree and analyze it in every possible way so as to bring to bear upon it
the best judgment we have from all sources. The tree grown upon a
hillside has a root pasture which is entirely different in many ways
from the root pasture in the river bottoms. If we have a tree growing on
a hillside in a soil that easily transmits moisture and it gives that
tree constantly a stream of pure water going through its root system,
and there happens to be enough fertility in that vicinity, that moisture
is impregnated with plant food, and the tree will get all it wants. You
can't speak in the same breath of the tree growing in the river bottoms
whose entire root pasture is entirely different. The root pasture may
become contaminated by various things which may cause, so to speak,
ptomaine poison. Therefore I say that every locality, every soil, every
climatic condition, every variety of tree must be taken as individual.
What would be good for an apple orchard in Virginia might be fatal to an
apple orchard immediately south of Lake Brie in Ohio. The use of
commercial fertilizer that would be good in one locality would be bad in
another. Therefore I disapprove of this kind of a discussion, because we
are not speaking to a definite point. I want to bring your minds to this
point, that every individual tree and its locality, and the man that is
responsible for its welfare, must be analyzed before you can speak
intelligently about what must be done.
I am going to tell you the same story I told the societies at Pharoa,
Alabama. They wanted me to talk on this subject and I said, "You remind
me of a backwoods character I have come in contact with in the woods of
Florida who is ill and doesn't know what is the matter with him. He
knows he needs medicine and he goes down to the general store and buys a
bottle of patent medicine recommended by the groceryman and he takes it
and maybe it helps him and maybe it don't, but if he don't get better he
goes and gets advice from some other man like the grocer." I said, "That
is the way you are demonstrating fertilizer." The first thing I would
advise would be this: to analyze the individual pasture of the
individual tree and take everything that enters into the history of that
tree and everything that bears upon it. All the accumulated wisdom of
others won't help us very much. We have to use common horse sense. We
can't talk about these things generally. In poor soil and under bad
conditions the pecan tree will do nothing. There are trees I know
twenty-six or twenty-seven years old that are not as large as my wrist,
that have never borne a nut and never will. I can also show you trees in
that immediate vicinity, planted at the same time from the same nuts
with favorable conditions, that are seventy or eighty feet high and
bearing good crops of nuts. Those nuts came out of the same bag the same
day, and were planted by the same man in the same locality, and that
proves, as I have said before, that you cannot discuss things of this
kind in general terms and it is a waste of the time of the association
to do so. I would be glad to answer definite questions as to definite
points.
THE PRESIDENT. The next will be a talk by Dr. R. T. Morris of New York.
DR. MORRIS: Mr. Chairman, and Members of the Association: My subject
relates to personal experiences with hybridization work. This is work
which is to be done more and more by various members of our association,
and we are thus to create new species of trees. Nature's whole endeavor
is to preserve the mean type among races of organisms. There are mutants
among all trees, among the hickories and walnuts, as well as among the
peaches and pears. In fact all species undergo mutation. We select the
most desirable mutants and we try to fix a given type by grafting and
propagating. Seedlings will go back toward the mean type. The mean type
hickory, walnut or chestnut is the type that nature wishes to preserve,
but these are not best for man's purposes. What is best in nature's plan
is not always best in man's plan. We have got to dynamite nature. We
have got to put a charge of dynamite under nature's seat and blow her
up, in order to get what we want for our own purposes. How do we do it?
How do we break up the mean type of a variety or species? By crossing
the flowers and bringing together the parents we wish to unite in the
hope of growing new forms, among which will be some that are
particularly desirable for our purposes.
Now in doing this work, I have had to get by experience a number of
points which will be of value to members of this association. First, in
regard to collecting pollen. Sometimes species, which we wish to cross,
flower at widely different times. They bloom perhaps two or three or
four or even six weeks apart, and it is a question how long we can keep
the pollen viable. What can we do about it? There are two good ways.
