introduction gardens at Chico. We had to establish gardens where we
could grow these trees and send out the young plants to growers and in
these gardens we have test nurseries or test orchards as we call them
where we grow these fruits. This is an Assyrian variety brought in by
old Dr. Fuller who spent some time as a missionary in Asia Minor and
became convinced of the importance of the pistache industry, and has
been one of the pioneers in these small beginnings. This is a six years
old tree. This is 15 years old a seedling tree near Fresno. It has borne
a good many crops of fair sized pistache nuts as large as the
Trabonella, the Sfax, the Tunis and the Alleppo and those forms which
are going to be the real pistaches of the future in this country. The
pistache in fruit is a most interesting sight. The nuts are pinkish.
They have the pinkness of the peach, almost, without the fuz and they
are covered with a thin skin which is taken off usually with the
fingers. The nut inside has a texture that makes it very attractive.
When they are first gathered it is very difficult to crack them with the
fingers but if they are put in the oven and roasted they open up and
leave a little suture into which you put your thumb nails and pry the
ends open.
This picture gives you some idea of the yield of the pistache. It is a
fair yielder, as much as fifty pounds of nuts having been borne by eight
or nine year old trees. Ours have not done as well as that. The price of
course ranges like the price of all other nuts. They sold last year for
75 cents a pound here in Washington. The kernels sell for $1.50.
This gives you a good idea of the pistache fruit with its outer shell,
the nut and the green interior. If any of you are going to California
and do not like the idea of taking up hazel nuts, walnuts and pecans, if
you will take up this industry we will help you all we can. It will grow
in Arizona, New Mexico, and we have records of them growing in Arkansas.
They will stand a temperature below zero. Trees have been known to live
through several winters even in Southern Kansas.
In all these investigations we have found the stock problem is very
important. Here we have the _Pistachia atlantica_ which has much smaller
seeds. It is this that we are using most commonly as a stock for the
pistaches that are being grown in California. Frank N. Meyer brought
back from China the seeds of the Chinese pistache, the hardiest of all
pistaches, a tree which has been almost hardy even as far north as
Washington and central Kansas. It is not only a nut tree but a
magnificent ornamental tree and grows to a very large size. We have used
it as an avenue tree leading to our plant introduction gardens in Chico
because it colors up so beautifully in the autumn and the spring. In the
spring the tips of these leaves and branches are a brilliant pink and in
the autumn it turns a gorgeous scarlet. It is destined to be one of the
best landscape trees of California in our opinion. It grows to be
centuries old.
Frank Meyer standing beside a tree which has stood three centuries at
least. Imagine what pleasure he would have had had he only lived to walk
under this great avenue in his old age.
The question of congeniality between the true pistache and the Chinese
pistache is shown here. We rather jumped to the conclusion, when we
found that the ordinary pistache overgrew the Chinese pistache, that
perhaps it was not so good a stock as we first thought, but I notice,
looking back at my photograph taken in Greece in 1901, that the regular
stocks used by the Greeks for the pistache are overgrown in the same way
by the true pistache. We have much larger trees than these now in Chico
and as the Chinese pistaches are very old and large trees we have come
to the conclusion that in all probability the pistache will be
successful on this Chinese stock.
I was walking through a market in Hong Kong in 1902 and I saw a few
bushels of nuts that I had never heard of or seen before. The nuts
looked like acorns but when I picked them up I found them as hard as
hickory nuts. I cracked one of them with a brick and it was almost as
hard to crack as a hickory nut. It was unmistakably an acorn, I thought,
and I bought a bushel of the nuts and sent them to this country. It is
called Pisania by botanists and it has many of the characteristics of an
acorn. The kernel of this nut comes out whole and for that reason it
would be very easily cracked by mechanical means. It has a sweetness
which does not suggest an acorn. It does not remind you of the acorn. It
is a commercial product in Southern China shipped down the West river
and it seemed to me well worth while trying to grow it in the United
States. We have had a great deal of trouble with it. We did not find the
right place for it at first. It was hardy here in Washington, even, for
a few seasons but the temperature at seventeen, eighteen and twenty
below zero finally killed it out. It is now growing down in Mississippi.
Here is a photograph sent me from Honkong, the only one I have of the
tree as it appears on the hills of Honkong. This tree which is now 11
feet tall on the place of Mr. Joe Williams at Langdon, Mississippi, is
one of the few that is now growing in the United States. There is one in
Southern California. It probably would be perfectly hardy along the Gulf
coast. Just how good a bearer it is going to prove I do not know but it
is very interesting even to register the fact that the plant is
established in the Southern States.
