community, but the sooner the value of tree crops is recognized, the
sooner will the agriculturists be on a more simple economic basis and I
feel that the members of this association agree with me when I say that
the Tennessee Valley Authority Board of Directors should be complimented
by this body for their foresight in making tree crops a part of their
economic scheme. In my five months of work the points that I believe are
of most interest to this body are that I have actually made a cursory
tree crop survey of the whole Valley--fifteen hundred miles long and
seventy-five miles wide. This is the first time this kind of work has
ever been attempted in the world on an extensive scale. The results of
this survey have been approximately the following:
(1) A keen interest by all the County Agents in the tree crops question.
(2) I was astonished at the surprising number of County Agents that had
been advocating nut trees as a farm asset. It gave me considerable
pleasure to note the number who had nuts sticking around their offices
they had gathered up because of their interest in trying to find a good
cracker of either hickory or walnut. As we all know it would be
impossible for me to attempt to fine-tooth-comb an area as large as the
Tennessee Valley basin for thin shelled nuts, but with the enthusiasm
shown by the County Agents we will have excellent co-operation with them
in getting publicity in local papers for the contests that we have run
to date on all the tree crops. The announcement of this association's
prize contest is going to have an outstanding influence in getting a lot
of samples of nuts and you can easily see the stimulant to get two
prizes in the place of one is going to make a lot of men and women and
children scour the country for the nut that will possibly take the prize
in both contests. I want to say that I feel that these nuts, from the
few samples and reports I have at hand, are going to give the balance of
the United States a run for their money in the contest.
My work, when developed along the lines as recommended, will not only
comprise the development of nuts but of all tree crops in general. Not
only in introducing selected tree crops to the farmers but in the
breeding of superior crops. The tree crops idea like the Authority's
power idea will have, in the words of Dr. Kellogg, in a recent letter to
me, "It will not only influence the welfare of the farmers in the Valley
but over the whole United States." First in showing the farmers on a
worth while scale the value of tree crops and second in introducing this
health food into the diet of the American people.
Some New Hicans and Pecans in Illinois
_From_ J. G. DUIS, _Shattuc, Illinois_
(_Read by Title_)
I am writing a short account of the new nuts I have discovered in this
vicinity, all in the Kaskaskia River Valley and not one fifty miles
away. The Duis, Swagler, Joffrey and Carlyle pecans. The Duis black
walnut. The Gerardi and Nussbaumer hicans. And the Dintleman hybrid.
The Duis pecan grows about four miles up the river from Carlyle. I claim
it as the largest northern pecan in existence, with the Swagler not far
second in size. Both have been bearing the two years I have known them,
the Duis rather prolifically. However, it was so severely whipped last
fall, and the season so dry this year, that I do not expect a crop off
either tree, though I have not visited them as they are rather
inaccessible. Both graft fairly well, especially the Swagler.
The Joffrey pecan grows alone in a corn field south of Pelican Pouch, a
glacial moraine south of Carlyle about six miles. It is the plumpest,
thinnest shelled nut of northern variety, and above average size. Fair
bearer to the best of my knowledge, but a severe hail storm and a season
of severe walnut caterpillars ruined two years' prospects. The Carlyle
pecan grows in the State Fish Hatchery and Park at Carlyle, and I have
only the word of the "game warden" and caretaker for size and quality.
The same hail and caterpillar pest hit that tree. The Duis black walnut
is from a scrub tree on Shoal Creek, about five miles northwest of
Carlyle and is about crowded out by other trees. My oldest grafted tree
from it is about seven years old and has been bearing consistently since
two years old. Even this year, after two severe dry seasons, and a late
frost that nipped the early shoots, it has a fine crop even though other
trees, grafted and seedlings, are mostly barren. The nuts are medium to
rather large and readily crack out in halves comparable to the Stabler
when properly prepared for cracking. There are so many new walnuts I
know nothing about that I presume there are better ones.
I claim only secondary credit for "resurrecting" the Nussbaumer hican
and the Dintleman hybrid, presumably king hickory and bitternut. The
Nussbaumer is the hybrid mentioned in Fuller's Nut Culturist some fifty
years ago. I thought of this for several months and corresponded
regarding this nut and finally made a couple of trips down the river to
Mascoutah and vicinity. I could hardly find a man old enough to know Mr.