First, get your branches of male flowers before they are open, put them
in cold storage, or in an ice house, or in a dark room, and keep them
anywhere from one to six weeks dormant. When you want to use them, and
your trees of the pistillate flowers are ready, take the branches of
staminate flowers out of the ice house and put them in jars of water in
a warm room in the sunshine. They will blossom and make good pollen
shortly. Another way is through correspondents living at a distance.
These correspondents will send you pollen from a species which blossoms
later further north or earlier further south, at the time which you wish
for your pistillate flowers. For instance, in crossing chinkapins with
oaks, the chinkapins will blossom about the 12th of June in Connecticut
but most of the oaks are through blossoming by the 12th of May. There we
have a month's difference. How can I use oak pollen upon my chinkapin
trees? I do this by sending away up to the northern limits of the growth
of the oak tree, up in Canada. The red oak tree blossoms there in June,
the same species that blossoms with me early in May. Pecan pollen that I
wish to use upon shagbarks and walnuts I get from Texas. Now how are we
to keep pollen when we have collected it, if we are not ready to use it
immediately? I have had pollen sent to me from a distance in tightly
corked bottles. It was probably ruined at the end of three or four days,
because it could not breathe. Every grain of pollen has to breathe just
as surely as a red squirrel in the top of a tree has to breathe. The
pollen grain is a living organism, and if it is sent in a closely corked
bottle it smothers and dies. You must have it sent in paper or wooden
boxes in order to have it in good condition when it arrives, and it must
be kept in a cool place, not too dry and not too damp. If it is kept in
a place that is too damp, various fungi appear, and begin to attack it
at once. If it is too dry, it loses its water content, and its
protoplasm does not make combination with that of the other flower. So
we must keep our pollen in a cool place, not too dry, not too warm and
not too moist, and where it can breathe. We may put it in cold storage
but not at a temperature below freezing. We may put it into the cold
storage which florists use, and keep it for a long while. Some pollen
will keep, viable for three weeks, under these conditions, possibly
longer. It is important to keep your pollen boxes open at the top. They
must be kept where the wind doesn't blow your pollen from one box to
another. I had not been impressed by that point until this year. I had
eight different kinds of pollen about the farm house, in different
rooms, in order to be sure to keep them far apart. One day on my arrival
from town ready for pollenating a number of trees, I found that a very
neat housekeeper had found it undesirable to keep such boxes scattered
about in so many places. She had put them all neatly together in a
closet on one shelf, and there was none of the pollen that I could use,
because the wind had mixed the kinds all up. I had eight kinds of pollen
across which one kind of wind had blown.
There is one practical point in cross pollenizing flowers that I have
recently learned. Pollen of one variety may not combine with the ovule
of another variety or species but may stimulate the ovule to go on and
develop all alone, without taking to itself the added pollen. That is a
very important point, and possibly a new point. I was deceived, and
reported that I had crosses of certain trees, and that such hybrids were
growing. I knew that the flowers of parent trees had been properly
protected from their own pollen. Now when these young trees are two
years of age, I find they are true to one parent type; so true that they
are evidently not hybrids. They have developed from the pistillate
parent only. In ordinary parthenogenesis the fruit grows without any
pollen influence at all. This forced parthenogenesis which I have
described seems to be a phenomenon with which botanists are unfamiliar.
Until I learn that it has been described and named by others I shall
call it Allergic Parthenogenesis (Allos, ergon). The pistillate flowers
accept absolutely no pollen, but go on and develop because of its
impulse given. In cross pollenizing flowers, I find one point of great
practical consequence. When covering the female flowers with paper bags
to protect them from their own pollen you give protection to a great
number of insects. The insects remain inside these bags and destroy the
leaves and flowers. They are protected there from their enemies,
predatory insects and the birds. When the bags are taken off, perhaps a
week later, for the purpose of adding pollen to pistillate flowers,
insects may have destroyed the leaves and even the flowers.
Consequently, I find it best to sprinkle the leaves with Persian insect
powder and to put some of it in the bags that are to cover the flowers.
