I had an experience this fall; a man on my farm had some pigs and he
kept them in a pen and fed them corn. I was going to begin to feed my
hogs, but I had a woods and I said let them eat the acorns. At the end
of a month they had eaten the acorns but they were not as fat as they
had been at the beginning. They had worked so hard to get the acorns
that they had worked off all the fat.
PROFESSOR SMITH: There are two hundred thousand hogs on the job in the
federal forests today. The Portugese pig in the spring is a lamentable
looking object. The method is to keep him alive until acorns get ripe
and they count on a pig multiplying himself one hundred to two hundred
per cent in the short season from the beginning of September to the
first of the year. They keep him ordinarily eighteen months; they carry
the spring or fall pigs through one winter, and at the beginning of the
fattening season a pig that weighs fifty or sixty pounds is counted on,
in the short time when acorns can be picked up, to jump up to one
hundred and fifty or two hundred pounds. There is much evidence on both
sides of the Atlantic to the effect that acorns fatten hogs if the
supply is good.
PRESENT STATE OF THE CHESTNUT BLIGHT
J. FRANKLIN COLLINS, WASHINGTON, D. C.
I presume that all of you who have any interest at all in the chestnut
know considerable about the blight which has been killing these trees in
the northeastern part of the country, so I will say nothing whatever
about the general features of the disease but confine my talk to those
points which have assumed, within a year, some special importance from
the point of view of fighting the blight, or related topics.
Perhaps the first thing that I can allude to is the discovery of a
certain disease in China which, at the time, was supposed to be
identical with the chestnut disease in the northeastern part of this
country. I say "supposed" because we had no positive knowledge at the
time that it was the disease. Specimens were sent to this country by the
agricultural expert, Mr. Meyer of the Department of Agriculture, for
examination. Cultures and inoculations were made by the pathologists in
the Bureau of Plant Industry and all of the tests that could be applied
showed it to be identical with our American disease.
Mr. Meyer's report upon this disease, as he found it in China, has some
points which may be of interest to you. He said the disease apparently
had been there for many years, as the lesions of the disease showed if
they were examined carefully. The fact that it has been there for many
years is, I think, questioned by no one at the present time. Its growth
in China seems to be somewhat different, in fact in many cases quite
different, from the growth on the American and the European chestnut
trees. It is rather of the type that we are familiar with on the
resistant Japanese trees. More-over, it appears on some of the trees as
shown in the photographs which I will pass around. The appearance of the
disease more closely resembles, in some ways, what we are familiar with
in the European apple canker as it appears on the apple trees. I think
those who are familiar with the apple canker will notice the
resemblance, in at least one or two of these photographs. Now, I don't
mean by that that it is the same as the apple canker, but I do want to
call your attention to its appearance in these photographs, and at the
same time, to tell you something that Mr. Meyer wrote about this disease
as it appeared in China. He said he found no trees that were absolutely
killed by the disease. This may mean, and probably does, that the
Chinese tree is resistant, to a certain extent, to this disease; that
is, it shows a certain amount of resistance, much in the same way that
the Japanese chestnut tree does to the disease in this country.
For some years (as some of you will remember, I think) there have been
two different views as to the origin of this disease. One is that it is
a native fungus which, for some reason, has assumed a parasitic form;
the other that it is an imported disease. The principal reasons for the
latter view are that it spreads in this country on the American chestnut
in much the same manner that other imported diseases have spread on
other plants. The fact is that this disease (so far as we can find
absolutely identical with the American form) has been found in China;
about this point there is no doubt at all, and I think we can safely
say, although we cannot absolutely prove it at this time, that the
disease in this country was imported from the Orient. What bearing this
will have on the question of control of the disease in this country
remains to be seen.