Nussbaumer, who was a druggist there. Later he removed to Okawville and
from there to Texas, where he died a number of years ago. I was advised
to see an old nurseryman by the name of Jacob Leibrock, now deceased. I
was told he had two of the trees from seed. He had, but both bore
bitternuts and he had cut them down. I did not think till later that
they probably were not from the Nussbaumer tree and when I wrote for
more information he had passed away. He advised me to see two men toward
Fayetteville down the river. The first one did not know where the tree
was. The second one did but was too busy to go to it, so I hired him to
go as soon as possible and advise me and if possible send me some
samples and I would return later. From what he told me I was sure I was
off the track of the Nussbaumer, but on the trail of a new and better
nut. He said the tree bore "sacks full" and the nuts were so thin
shelled you could crack them in your hand. I went farther down the river
to Fayetteville, not far from which place east the tree was located, but
was there informed the tree was dead. However, the informer told me he
had a seedling from it, but upon investigation found he had a fullblood
pecan, probably planted by a jaybird from a number of bearing trees in
close proximity, for I was satisfied by this time the nut was not even
part pecan. The two original nuts probably never grew. The innkeeper
advised me that Mr. Dintleman, a nurseryman of Belleville, Ill., had
been much interested in the nuts and might have a tree. So I wrote him
asking about it and also wrote Mr. C. A. Reed, U. S. Dept. of
Agriculture, Washington, D. C. Mr. Dintleman wrote me that our well
known Mr. J. F. Wilkinson, had a seven-year-old budded tree from buds he
sent. And Mr. Reed advised me to write a farm advisor in Missouri.
Through him I was informed a Mr. George Miller, near Bluffton, son of
Judge Miller, mentioned in Fuller's book, had a tree thirty years old.
In short, I found not only the one tree I was after but a second king
hickory and bitternut cross with a shell so thin you could "crack it
with your hands." Shall we call it a Hickbit? Mr. Wilkinson sent me
graftwood and stated he expected we call it the Dintleman. The
Nussbaumer, Mr. Miller informed me, is not a good bearer, but it may be
due to location or lack of pollinization. I now have several trees of
each from spring grafts.
All the above trees grow in overflow ground, sometimes in water for
weeks, called slashes. The Stabler walnut also seems to like that, but
the Thomas does not and is outgrown by the three-year-old Stablers. I
will know more about that in a year or two. However, nearly all grow
very well on the prairie land around here and some seem to bear better.
May I add another observation. Cultivation will produce bigger, better
and more nuts, same as for corn.
* * * * *
Evening session.
DR. DEMING:
I'd like to speak for a moment about some old friends, one of whom we
shall never see any more, Mr. Bixby. If you will take the trouble to go
back through our annual reports and see the number of articles he has
written and the diversity of subjects he has written on, and see what an
important part he has taken in our discussions, you will get a good idea
of the ability and broad-mindedness, the scientific knowledge and the
honesty of Mr. Bixby. There is one thing that perhaps you don't all
know, and that is that his collection of nuts has been sold to the
United States Government. There is something fewer of you know and that
is that this sale was brought about by the persistent energy, mental and
physical, of Mr. Reed.
The other old friend, whom we shall perhaps never see again at a
meeting, is Dr. Morris. I've seen him twice this summer, had several
letters from him, and lunched with him once. He has with him his devoted
wife and his little daughter and he appears to be fairly well. He
doesn't look very different from what he has when he attended our
meetings. He is up and around and he walked about the place for fifteen
or twenty minutes with Mrs. Morris and me looking at his trees.
Some other old friends that I would like to call to your attention are
our past reports. I suppose that I have read those reports more times
than anybody else, since I have edited nearly all of them. I go back
over them occasionally even now and I have been astonished to find the
value of the papers and discussions that are contained there. I
recommend to all of you who have these reports to make a review of them
and see how many things were known during the early years of our
association, as Mr. Walker has said, that we are now rehashing. When you
go over the names of the men who made up the membership of the
association in its early days, men whom many of you perhaps have never
seen, or have seen very seldom, you can understand how these pioneers in
nut growing would have had something interesting to say.