Insects can't live in an atmosphere of this insect powder. They sneeze
themselves to death. I have taken the bags from leaves and flowers which
were so badly injured by insects you could distinguish them at a
considerable distance. Those are all the points that I jotted down for
this address today, but no doubt many other points will be brought out
in the subsequent discussion.
MR. MCCOY: I would like to inquire how far it is possible under a
microscopic examination to determine the species of the pollen.
DR. MORRIS: It is possible to determine the species but not the variety
so far as I know. It may be possible to determine a variety but I don't
know the extent to which that is possible, from microscopic examination
of the pollen. If we wish to know whether pollen is still good or not we
may in twenty-four or forty-eight hours cause it to "sprout," and in
that way know whether it is viable and good. We may save ourselves a
good deal of trouble by making this examination and determining whether
or not a given lot of pollen is viable before putting it on the flowers.
We can cause it to sprout in a sugar solution.
THE SECRETARY: What is the strength of the sugar solution?
DR. MORRIS: That is technical work and must be done by a plant
physiologist. He will do it for us at the State Agricultural College and
telegraph his report.
MR. DORR: Is this work you have outlined of sufficient definiteness to
get results? That is the important thing. We farmers sometimes discover
a plan accidentally that will outclass anything we can get in an
agricultural college.
DR. MORRIS: That is very important. We are to produce nuts that are
better, and also in greater quantities. The question if hybridizing work
is valuable has been already answered in the case of roses and soft
fruits. Our best types are largely the ones which have been secured by
hybridization and the same will be true of nuts. The subject has not
been so largely taken up as yet with nuts. Very few of us are doing with
nuts what has been done with other fruits.
THE PRESIDENT: The chair wishes to say that the members of this
association have a very great and rare opportunity to secure information
on this subject. Dr. Morris has made a very careful study of it.
DR. MORRIS: The more study I make, the less I seem to know. Consequently
I shall be very modest in my replies.
MR. DORR: I have been working with different things and find so many
things I can't get at the truth. In the last year I have made
experiments in breeding cattle to get colors, and I was agreeably
surprised with my own success. I want to know if you can get similar
results. I can observe the results so readily that I know exactly how I
get them.
DR. MORRIS: As a general statement the same thing you get from working
with animals we may expect to get in working with plants. The protoplasm
of plants is now known to act like that of animals, but not quite so
quickly or freely in response to cultural methods. We can breed to size
and breed to quality and character of fruit, and we find we may do with
plants just about what we do with animals, only not quite so quickly,
because animal protoplasm responds more readily.
MR. W. C. REED: I would like to ask if in a cross between the Persian
walnut and the shagbark hickory there is a cross pollenization, or is it
an increased vitality given by the pollen? Is there really a cross
there?
DR. MORRIS: I made one cross between the Persian walnut and the shagbark
hickory that was evidently a good hybrid. It showed character of both
parents, but I lost that entire lot. I wasn't careful enough in
protecting them. I have another lot of crosses between these two flowers
in which the type often is so definitely shagbark hickory that I doubt
if there is any walnut there at all. Under certain conditions we may get
hybrids, yet miss it at another time, even when working with the same
parents. Somebody has probably made a better study of this point and
recorded better ideas. I think we may safely say that we may expect an
actual cross between some walnuts and hickories.
MR. MCCOY: Would it be possible to cross the English walnut and the
black walnut and produce a nut of superior quality?
DR. MORRIS: Yes, it is possible to cross them, but you do not often get
a nut of superior quality. The tendency seems to be to have a nut of
thick shell and of not high quality, but if you make a thousand of those
crosses, out of the thousand you may get a few of just what you want.
PROFESSOR CLOSE: I want to ask if you are always careful to apply the
pollen when it is well ripened?
DR. MORRIS: Yes, I have always been careful to apply it at just the time
when it was well ripened, and that is of great importance in its bearing
upon Mr. Reed's question. If I have pollen which is quite ripe I may
perhaps catch it upon an ovule, but if it is not ripe I won't got the
cross. I may add it a little too early or too late when the pistillate
flower is unprepared and I won't get a cross. If I get my pollen just at
the right time upon the pistillate flowers I may have a good cross,
between varieties which do not cross readily.