Have we any chestnuts which show immunity to this disease? The American
chestnut is subject to it in its most virulent form. There are of course
a number of varieties of the American chestnut which have been
cultivated. Of these the two which I have seen most of are the Hathaway
and the Spineless. Both of these are subject to the disease in the
ordinary form. The American varieties which have been originated within
a few years, the Boone and the Rochester, I am not prepared to say
anything about at the present time. The resistance or immunity of these
varieties has not been determined so far as my own work is concerned. Of
the European varieties we have a great many and they produce, as a rule,
the large chestnuts of the market and are known under various names.
Some are scions of named varieties and I will mention some of the more
prominent. The first and best known, perhaps, is the Paragon chestnut.
This is susceptible to the disease and takes it in almost as violent a
form as does the American, and so it is with the Ridgely, a nut which
originated near Dover, Delaware. The Dager and the Scott also take the
disease, and so do many of the so-called French varieties--the Marron,
the Marron Combale, the Early Marron and others--so far as I have been
able to ascertain. I have not seen very many Numbo trees, but of those
which I have seen, some have been diseased. Two varieties, which I have
seen have not had any disease upon them. One of these I saw only once or
twice and was unable to make a thorough examination. This is the
Darlington chestnut which grows near West Chester, Pa. I have no reason
to think this is immune in any way to the disease; all I can say is that
I have not yet seen the disease on this variety. Another variety which I
have heard a great deal about from the point of view of resisting the
disease is the Hannum. I don't know anything about this. I have been
unable to locate any trees which I could examine. Now these are all the
varieties of the European or American sorts that I care to speak about,
and we can say that they are all, so far as we know, with the possible
exception of the one or two last mentioned, subject to the disease.
Now let me turn for a moment to two other types of chestnut. First the
chinquapin, a small dwarf chestnut which grows in the southern Atlantic
states but reaches as far north as New Jersey and perhaps farther for
all I know. The chinquapin in the past has been regarded as a rather
resistant species and my own observations seem to bear out this
supposition. I have seen very few chinquapins which had the disease. It
may be due partly to the fact that they are not so subject to the
attacks of insects and injuries through which the blight might gain
entrance, or it may be due to the resistance in the species--I cannot
say about that. I had an opportunity this fall to see the Rush
chinquapin. I examined these trees--there are two of them--and I think
there is no question but that they are hybrids between the chinquapin
and the American chestnut. One of these trees was diseased, the other
had no disease upon it.
The Japanese chestnuts have been known for a long time to be highly
resistant to the inroads of this disease. Some may be immune, if we use
the word immune in a very loose sense. It has been regarded as of rather
coarse quality and some varieties as entirely unfit for human food. This
is true of many of the Japanese chestnuts, but I have recently seen some
which, so far as I could tell, were nearly as sweet as the American
chestnut and Paragon chestnut which I tested at the same time and which
were growing side by side. I could detect very little difference between
them. The Japanese nuts were very large, considerably larger than the
Paragon. Whether these will retain their sweetness in drying I cannot
say. These Japanese chestnuts are seedlings, and are known as the
Delaware, the Felton, the Kent and the Henlopen. Like all of the
Japanese chestnuts they are highly resistant to the blight.
I wish to call your attention to a few of the standard Japanese
varieties upon which I have made observations. These were all grafted
trees, that is the Japanese variety was grafted on American stock. The
McFarland is a rather well-known variety. Of five trees which I have had
under observation, all of them became diseased below the graft but none
above the graft, showing the resistance of the Japanese scion on
American stock. I think this is given out as a Burbank variety. The Hale
is another one which has the same record exactly. On the Coe I have seen
two cases of the disease on the Japanese part and several cases where
the trees are diseased below the graft. The Alpha, one of the Parry
varieties holds about the same record as the Coe--two cases of disease
on the Japanese part and several below the graft. The Parry Giant has
been considered one of the largest nuts; in four trees observed there
was one case of the disease on the Japanese part and two below the
graft. The Superb had the disease below the graft but not above; the
Reliance just the same way. Then along with these plots were one variety
of European, the Scott, which was quite as susceptible to the disease as
any other European, and another variety, the origin of which I do not
know. This last appears to be something of a hybrid with some chinquapin
blood in it--whether this is so or not I cannot definitely say--I can
say this, however, that it takes the disease not as readily as the
European but more readily than the Japanese.