The _Macadamia ternifolia_, or Queensland nut, is not quite so well
known in Queensland as I thought it was. A very brilliant young man from
Australia, by the name of Johnston, passed through my office the other
day and I showed him the photograph of the Macadamia and to my chagrin
he did not know much about it, although he was a very good botanist and
a very keen man. He said "We do not pay much attention to these things
over there." That is really characteristic of many of the foreign plants
that we have brought in. They are not developed in their own countries
any more than some of the fruits which we have in this country are not
developed by us. Mr. Littlepage and I are going out in a day or two to
see if we can find some larger papaws. Now the papaw has been just as
badly neglected by the Americans as the Macadamia by the Australians and
it may be that the only way to get the papaw developed is to send it to
some other country and get them to develop it. We do not always develop
our own possibilities.
This is a tree grown in Avon Park, Florida. It interests me very much
because it looks as if it would be a good bearer, is suited to the sandy
lands of southern and central Florida, seems to be quite hardy and is a
beautiful nut. It will vie with any other edible nut that I know of.
This tree is in the Royal Palm Gardens in Palm Beach. The trees were
brought in by us about 1905 or 1906.
This is a tree in Cuba where it is perfectly at home.
This gives you an idea of the character of the nut in a bunch. This is
the nut. The shells when opened are as attractive as anything I know of.
This is a very thick walled variety. We have much thinner walled forms
that have come from Hawaii where it is now being grown. The dark part is
a maroon brown and the lighter part is a brilliant creamy yellow.
Altogether it is an extremely attractive nut, an excellent eating nut
and has very good food qualities. We have had them analyzed, and all the
data are at the disposal of you gentlemen at any time you wish to
consult our files.
One of the first pieces of foreign work I was asked to do for the
government was to get and import the hard-shelled almonds of Spain. Most
of you have eaten the Jordan almond and I imagine most of you think it
comes from California, but there are very few Jordans grown in
California and, so far as the investigations go which I have been able
to make in California in co-operation with the candy manufacturers, I
have discovered that the California growers are not growing the best
almond in the world. That the IXL and the Nonpareil and other almonds
are not considered sufficiently good for such men as Lowney to use in
the manufacture of their almond candies was a surprise to me. And the
reason? In the first place the skin of the kernel itself is too thick,
the nut is too brittle and it has not the flavor of the imported nut. I
was shocked the other day to read from cover to cover a bulletin on the
subject of Almonds, and to find that not one word was said of flavor. It
had to be a good cracker; but the marketable qualities did not take into
consideration the question of the _flavor of the kernel, its hardness or
the thickness of skin_.
This picture on the screen was taken in southeastern Spain. These are
the almond crackers of Spain and a poorer lot of people I have never
visited in my life. The little children, not over four years old,
instead of playing as ours play, carry around with them in their hands
little bundles of wheat straw which they braid with their hands as they
play, making sombreros which are shipped to the Argentine. It is a very
poor country where these grow. The soil Is very thin and very dry and
these almond trees grow on the hillsides. It was with an unpleasant
feeling that I took these cuttings from southeastern Spain, and brought
them to America. I got them from the trees that were bearing these
almonds, they were budded in California and we know where the trees are
growing in California from these buds.
This is a view in one of these hillside plantations of southeastern
Spain with two of the almond growers.
This is a view in the plains region near Valencia showing both the hard
shelled almonds and the soft shelled ones. The soft shelled are those
which are easily cracked with the fingers while the hard shelled have to
be broken with a hammer or an instrument. It is these hard shelled
almonds that we have been interested in getting.
I have not kept in touch with this almond situation as I would have if I
had been a specialist on almonds instead of spreading my energies out
over the whole field and it is time someone really got into the almond
business. I once traveled fifty miles from Bobadilla, Spain to the next
railway station between solid walls of seedling almonds in bloom. No
American has ever been to these seedling orchards to see what they are.
It should be possible to find in those rows that are now 25 years old
late flowering varieties which would be adapted to the conditions in
California or early flowering varieties which would cross pollinate the
Jordan almond. But we have not had the extra man with which to do this
and carry out the other things we have been obliged to do. The
interesting thing about this Jordan almond is that it behaves
differently in our country than it does over in Spain. You notice how
smooth each one of these almonds is. There is no sharp keel on the
Spanish grown Jordan almond at all. It is smooth all around. Here are
the almonds grown in California from the scions which I brought in. You
see how these "keels" are developed and the nut has also become more
pointed. We have not had an opportunity to investigate this thing
thoroughly, but I am convinced that this is an environmental effect. Dr.
