We need a consistent philosophy in this troubled world of ours. Working
with nature and especially with nut trees helps us to develop this
philosophy and to realize that there are no panaceas for our present day
problems except as we work them out ourselves. After all our wishful
thinking with panaceas and doctrines, we come back to the same
conclusion. Those people with the best foundations built on reason and
truth are those who are nearest the soil and growing things. Those who
work with trees and other living things in nature possess the philosophy
which acts as a breastwork against the forces which would destroy our
society.
We started our propagation of nut trees in 1930 under the guiding hand
of Mr. Wilkinson, Mr. Sawyer and Professor Ray Marsh of the University
of Illinois, and later have had help from Dr. Colby of the University.
We have at present about 2500 grafted pecan trees, a few varieties of
hickories, black walnuts, chestnuts, filberts, persimmons, butternuts,
heartnuts, pawpaws, etc. When people ask me what we expect from our
trees, I tell them that the trees have already paid me in satisfaction
if not in filling my purse. I do expect our nut tree project to give us
a good financial return. The pecan is our leader in Western Illinois as
a popular nut. Much of our Illinois river bottom land, if deserted by
man, would immediately pass back to nature and exist as pecan groves. I
have been working with pecan trees since 1930 and today find myself with
more questions than answers. We are growing at present about 37
varieties of pecans. We are reaching certain notions which we hope are
right. The hybrids are fine and make wonderful trees but I doubt if
they are the answer to our problem. With these remarks I dispose of
further discussion of the Burlington, Rockville, McCallister and Gerardi
varieties.
The Major and Greenriver are excellent performers but are a little late
maturing for us. The Posey nut is slightly earlier and makes an
excellent quality but is not to be compared with Major and Greenriver
for bearing. Our Butterick trees are excellent growers but bear few
nuts. This variety is the poorest bearer that we have. Our earliest
pecans of the better known varieties are Indiana and Busseron, of the
newer varieties, Stephens and Gildig No. 2.
The Giles pecan which Mr. Wilkinson discovered in Kansas is our
outstanding nut for yield, size and early bearing but it should also be
earlier maturing. Although the Giles has been late when grafted on some
of our native trees, it has been early on others. In 1945, which will
always be known by the Illinois weather man as the year without a
summer, we found a great difference in our Major, Greenriver, and Giles
nuts from tree to tree as to size and maturity. This question of
compatibility between stock and scion is of the utmost importance and it
impedes investigational work, complicating comparisons we are trying to
make. Some of our new varieties which we are trying out might be checked
immediately if we knew the effect of the under stocks of our trees.
Our farms are about 50 miles north of St. Louis, Mo. Our first problem
with pecans is maturity. The old named varieties are a little late for
us. I personally feel that we should get grafts from no farther north
than New Haven, Ill., or Rockport, Ind. I am interested in Mr. Gerardi's
varieties at O'Fallon, Ill., because they should be early. Dr. Colby has
brought to light three new ones from Cass County, Ill. which should make
excellent maturity in central Illinois.
We are blessed in our community with large numbers of native pecan
seedlings. The behavior of different nuts on different stocks is not the
same. Before any nut should be condemned we feel it should have an
opportunity to perform on different stocks over a period of years. For
this reason we always try to graft a number of trees to each variety.
Most things taken from nature are subject to improvement and can be
better adapted to the use of man. I would like to see some new varieties
of pecans developed for our northern zone. I would like to see large
plantings of nuts from all our leading varieties of pecans. From these
seedling studies, great good would come and possibly a good variety. I
would like to see Major, Greenriver, Giles, Posey, Busseron, Indiana,
the Gildigs crossed with some early prolific nuts. I would like to see
every nut that had any good quality crossed with every other good nut in
a mass planting so that genetics could operate and have these trees
planted where they might be permitted to reach maturity and the "get" of
each union studied. We might get an early heavy bearer which would
revolutionize the pecan industry. I would like to see some of our good
Southern varieties like Stuart crossed with early northern varieties.
This search for new nuts should be accelerated.
Let us rededicate ourselves to the problem of getting the "super-nut."
Let us explore these new fields of nut germ plasm which lie all about
us, pull these old nuts apart genetically and recombine their good with
the good of other nuts into new varieties. If we should fail 10,000
times and succeed once, success would be cheap.