Just a few words now in regard to the present distribution of the
chestnut disease, or at least its extended distribution. The disease is
now known to occur in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York east of
the Catskills and as far north as Lake George, and generally as far
south as northern Virginia. Farther south there are some scattered
infections, one nursery having been found in North Carolina which had
the disease. The western distribution of the disease, if you take
isolated cases, is now carried to the Pacific coast. We know of an
orchard in Agassiz, British Columbia, in which the disease has been
found. Nobody knows how this was transmitted, but the chestnut trees
upon which the disease occurs were supposed to have been sent to the
owner from the Orient. They apparently are not of the usual Japanese
type, however; that is all I can say about them now.
The chestnut blight has been found on all parts of the branches, twigs,
trunk and the exposed roots. Last year we found the disease on the nuts
themselves and on their burs and we were able to isolate the disease
from the shell of the nut and we were also able to produce the disease
on the bark of a chestnut tree through inoculation from the nut itself.
So that the disease can occur on almost any part of the chestnut tree.
* * * * *
A MEMBER: I saw quite recently that there were two cases of fatal
poisoning in Connecticut from the result of using nuts said to have been
blighted. I would like to know if that has been verified.
MR. COLLINS: There have been, so far as I know, about fifteen cases of
supposed chestnut poisoning in the vicinity of Hartford with five
deaths. We have reports of disease and possible death in other portions
of the country, particularly in the northeast. These reports come in
such a way that it is impossible to say definitely that chestnuts caused
the trouble, but this much can be said: our office here in Washington
has a physician working upon this very point. At the present time all
that I can say is that there is no doubt about the cases of illness and
it is impossible to dissociate the eating of chestnuts from the
possibilities. At the same time it is not possible to show that
chestnuts were the cause of the trouble rather than something else which
was taken at the same time.
THE SECRETARY: I wrote to the physician near Hartford whose wife is
reported to have died, but I have had no answer.
DR. METCALF: After following those cases up and finding that chestnuts
could not be excluded as a possible cause, we have started experiments
with various animals, also some chemical, to determine if there is any
possibility of any definite toxic substance in the nuts; so far results
are negligible. We are not prepared to say whether there is anything in
chestnut poisoning or whether there is not.
THE SECRETARY: I think there are three points in relation to the
chestnut blight of very great importance to the practical nut grower,
and I would like Professor Collins to answer these questions. In the
first place, how far are we justified in recommending planting of
non-immune varieties within the blighted area, in limited quantities,
with the understanding that there is a fair show of keeping them
tolerably free from the blight by watchful care and cutting out? Mr.
Roberts of New Jersey has a large chestnut orchard and he says he is not
afraid of the blight. He has had a large crop of chestnuts this year,
and he says that, while he has cut out, I believe, one orchard of small
trees his large bearing trees are not seriously affected by the blight.
This is the same testimony that we had from Colonel Sober last year.
The second question is, how far are we justified in recommending the
planting of chestnuts outside of the present blighted area? It seems to
me this is a very important point. Can we go so far outside the present
blight area, perhaps beyond the present range of the chestnut tree, that
we can hope to plant them without their being exposed to danger, or much
danger, of contagion from the blight? Can we recommend their being
planted in places where the chestnut does not grow now perhaps within
several hundred miles?
And the third question is in regard to immune varieties. How far has the
immune quality of any varieties been demonstrated?
