hasn't been given to the hazels. Here we apparently have a nut which is
easy to transplant, which is perfectly hardy, which comes into bearing
early, which bears a valuable nut--so valuable that when I went into a
confectionery store in New York, I saw trays of nut meats lying side by
side, and pecan meats were priced at $1.00 a pound and filbert meats
were $1.25. I understand the only obstacle to the growth of the filbert,
which might well fill the early waiting years of the nut grower, is the
hazel blight. I tried to get information on the hazel blight from Doctor
Waite of the United States Department of Agriculture, and also from Mr.
Kerr of Denton, Maryland, who, I know, has grown hazels for a long time,
and done it very successfully; but I have not succeeded in getting any
accurate information on the blight, and as I understand it, no accurate
experiments have been carried out in the treatment of the blight, or in
its prevention. It seems as if the blight, being an external fungous
disease, ought to be one amenable to treatment by sprays. I am not aware
of any experiments which have been made with that object.
President Morris: Henry Hicks of Westboro has given as much attention as
anybody to this matter. He made a great effort to introduce the European
hazels for years. They all went down with the blight. Specimens of the
blight you can get without difficulty.
Doctor Deming: Did he practice spraying experiments carefully?
President Morris: He told me he had tried all. What have the Meehans
done?
Mr. Wilcox: They have never had any trouble with the blight.
President Morris: How long do they keep them in the nurseries?
Mr. Wilcox: We keep them to six or eight feet.
President Morris: Do you have the common hazel abundant?
Mr. Wilcox: Yes, along the water courses.
President Morris: This blight is more apt to attack the exotics, and
over where Mr. Kerr lives there are no native hazels. He happens to be
on an island. He started Europeans where we have no American hazels, so
that accounts for his immunity.
Mr. Reed: His trees are practically all dead now. He has given up.
President Morris: That has been the history everywhere. That is the last
instance I have been able to find of successful raising of hazels. One
line, it seems to me, offers promise--that is the making of hybrids. I
am making hybrids between the American hazel and various European and
Asiatic.
Mr. Rush: I have had some experience with the hazel. I have exchanged
with Mr. Roody of Washington. He has sent the Barcelona and Du Chilly,
and they are growing very hardy without the least indication of blight.
There are two kinds of American hazels. I have them growing as large in
the bush as twenty to twenty-five feet. And then we have a small bush.
The small type is worthy of propagation. The Barcelona and Du Chilly are
thickly set with catkins this fall, and by all indications there will be
a very nice crop next summer.
President Morris: The rule is they begin to blight about the fifth year.
About the eighth they are gone.
Doctor Deming: Isn't that a most promising field for experiment, in
producing blight-free varieties, and also in spraying?
President Morris: As I understand it, this fungus lives in the cambium
layer of the bark, very much as _Diaporthe parasitica_ does, and at such
a depth that spraying is not much advantage. The fungus does not attack
the native hazel, except when it has been injured.
Professor Craig: We haven't heard from Mr. Barron.
Mr. Barron: I don't know that I have anything to say. I came here to
gather some information. I am chiefly interested in the possibility of
the use of nut trees for landscape effect.
President Morris: This belongs right with this paper, because the uses
of nut trees are not limited to the nuts for fruit purposes. Their
decorative value is one Mr. Barron brings in very properly, and it seems
to me we may replace thousands of practically useless trees in the parks
with wonderfully beautiful nut trees. What had you in mind particularly?
Had you thought it out?
Mr. Pomeroy: The nurserymen must have done something to induce people to
set out horse-chestnuts. There can't be anything more unsightly. It is
always shedding something in the way of filth. There are two or three
varieties of Japanese walnuts that are beautiful, at the time of year
when they are in blossom, with that long, red blossom. It seems as if
the nurserymen might do something to induce people to set out these.
President Morris: What could be finer than your English walnuts?
Mr. Barron: Mr. Hicks has given up hazel, but right close by Mr.
Havemeyer is starting right in again. He has had them there for two
years.