I've made a little list of names of these men, some of whom are gone,
and the rest of whom we seldom see. Dr. Morris, Prof. Craig, Henry
Hales, Prof. Close, Prof. Hutt, W. N. Roper, W. C. Reed, Prof. Collins,
E. A. Riehl, Dr. Van Fleet, Prof. Van Deman, J. G. Rush, Mr. Jones, Mr.
Littlepage, Mr. Bixby, Dr. Smith, Prof. E. R. Lake, S. W. Snyder, Mrs.
Erlanger, Col. Sober, Prof. Drake and many others. I think it will pay
you all to look back through those annual reports and see what the
pioneer nut growers of this country have recorded.
Mr. Reed, I was saying that Mr. Bixby's collection of nut trees had been
sold to the Government and that it was through your help that this sale
was made. Now I'd like to ask you if there is any information that you
could properly release to the meeting about the sale of those trees. I
am sure everyone of us would be interested to know where they are going.
MR. REED:
The trees have been bought by the Interior Department with funds placed
at their disposal for the purpose of planting trees for the national
forests. Their attitude has been rather liberal in this case. They have
felt that if they could get trees planted, regardless of whether they
were planted on Interior Department land or not, it would be justified
expense. When the matter was laid before them, they at once thought of
the arboretum which is now being developed within the District of
Columbia. The final purchase was made largely in order that the
arboretum might be able to start off with the Bixby collection as a
nucleus. A complete list of all varieties that are in the collection
will go there. Another part of the purchase comes to the branch of the
Agricultural Department which I represent, and practically all of the
varieties in the Bixby collection which are not now in the plant at
Beltsville will be sent there.
It was the original plan of the Interior Department that all of the
trees which neither the arboretum nor the branch of the department which
I represent needed, should go to the Shenandoah National Park in
Virginia, and it was with that understanding that the deal was closed.
After the deal was closed and a notice was sent to the authorities in
charge at the park that a certain number of seedlings of different
species and a certain number of grafted trees would be delivered there
sometime this fall, the Shenandoah authorities took the strange attitude
that they couldn't use grafted trees. In other words, they preferred
mongrels to thoroughbreds. We chuckled in our sleeves. But nevertheless
they threw back upon us several grafted trees to find some place for. We
immediately took it up with the Forest Service. They have land in North
Carolina where all of the trees can be planted fifty feet apart, not
cultivated, but nursed and cared for, and available for study by our own
department and the state of North Carolina and any individuals.
I have omitted mentioning that there are certain limitations on the
ability of the Interior officials to buy trees for Interior Department
planting. It is a definite policy of the Interior Department that in all
national parks they plant only American species. That automatically
eliminated many trees of the Bixby collection. But the arboretum wanted
a good many of those trees and so did we.
There are still in the Bixby collection several fine Persian walnut
trees. We haven't been able to trace their source, but it is my
impression that they are of Chinese origin.
DR. DEMING:
He had a row of Pomeroy trees.
PROF. SLATE:
He also had some trees from Chinese seed, because he sent some of them
to Geneva.
MR. REED:
We have the Bixby correspondence. By the terms of the purchase Mrs.
Bixby was to deliver to the Interior Department all of Mr. Bixby's
records pertaining to those trees, and as far as she has been able to
get things together they have been turned over to me.
DR. DEMING:
In addition to our annual reports I want to say a word about the reports
of the National Pecan Growers' Association. Twenty-five years ago I took
out a life membership in that association for $10.00, and I have been
getting annual reports ever since. While they relate almost exclusively
to the southern pecan they have also many scientific articles on the
development of twigs, blossoms and fruit, on pruning and grafting and on
fertilizing and cultivating, which are of importance to all nut
growers.
I think perhaps I won't go into the subject which has been talked of so
much today, the severe winter and summer we have had. But J. G. Rush in
our third annual report has a paper which is entitled, "The Persian
Walnut, Its Disaster, Etc.," which describes events twenty-two years ago
very similar to those that have taken place in the last winter.