PROFESSOR COLLINS: With regard to the first question,--planting of
non-immune varieties within the chestnut disease area,--I don't feel
like recommending it except on an experimental basis. Perhaps I am
recommending something that I might feel like changing my mind about a
little later, but, in the present state of our knowledge I would
hesitate to recommend planting within the disease infested area. So far
as the second question is concerned, the planting of non-immune
varieties outside the chestnut growing area, I think there are some
pretty good prospects in sight, provided the stock which is obtained is
carefully inspected to see that it is free from the blight to begin
with, and is watched carefully for at least the first year. The third
question, in regard to immune varieties,--if there are any the immunity
of which has been demonstrated sufficiently to warrant their being
planted,--the Japanese, which are highly resistant, and what some people
might consider immune, are the only possibilities so far in sight. The
great trouble with the Japanese trees which have been grown in the
orchards in parts of the country that have come under my observation,
is that they have been grafted on stock which is very susceptible to the
disease, and I think it is safe to say that 80 per cent at least,
possibly 90 per cent, of the trees that have been killed under these
conditions have been killed by the disease girdling below the graft on
the susceptible American stock. If we can grow Japanese seedlings under
the same conditions, perhaps, that Colonel Sober is raising his
Paragons--two years from the seed and then grafting--I don't see why we
can't have a tree that is going to be reasonably resistant to the
disease; now if we can find some Japanese nuts which are really
palatable, really good and sweet, as these three or four that I have
mentioned appear to be, I don't see why we cannot have a tree which will
be reasonably immune to the disease and at the same time producing an
edible nut. The Japanese stock seems to be able to fight off the disease
to a certain extent in much the same way that the apple tree can fight
off the apple canker, each year the lesion increases a little but each
year the growth of the tree overcomes it to a certain extent, and there
is a fight between the disease and the tree all the time. Very likely
the disease once on the tree will remain on the tree, as far as we can
tell at present, for quite a time, but perhaps not kill the tree
outright.
PROFESSOR VAN DEMAN: Dr. Van Fleet of the Department of Agriculture is
working on what seems to be a very fine prospect for raising chestnuts
that will be immune and that will have good quality. Japanese chestnuts
are the poorest of all in quality but he has taken the chinquapin, which
is of high quality but the very smallest of the whole chestnut family,
quite common in many of the central and southern states and as far west
as Arkansas, has crossed the Japanese chestnut and the chinquapin, and
has obtained seedlings that bear very young--when they are not more than
four or five feet high sometimes. They are loaded with nuts, and nuts of
large size, larger than our ordinary wild chestnut, usually one in a bur
just as the chinquapin is and having the high quality of the chinquapin,
and he has grown many of those in New Jersey right in the very worst of
the disease area and has found some that are exempt. Perhaps some of you
have noticed what was published in regard to this in the _Rural
New-Yorker_ sometime in the past few months. I have seen the nuts from
some of these trees, and while I have never eaten any, I have Dr. Van
Fleet's word for it that they are of excellent quality. Now that is
something that we might feel quite hopeful about.
PROFESSOR COLLINS: Dr. Van Fleet is doing a fine work. I have seen some
of it and gone over the work with him.
PROFESSOR VAN DEMAN: He is one of the government people and he is
carrying on his experiments here at the Arlington plantation, right
across the river.
DR. METCALF: Speaking of breeding material, we have six sorts for
breeding purposes in the shape of seeds of this very species of Chinese
chestnut on which the disease occurs in China. The nut of that tree is
of very high quality and good size, and, so far as I can tell, quite as
sweet as the American chestnut. If there is no more disease on the trees
in this climate than there is in China it would be a very practical tree
to grow, as far as we know.
TOP-WORKING SEEDLING PECAN TREES
W. N. HUTT, NORTH CAROLINA
According to a census we have just completed there are in North Carolina
upwards of 50,000 seedling pecan trees. These trees range in age from
one to thirty years. Seventy-five per cent of them are of bearing age,
but there is probably not one per cent of that number that are
profitable bearing trees. In all parts of the pecan country experience
has shown that seedling pecans are notably slow in coming into bearing
and some trees never bear at all. Those that do bear have nuts that are
almost invariably, small, thick-shelled and of indifferent quality. In
this respect, however, the pecan tree differs in no way from any of our
other classes of fruits. No one would today be so foolish as to try to
get a good peach or apple orchard by planting the seeds of these fruits;
but this is just what a great many people have been trying to do with
pecans.