Doctor Deming: One of my correspondents wrote, asking me what varieties
of nut trees were most rapid growing and best for shade or screens. I
think that is a very good subject for investigation.
President Morris: We can discuss it right here.
Doctor Deming: I said the most rapid growing trees were the Japanese
walnuts, and perhaps the best for screens were the Japanese chestnuts. I
should hardly know what to say are the best for shade, because all of
the nut trees are so good.
Mr. Reed: It would depend very largely on the locality. Of course, there
are some of us here who are disciples of the pecan, and where you can
grow the pecan successfully, it is doubtful if there is a prettier shade
tree and one that makes less litter, or that grows faster. Some of the
hickories--the mocker-nut especially, _Hicoria alba_, makes a very
beautiful growth, and has a dense foliage of rich, dark green. For other
purposes, there is no prettier tree than the chestnut, aside from the
blight. It grows to greater size than most of the hickories and more
rapidly. The Japanese chestnuts I am not familiar with. The butternut is
not usually a compact enough grower to be a beautiful tree, but the
black walnuts and certain of our hickories, the rapid growing
hickories, are very fine, and this Rush chinquapin, I expect, would be
very fitting for hedge planting. It is a very compact grower, and grows
up about fifteen or twenty feet, making a very pretty tree. But every
one of these trees we are mentioning has its particular place in the
landscape. You can't use any one of them in all places.
President Morris: The objection to black walnut and butternut is the
early loss of leaves in autumn. I have heard others speak about it as an
objection. Among the rapid growing ones, there is no doubt the Japanese
walnuts are tremendously rapid growers, during the first few years. For
screen purposes, the chestnuts and chinquapin certainly would do
remarkably well. We have forgotten the beech altogether, simply because
we haven't been classifying it as a nut tree. But the nurserymen can put
out beech trees grafted from trees that bear fine, valuable nuts, and
give us the beech as a tree of double value.
Mr. Reed: Dr. Deming raised the question as to why the hazel nut was not
given more attention. It occurs to me that we have an analogy in the
pecan situation. The pecan is native up and down the Mississippi River
and out in Texas, and in that district you will find that a great deal
less attention has been paid to development of varieties of the pecan as
an orchard tree than farther east. All through Mississippi, Alabama,
Georgia, and Florida, we find new varieties by the scores. It seems to
be a case of distance lending enchantment.
Professor Lake: Going back, I wanted to ask you, Doctor Morris, if in
your work of reproducing the hazel, you had used the Pacific Coast hazel
for stock.
President Morris: Yes, the Pacific Coast hazel is really the same
species as ours, only it grows thirty or forty feet out there, and I
have seen it nearly thirty feet high up in the Hudson Bay country. In
some of the rich valleys in the far North, both on the Pacific and
Atlantic Coasts, the hazel becomes almost a tree. I have used it for
grafting stock, but I haven't used it for crossing as yet. I have a lot
of hazels ready for pollenizing next spring.
Professor Lake: It seems to me it would be a most excellent thing if
this Association could do something in the way of stimulating the
improvement of varieties of the native hazel. I can't help thinking that
bush is entitled to much more attention than we have given it in the
past.
President Morris: Some work has been done along that line. I devoted the
entire nut-collecting part of one year to studying the hazel. I went
over many thousands of hazels. One day, when I asked a neighbor if I
might go over his grounds, he said, "Yes, but what better hazel do you
want than that one that grows above your north bars?" He said, "We have
known of that for one hundred years about here." He couldn't find it.
Finally it was found, covered by a ton of grape vine. It has wonderful
hazels on it. I have transplanted it. It is a large, thin-shelled, fine
hazel, but a shy bearer. I have three very fine American hazels I am
going to use in crossing. This big, thin-shelled one is a wonderful
hazel, except that it is a shy bearer, and it is difficult to
transplant. I have transplanted four American hazels, and it took me
about two or three years to get them under way. It is a nuisance with
us. It grows in our pastures so rapidly the cows have to get out of the
way--crowds everything out. I have no doubt a great deal more work will
be done with the hazel. Now my bushes are all ready for pollenizing. I
have crossed a lot of them this year.