PROFESSOR CLOSE: In my experience in breeding apples, formerly I always
waited until the pollen was ripe, and that meant I had to cover the
blossoms with bags and depend on the weather for conditions favorable to
pollenation. But four or five years ago I began pollenating much earlier
and I have had good results.
DR. MORRIS: That is a very important point.
PROFESSOR CLOSE: By doing that I know it is pollenated. I have been
failing so many years I felt it was a loss of all the first part of the
work.
DR. MORRIS: It is a great convenience to be able to pollenate at the
same moment when you emasculate.
A MEMBER: I would like to have you kindly explain to what extent cross
pollenation can be made practical to the ordinary grower.
DR. MORRIS: Let's say that in case of the butternut we wish to
experiment with removal of the thick shell, and also to obtain less of
that strong oily flavor; we wish to get rid of those two things. In
order to do that I would first think of the Japanese walnut, _juglans
cordiformis_, which has a much thinner shell and is less oily and more
bland. Crosses between this Japanese walnut and the butternut we may
fairly expect will sometimes give us a large, thin shelled butternut of
good character. The next question is, who is going to do it? The men
about my place are pretty busy, and this is rather delicate work. It is
going to be a most inspiring field for the young folks and the ladies,
because it is nice, pretty, ladylike work, and beside that its returns
may be large. If your little daughter, ten years of age, knows that she
may get $2,000 for a single cross that she has made, it is stimulating,
because it is not every child ten years of age who can put $2,000 in the
bank, as personal earnings of increment.
MR. MOSELY: I would like to ask just what results you expect from the
cross pollenization of these nuts, and just how far they will differ
from the parent type?
DR. MORRIS: You are bound to have continuance of one parent type, but in
crossing with pollen from hybrids you may carry desirable
characteristics through a series of generations and breed for what is
wanted, possibly to the sixth generation or even further with some
species.
MR. MOSELY: Then the type is not fixed until pollenization?
DR. MORRIS: By selecting the one showing the dominant characteristics
you wish to preserve, you could breed through several generations and
have an ideal type eventually.
MR. DOAN: I would like to ask how far the buds are developed in cold
storage before the pollen can be used?
DR. MORRIS: For instance, take the hazel when its catkins are just
beginning to elongate. It may be put in the ice house and kept there,
for two or three weeks dormant. When we wish to develop those flowers we
put the branches in a jar of water in a warm room and in about three
days the plants are shedding pollen. I got some hazel catkins this
spring that were elongating. It was the latter part of February when we
had one or two warm days and I believed my pistillate hazels were about
ready for pollen. I got those branches from Rochester. We had unexpected
cold weather and storms and my pistillate hazels did not bloom until
more than two weeks later. I kept these undeveloped catkins that I had
received in a cold dark place. When I wanted to use them I put them in a
jar of water and in less than three days they were shedding pollen
freely, at a time when my pistillate flowers were ready for pollen.
MR. MOSELY: I would like to know the object in crossing the oak on the
chinkapin.
DR. MORRIS: My idea is to get a chinkapin tree twice as large as an oak,
perhaps. I shall hope to have a chinkapin tree as sturdy as the red oak,
with nuts larger than acorns and of as good quality as the chinkapin
nut. Of course that extravagant possibility only appeals to one with a
speculative nature.
THE PRESIDENT: Pursuant to the authority conferred on the President this
morning, the following committees are announced:
On Nomination--Robert T. Morris, Chairman: C. P. Close, J. L. Doan, R.
T. Olcott, C. A. Reed.
Exhibits--Prof. C. P. Close, Chairman; J. P. Wilkinson, E. A. Riehl,
Colonel Sober, W. C Reed.
Resolutions--W. O. Potter, Chairman; H. R. Weber, J. Russell Smith.
The chair also wishes to place an additional member on the membership
committee, in the place of Mr. Corsan, who has not been able to attend
the last two meetings, and will appoint Leon D. Batchellor of Utah.