Nut Growing in Vermont
_By_ ZENAS H. ELLIS, _Fair Haven_
In all my life of over seventy years I have never seen a time like the
present. We have passed through the coldest winter and the dryest summer
ever known.
I raise on my place in old Vermont every kind of tree that will grow
there, and try many that will not, or only with more or less protection.
I have apples, pears, plums, cherries, peaches and figs, with berries of
all kinds. I have nut trees of many different varieties, hickories,
black and English walnuts, filberts, hazel-filberts, pecans, almonds and
butternuts.
Which have stood the cold and drought the best? Strange as it may seem,
my nut trees have stood the extreme temperatures the best. My hardiest
apples like the Wealthy, Yellow Transparent, Wolf River, and Pewaukee
have gone down to their death, or so near thereto that I never expect to
see any fruit from them again. Whereas, on the other hand, my hickories,
black walnuts, butternuts and hazel-filberts have not even lost a leaf.
Wonderful to relate and almost unbelievable my large pecan tree, over
forty feet in height, and a foot in diameter, is as hale and hearty as
ever.
August 15th last I picked and cracked some of my improved butternuts and
hazel-filberts, and found the kernels large, full grown and normal in
every way. Whereas I have not an apple or pear fit to eat, no, not even
a berry either.
I set out my butternut years ago in the position of honor in front of my
house, and it has merited it ever since. The kernels came out in halves
and often times whole. I have given away many of the nuts for planting,
even as far away as Kew Gardens, England. Money could not buy the parent
tree. I would not exchange it for the best cattle ranch in Colorado, the
best wheat farm in Kansas, or the best cotton plantation in both the
Carolinas. It is self-sustaining, does not require any subsidy from
Uncle Sam, or any twenty-five thousand dollars a year official to
regulate it. It is better than any dollar nowadays, always worth 100 per
cent in gold instead of 61 cents, as is our government kind. The reason
is, God rules it, instead of a mere man with any combination of the
alphabet you can make.
It is the same with my improved hazel-filberts which grow tall and rank
and bend down to the ground with their branches heavily laden with
large, well-filled nuts.
My Thomas black walnuts are doing well, as also my Sier's hybrid
hickories; both are perfectly hardy but not bearing this year as it is
the off year for them. The butternut and hazel-filberts have never an
off year but, like the "brook," go on forever. My English walnuts with
some protection passed the winter in perfect safety. But the almonds,
though protected as well, fared very poorly, showing that they are not
near so hardy as the former.
The other kinds of nut trees that I have mentioned, even to the pecan,
withstood the rigors of the winter with no protection whatever.
My true filberts fared rather poorly but are coming up lustily from
below the snow line and will, I think, be as good as ever if the past
winter does not repeat itself.
What does this all mean? It means that we should plant more nut trees
instead of so many fruit trees, especially the apple, which has proven
more liable to cold injury than even the pear, if we would have any of
the delectable valuable products of the tree kind. Why, just think of
it, a few nut trees planted around every home in the country would do
more to relieve the present depression than all the other agencies and
remedies put together. Frost does not impair their fruit. Nuts will keep
through the year or longer. Insects do not injure them as they do the
soft, unprotected fruits. Squirrels may take their toll but they are far
easier to destroy than a bug. To hunt them is grand sport for young
people, whereas to chase a bug is no fun at all.
The workman, the professional man, the merchant, should especially raise
them as they would take no time from their business. Their children
would think it no work at all to gather them, that is if they were like
the children of my youth who looked forward to gathering nuts as one of
the pleasantest pastimes of the year.
If all our city parks, public squares, playgrounds, roadsides, waste
places and other like areas were planted with them, all children even to
the poorest could have a sufficiency of the healthiest food that would
build up their bodies into strong healthy adults who could go out into
the country and build it up again as it was years ago, instead of the
vast, desolate region it is now.
What makes children so puny and so unwilling to do any real work today?
It is because emigration from nut-eating countries being shut off, and
our native nut trees cut down or uncared for, there is nothing to keep
up the supply of the best food for the body today. The remedy is to
raise more nuts so the children and adults as well can again be fed on
the most valuable, healthy and strength-giving food God ever made.