Professor Craig: I think Mr. Barron's point in reference to the
ornamental or esthetic value of the nut trees is very well taken,
indeed. It is a fact that nurserymen have paid more attention in the
past to those forms which are particularly striking in some way, rather
than to the forms which are actually and intrinsically beautiful.
Anything which has variegated leaves or purple leaves is sure to catch
the eye. As a matter of fact, I believe there are few trees which are
more picturesque than the hickories here in New York. The summer season
is not the season in which they carry their most beautiful forms. The
winter is the time when we see that picturesque framework standing out
against the sky, distinctive in every respect.
Mr. Collins: Isn't this subject one in which the Association might
interest itself?
President Morris: I have found that nurserymen to whom I have talked for
the most part were men of naturally esthetic taste, but dropped their
esthetic taste in order to adjust themselves to economic principles. If
a customer says, "Please give me a thousand Carolina poplars," the
nurseryman knows these will be beautiful for about fifteen years, then
ragged and dead and unsightly; but the customer wants them, and the
nurseryman has to furnish Carolina poplars.
Mr. Barron: The nurseryman, as a rule, doesn't take much trouble towards
educating the people up to the better stuff.
President Morris: I believe that if the nurserymen make a concerted
movement--or not necessarily a concerted movement--if any one firm or
two or three firms will make a business of introducing beautiful, useful
trees of the nut-bearing group, they will open up a new group. People
just haven't thought about it. They give an order for trees in a sort of
perfunctory way, because they must have them.
If there is no further discussion, we will go on to the Indiana pecan,
by Mr. T. P. Littlepage, and this will be the last paper of the
afternoon.
THE INDIANA PECAN.
T. P. LITTLEPAGE, Washington, D. C.
The subject of the northern pecan is one that I have been interested in
for more than thirty years. Away down in Spencer County, Indiana, on the
banks of the Ohio River, stand many large native pecan trees, and some
of my earliest recollections and most pleasant experiences are connected
with gathering the nuts from under these large trees; and, without
realizing it, I acquired much of the information in those early days
that has of late enabled me to carefully discriminate between the
desirable and undesirable varieties of pecans, viewed from the
standpoint of one who propagates them for orchard purposes. My interest
in the various points connected with pecan growing was at that time a
very direct interest, and the only motive I had for determining various
facts was the fundamental motive which largely dominates the world
today, and that is the question of securing the thing we desire for our
immediate use.
The large, magnificent pecan trees growing on the banks of the beautiful
Ohio year after year became a matter of the deepest interest to me. I
have seen the Ohio surging swiftly through their branches in the winter,
have seen them withstand the storms and vicissitudes of snow and ice and
raging floods; and as the spring came on I have beheld them, with more
or less surprise and pleasure, laden with blossoms. As summer advanced,
I watched the growing clusters of delicious nuts; and as the nuts began
to ripen in the fall, I soon learned to pick out the best bearing trees.
It was not a matter of science or unselfish research that enabled me to
determine the fact that some trees rarely ever missed a crop, while
others were very uncertain; that some nuts were large, thin-shelled, and
of fine flavor, while others were small and hard to crack, and otherwise
undesirable; that some of the trees ripened their nuts early, long
before frost, while others seemed to hang on and resent the coming of
autumn with all their might. At the age of nine, I could take many
different varieties of Indiana seedling pecans, separate them, and
locate the trees from whence they came, and give the essential points of
their bearing record. I could also tell whether the respective owners
watched them very carefully, kept a dog, or lived at a safe distance
away, all of which points were just as essential so far as I was
concerned as the size of the nut and its quality. The pecan captured me
early in life, and I have been a willing victim ever since. My interest
in this nut of late years is based on more scientific principles, but I
doubt if the facts arrived at are any more reliable than the facts which
came from the simple desire to appease a boyish appetite with the best
nut that nature has ever produced.
When I was about fourteen years old I came into personal possession of
twelve acres of land which had descended to me from my father's estate.