Committee on Revision of Constitution and Rules--Prof. C. P. Close, Dr.
W. C. Deming.
I will also add to the committee on nomenclature C. A. Reed and R. L.
McCoy.
THE PRESIDENT: We have a few minutes before time for adjournment and Mr.
Evans, a dynamite man, will speak to us.
MR. EVANS: Mr. Chairman: The question arises as to what kind of dynamite
to use in the different soils. Most pecan land contains clay and can
best be worked by dynamite. Don't buy ordinary dynamite, because it is
too high an explosive. For several reasons it is not the kind of an
explosive you wish. In some places dynamite can hardly be put on the
market as many people are afraid of it and so the word dynamite has been
eliminated, and we now have what we call Red Cross Farm Powder. It will
work in any part of the country, it is not a high explosive and the
price is lower as the hardware dealers have it direct from the Dupont
companies. By using this Red Cross Farm Powder, less labor is required
and it doesn't cost very much. For labor and all it will cost you about
five cents per hole, and that includes the dynamite caps, fuse and
labor.
PROFESSOR SMITH: How much do you use?
MR. EVANS: That depends on the soil and also on the depth to which you
want to shoot the hole. Nurserymen have different opinions on that
subject, but in the southern field where I have been working they
usually go from two and a half to three feet deep. They use one-half
stick 20 per cent dynamite, or one quarter of a pound as it weighs two
sticks to the pound. That should make a hole two and a half or three
feet deep. Fuse is cheap and you should use plenty of it. A man has to
be governed always by the kind of soil he is dealing with.
MR. POMEROY: In shooting an old apple orchard how deep would you go?
MR. EVANS: Where I have been working from three and a half to four feet,
but as I said before it will depend largely on the soil.
MR. POMEROY: How far from the body of the tree?
MR. EVANS: I have never made a study of that.
MR. POTTER: In limestone soil, for instance, built up with clay, how
near the trees would you use the dynamite if you want to loosen up the
soil?
MR. EVANS: What kind of trees?
MR. POTTER: Pecan.
MR. EVANS: About six feet. I think that is close enough.
MR. POTTER: Would you make more than one hole around the tree?
MR. EVANS: Use your own judgment about that.
MR. POTTER: How far out will it loosen or break up the ground?
MR. EVANS: Probably six feet. You can distinguish on the top of the
ground where it takes place.
MR. POTTER: How deep will it be?
MR. EVANS: About a foot deeper than the charge is placed.
THE SECRETARY: With me the most important thing in using dynamite is the
question of headache. I used the 20 per cent at first and it had no
effect. I had heard of its causing headaches and knew some people
couldn't use it but I thought I was immune. Then I began to use 70 or 80
per cent and I got knocked out for twenty-four hours. The more I used it
the more susceptible I became. When I went back to handling the lower
percentages I got the same results, was completely knocked out and had
to go to bed. Sometimes the effect would come on a long time after I
used the dynamite, perhaps hours afterwards, and the headache would
increase, until I was intensely nauseated and had to give up entirely.
Is there anything to prevent that? Is it caused by the fumes after the
explosion?
MR. EVANS: Some say it is from handling the dynamite, others say it is
the fumes after the explosion. Red Cross has ammonia in it and that
ought to help some. Dynamite contains nitro glycerine and if you handle
it bare handed it gets in the pores of the skin and causes rapid heart
action. In dynamiting holes for tree planting you will get the fumes and
you will get a headache. If a man could work with gloves on he could
avoid this to a very great extent. You can't do it easily but if you can
do it without taking off the gloves I don't think it would bother you
much. I neglected to state that dynamite by itself is not dangerous
because it will withstand shock or fire or anything like that. The
danger is in the cap. It contains the most powerful explosive known. If
you handle them carefully, there is absolutely no danger. This year we
are slipping little copper disks into the caps with a pin hole for the
fire to strike through.
MR. HARGIS: I have difficulty in making the shots. Should you put your
cap at the bottom or the top of the stick?