This attempt to produce pecan orchards from seed has been the origin of
the 50,000 trees noted in the census above. Now that we have these
seedling pecan trees, are they of any value at all? Can we make anything
out of them whatever or must we cut them down and charge up the expenses
to the account of experience, and start over again with standard
varieties of budded and grafted trees? Years of time and quantities of
money have been spent in producing these beautiful but comparatively
valueless seedling trees. However, they are far from being a total loss,
for in those deep roots and stalwart trunks and spreading branches,
there are latent possibilities in abundance. If by some magic power like
that of Aladdin's wonderful lamp told of in the "Tales of the Arabian
Nights," we could transform these seedling trees in a single night to
standard varieties, we would enrich every owner of pecan trees by
hundreds of dollars and the aggregate wealth of the state would be
increased by millions.
For several years I have been in search of Aladdin's wonderful lamp to
enlighten me how to effect this felicitous transformation. Like
Aladdin's quest of old the search has been long and wearisome and has
led me a tedious road through many vexatious disappointments, but at
last I have found the lamp! I have in my power the magic by which a
worthless seedling pecan tree can be transformed into a productive
standard variety. This magic talisman is simply
_Patch-Budding._
Every kind of budding is magical. Is it not wonderful to make a crab
apple tree produce Stayman or Grimes Golden apples or a quince bush
produce luscious Duchess pears? Is it not strange that the sap from the
same root can produce red apples on one branch, yellow ones on another,
and russets on a third? How does it come that one twig can be made to
produce sour apples and the next Paradise Sweets? Strange! Wonderful!!
but True!!! It is all owing to the fact that the sap of a tree is a
homogeneous substance and that it is the bud through which it passes
that stamps the individuality upon it whether it shall be a crab or a
Grimes Golden. If we make all the buds of the tree of the Grimes
character, the apples will all be Grimes Goldens. In the same way if we
make all the buds on a pecan tree Stuarts or Schleys there will be nuts
to be gathered from that tree and they will not be the worthless scrub
seedlings.
When I began my experiments in the top-working of seedling pecan trees I
soon found that there were many things one could _not_ do with pecan
trees. I counted myself a successful propagator of apples, peaches,
plums, grapes and various other kinds of plants, but apple, peach and
general propagation methods failed to give success in the budding and
grafting of pecans. I concluded the method must be all right but that I
should be more exact about my mechanical manipulations. I started out
with the ordinary cleft graft commonly used for top-working most sorts
of trees. I experimented in several different orchards and put in
hundreds of cleft grafts. I took great pains to make my work as
mechanically perfect as possible. All conditions of stock, scions,
weather, etc., seemed to promise the highest degree of success. The
result of that season's work was a world of disappointment, a lot of
experience, and two living grafts. One of these latter, the result of my
skill, was so effectively pruned that fall by the pecan girdler that my
work for the season was a minus quantity in all but experience. The
other living graft, which was put in by an assistant, is now a bearing
Curtis tree, our only monument to the success of cleft grafting the
pecan. Other propagators are said to be able to secure fair results with
cleft grafting of pecans in certain localities, but from my experience,
I am willing to aver that it cannot be done in this latitude.
Next followed a series of trials with shield budding which is so
uniformly successful with peach, but peach methods failed entirely with
pecans. Then followed a succession of trials with whip grafting, veneer
grafting, bark grafting, and chip budding, all with a varyingly large
percentage of failure and a uniformly small percentage of success. Some
propagators in the South report fairly successful results in the chip
budding of pecans, but my results with this method were largely of a
negative character.
After persistent trials of all the known methods of budding and
grafting, through the varying conditions of four successive seasons, I
have narrowed the propagation of the pecan in North Carolina to one
single method, namely, patch-budding. This method has year after year
given us the highest percentage of successful unions. The operation
illustrated by figures 1 to 12, is as follows:
1. _Heading Back._