The land was almost valueless for general cropping purposes, but I had
already, at that age, determined something of the value of a pecan
orchard, and I proceeded to gather nuts from the best trees in that
section, and the following spring planted the whole twelve acres in
pecans. I knew, however, that even though the ground was not very
productive it would have to be cultivated that summer, so I planted the
pecans around stumps where the young trees would be protected. My
information as to the value of pecans was accurate and unerring;
however, there were several things I had not taken into consideration.
First, that a pecan that is kept in the dry all winter is very slow to
germinate in the spring, and in fact the percentage of them that does
germinate is very small. Second, that the field mice have an abiding
hunger for pecans. Third, that the pecan does not come true to seed, and
that an orchard of seedlings is of very questionable value. The first
two facts, which I failed to take into consideration--that is, the poor
germinating qualities of a dry pecan, and the appetite of the field
mice, relieved me from the embarrassment of the third, for it is
needless to say that this attempt made twenty-five years ago was a
complete failure, and for the time being discouraged my ambitions in
this direction. But after many years they revived sufficiently to
stimulate me to action again in the line of pecan culture.
I mention the above facts merely to show my credibility as a witness on
this subject. Being a lawyer by profession, I have learned long since
that the value of one's opinion, and especially the value of testimony
is directly in proportion to one's knowledge of and interest in the
subject matter at issue. Therefore, trusting that I have sufficiently
established my credibility, at least to my own satisfaction, I shall
proceed to make some observations relative to nut culture in the North.
First, let me say that I most heartily endorse the line of work
undertaken by our Association--that is, the work of collecting and
diffusing information in reference to nut culture that will be valuable
to the prospective grower. Our southern brethren have very largely
passed this stage in nut work in the South. They still have many
problems before them, but the fundamental problems of the determination
and propagation of the most desirable varieties of pecans have been
already worked out and they are producing in their nurseries hundreds of
thousands of fine budded and grafted pecan trees. There is such a lack
of information on this subject in the North that it is indeed opportune
that our Association should at the beginning of the interest in nut
culture in that section take up these various question and give the
public the benefit of our experience and information in reference to
them. There are yet many people who think that you cannot transplant a
pecan tree, and that if you cut the tap root it will not produce, while
the fact is that the pecan tree can be transplanted with almost as much
success as can fruit trees. Two years ago I transplanted a number of
cherry trees. At the same time I transplanted some pecan trees, and I
had a higher percentage of loss among the cherries than among the
pecans. There are some who believe that it is even a benefit to cut the
tap root. I have never belonged to the school which endorses cutting the
roots of any tree to accelerate its growth, except, of course, where it
is necessary to take up a tree and reset it, in which case it is
necessary to cut some of the roots. It is unquestionably true that if
the roots are cut too severely the tree receives too great a shock, but
the pecan tree seems to recover as quickly as any other variety of tree.
However, there are hundreds of farmers today who would not undertake to
raise pecans, for the reason that they think they cannot be
transplanted. Also, in every community where the pecan is native, can be
seen many seedling trees ranging anywhere from ten-to twenty-five years
old that have never borne a nut. These trees are pointed out by the
general public as horrible examples of the uselessness of attempted
pecan culture. Near my home at Boonville, Ind., is a row of seedling
pecan trees planted in a garden. The trees are now old enough to bear a
half bushel of pecans every year, but so far as I know they have never
borne a nut. The general public throughout the North and Middle West
have not yet learned that the average seedling pecan is an uncertain
quantity, grows slowly, bears irregularly, if at all, and probably
inferior nuts. However, once in a while, nature, through her wonderful
workings, has produced a tree that bears large crops of fine nuts
regularly, and when the seedling pecan is grafted or budded from this
kind of tree the trees so propagated take on the qualities of the parent
and begin bearing very early. I have frequently taken pictures of small
pecan trees not over three feet high, each bearing a cluster of large,
fine nuts. This, of course, is unusual, but shows the tendency of the
grafted or budded tree. I mention the above two points not for the
purpose at this point of entering into a discussion of the propagation
of the pecan, but to show the necessity for general enlightenment on the
possibilities, and to dispel some of the bug-a-boos that exist in the
minds of many persons. Those of you here who have engaged in the various
phases of nut culture may think these points primitive and unnecessary,
and they are, perhaps, unnecessary to the expert, but it is my pleasure
every summer to spend considerable time in the rural sections of the
country, and it is surprising how very little is known, even by our most
enlightened farmers, on the subject of nut culture. I have made many
trips throughout the South, and I find the farmers in that section have
read the various proceedings of the National Nut Growers' Association
until a knowledge of nut culture throughout the South is becoming very
general. It is, therefore, the duty and the province of the Northern Nut
Growers' Association to diffuse as much information as possible among
the farmers of the North and Middle West on this subject.