Then, too, crime would be greatly reduced, especially of the juvenile
kind. The spare time of our youth would be taken up for about three
months in a year with a clean, pure, pleasant, agreeable occupation
instead of searching for mischief and quasi-vicious adventures. Have no
juvenile crime and the adult crime is reduced to a minimum, or
obliterated entirely.
God started man on a nut eating diet and kept him thereon for centuries.
As long as he stuck to it he was all right. We do not hear much about
that era, for happy is the nation that has no history. Then he had no
diseases to speak of except extreme old age, no wars and hardly any
troubles. But when, in the Garden of Eden, the Devil tempted him to
switch off onto some other diet, he has been wrong ever since. So then,
let us return to our old diet as far as possible and have something of
an Eden again about us today.
Perhaps you people of Michigan would like to know what my town of Fair
Haven is. It gave you James Witherell who, while congressman from
Vermont, resigned to accept the supreme judgeship of the great territory
of Michigan. In the war of 1812 he had command of the troops thereof
and, when ordered by the cowardly General Hull to surrender them to the
British, absolutely refused. After that war he laid out anew the war
stricken city of Detroit.
His grandson, Thomas Witherell Palmer, the son of a native born Fair
Haven girl, became your United States Senator, Minister to Spain and, in
1893, President of the World Fair commission at Chicago. He gave to
Detroit that large and beautiful park named after him.
So you see Henry Ford is not the whole architect of that great city, as
good Vermont blood had to relay its foundations and get it well under
way for that great auto magnate to make it the fourth city in the
Union.
A Roll Call of the Nuts
_By_ DR. W. C. DEMING
_Connecticut_
In the report of the proceedings at the eighth annual meeting of this
association, held at Stamford, Conn., September 5 and 6, 1917, is an
address by the Vice President, Prof. W. N. Hutt of North Carolina,
entitled "Reasons for Our Limited Knowledge as to What Varieties of Nut
Trees to Plant." I quote from that address:
"In 1847 the American Pomological Society was formed as a national
clearing house of horticultural ideas. The first work the society
undertook was to determine the varieties of the different classes
of fruits suitable for planting in different sections of the
country. Patrick Barry of Rochester, one of the pioneers of
American horticulture, was for years the chairman of the committee
on varietal adaptation and did an immense amount of work on that
line. At the meetings of the society he went alphabetically over
the variety lists of fruits and called for reports on each one from
growers all over the country. This practice was kept up for years
and the resulting data were collected and compiled in the society's
reports. A similar systematic roll call of classes and varieties of
nuts grown by the members of this association would be of immense
value to intending planters of nut trees. In northern nut growing,
however, it may be questioned if we have yet arrived at the Patrick
Barry stage."
These were the words of Prof. Hutt in 1917, seventeen years ago. I
believe that nut growing has now arrived at the Patrick Barry stage. It
seems right, therefore, that we should begin to have an annual roll call
of the nuts. To this end I have prepared a list of nuts of the different
genera, species and varieties grown in the northeastern United States.
This list is long but by no means complete and this, by the nature of
things, it can never be. It is evident that there will not be time
enough to go over more than a small part of this list. It is, therefore,
proposed to have the list mimeographed and sent to all members for their
reports. Members are asked particularly to add to the list the names and
performances of any varieties not listed of which they may have
knowledge. In this way we shall soon be able to make our lists as nearly
complete as possible.
In order to reduce bulk and expense it will be necessary to print the
names in compact form. It is suggested that the lists be kept for
reference and that any report be made on a separate sheet under the
proper heading. I will go as far in it now as you want me to. As I call
the names of the nuts on this list I will ask the members present to
report, as briefly as possible, any knowledge they may have as to the
performance of each nut, such as the earliness of its fruiting, size and
regularity of crops, growth and vigor of tree and character of nuts.
HICKORIES
THE ANTHONY:
See Mr. Reed's paper in this report.
THE BARNES (Shag. x Mock.):
Dr. MacDaniels: There are some at Itaca which bear.