This is important for many reasons. At a recent meeting of the National
Nut Growers' Association held at Mobile, Ala., in discussing the subject
of the Extension of the Pecan Area, I used the following language:
"In my opinion nothing is more important to the permanency of the pecan
industry than the development of the pecan area in different parts of
the country, and having orchards cultivated under as many different
conditions as are consistent with the known probable successful area.
This is important, for the reason that this more than anything else will
insure a supply of pecans each year, and this will develop a public
dependency upon this most valuable nut. Nothing can be more detrimental
to any industry than a spasmodic and irregular supply of the product
upon which that industry depends."
I quote this language for the reason that the culture of the pecan in
the North is just now in its infancy, and it is peculiarly the function
of our organization to get before the public the essential facts upon
which its success depends. We are under great obligation for the work
that has been done in the South and the information that is made
available through the National Nut Growers' Association. Much of this is
valuable in the North, but there are a great many of the essential
points that have yet to be worked out, as the climatic conditions make
it impossible to follow exactly in all cases the line of work that has
been done in the South.
The fake promoter and the crooked nurseryman will no doubt come in for
their inning in the North, as they have in the South, and the public
will be imposed upon by inferior and "doctored" trees, and all sorts of
get-rich-quick orchard schemes will no doubt make their advent
throughout the North; but it is very probably that our Association,
through its proper committee, having in mind the experiences of the
South, can keep closely in touch with the general work that is going on
and have on hand sufficient information to protect those who will take
the trouble to make inquiry. Nothing in the horticultural line is more
satisfactory, more beautiful or more valuable than a fine young grove of
grafted or budded pecan trees of good varieties; but like all other good
things, it will attract the counterfeiter.
Coming now more specifically to the subject which has been assigned to
me by the committee--that is, "The Indiana Pecan and My Experience in
Nut Culture," I want to explain what is meant by the "Indiana pecan."
It is true, of course, that some of the very finest of the northern
pecans have originated in Indiana, yet I prefer to speak of pecans in
that whole section of the country as belonging to the "Indiana group."
Taking Evansville, Ind., as the center, there grow, within a radius of
fifty miles, in Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky, many thousands of wild
pecan trees; and after an investigation extending through a number of
years, there have been selected from these various wild groves a few
trees from which it has been deemed desirable to propagate. In this
connection I want to mention the valuable work that has been done along
this line by Mason J. Niblack, of Vincennes, Ind.; Prof. C. G. Woodbury,
of Lafayette, Ind.; R. L. McCoy, of Lake, Ind.; and J. F. Wilkinson, of
Rockport, Ind. These men, with the assistance of others throughout the
State, have for several years been making investigations of these pecans
with a view of determining the most desirable varieties from which to
propagate. It has been my privilege to have the benefit of the
information gathered by these gentlemen, which, added to my own
experience, has given me a fairly comprehensive view of the desirable
nuts in that section, and, as the geographical center of the present
known desirable varieties seems to be about Evansville, Ind., I will,
for matter of convenience, designate them as belonging to the "Indiana
Group."
We have been able to determine with some certainly the desirability of
six or seven varieties of pecans for propagating purposes. We have a
number of others under observation. In investigating a pecan for
propagating purposes, it is necessary to examine it from two
standpoints, first, the tree qualities, and second, the qualities of the
nut itself.