W. A. Taylor has suggested that the fact that the Jordan flowers before
any other variety comes out may mean that the California nuts are the
result of self fertilization and this self fertilization may be the
cause of their different shape and texture. Either that or the bud wood
which I brought over from Spain was not representative of the Jordan
variety although I picked it from trees that were bearing these nuts and
I saw the nuts and they were typical. Of course it is possible that on
the bud stocks which I brought over there was this hereditary tendency
to produce these keels. However, we have made importations of the Jordan
almond since then with the same result. One of these was grown in
California in the desert region and one in Niles where John Rock, the
great pioneer horticulturist of California, had his orchards. Both of
them behaved in the same way. I sent some of the best kernels from these
imported Jordan almonds to Mr. Lowney, the candy manufacturer who
imports large quantities of Jordan almonds from Spain, and he reported
that he could not use them for his candy manufacture because they were
too hard and the skin too tough.
One of the most interesting experiences of my life was in 1903 when I
visited a French barber in a little town called Nevada City, California,
in the foothills of the Sierras. He had come over to this country
without a penny and had set up a barber shop in this little mining
village of Nevada City. He had saved from his fees for cutting people's
hair and shaving them, $3,000. He had bought a piece of barren hillside
which everybody laughed at him for buying; and he sent an order for
$2,500 worth of nut trees and fruit trees to a nursery firm in his old
home in France. He did this without even having an irrigating system
with which to irrigate those plants when they arrived. He told me with
tears in his eyes how he had worked night and day, carrying buckets of
water to save this collection of plants when it arrived from France.
When I visited Felix Gillett in his plantation there, which he called
the _Barren Hill Nursery_, I felt that I had never seen a more
delightful spot in my life. It was a kind of a paradise which he had
built up by his love for plants and his wonderful knowledge of the
varieties which he handled. He certainly was one of the great experts of
this country in the nut and fruit industry, particularly the nut
industry. It is his collection of hazelnuts which Mr. Reed spoke of as
having found its way into Mr. Quarnburg's hands. In fact I was at Mr.
Quarnburg's place a year ago last summer and learned that he got his
first start from this little French barber in the mountains of Nevada.
This is Felix Gillett standing beside the first Jordan almond tree in
America. The difficulty with the Jordan tree in this section was that it
flowered too early and too few crops were produced. We have tried a
good many sections for the almond and one of the problems, in my
opinion, is the development of stocks for it. Here is the IXL on one of
Meyer's Chinese stocks (_Amygdalus davidiana_). It does very well on
this stock in the region of San Antonio, Texas. But the future of this
almond business ought to have been told you by Meyer after he came back
from his trip in Western China. These bushes are of the Tangutian
almond, a little bush almond; growing occasionally 15 or 18 or 20 feet
in height and hardy. It was Meyer's plan, had he lived, to find some
place in Southwest Colorado in which to breed hardy almonds that would
cover those hillsides with a food producing plant. I believe had he
lived he would have done that for we have gotten together already for
the breeders a number of forms of great promise. Mr. Wight of the Office
of Pomological Investigations is now in California doing breeding work,
and I hope his life will be spared so that he can produce a practical
bush almond. My object in throwing this photograph on the screen is to
show you a hillside covered with a food producing plant which has never
yet received the attention of human beings, and yet if studied might
lead to the production of an entirely new type of almond which will
probably grow as far north as the Dakotas.
Jumping from the Dakotas to Florida I want to introduce to you the
Candle Nut or Kukui nut of the Hawaiian Islands which is growing in the
sandy regions of the tropical belt of Florida. If you will read the
literature you will find that it is referred to as a cathartic,
resembling in this respect the castor bean. The problem is whether the
candle nut as grown in Florida is poisonous or not. Prof. Simpson is
growing in his yard in Florida a tree of this Kukui nut and has eaten
these nuts for years, and he just sent me a couple quarts of them from
his tree and I have tried them on my friends with no injurious results
whatever. The thing to look out for is this fetish, this superstition of
poison. This is a very hard-shelled nut, very oily and resembles
somewhat the Brazil nut. If a market can be made for it, and there does
not seem to be any reason why there cannot, there is no reason that they
cannot be grown and they will be grown in southern Florida. That country
which in 1898 was a wilderness is now developing very rapidly as a
region of homes and what they want is plants that they can grow down
there that they can live upon.
On the left is one of these trees which has a good many nuts on it. It
is in Miami, Florida. This is a branch of one of these Kukui nuts in
Miami.
This is probably the least known of any of the nuts. It is the Yeheb
nut. It belongs to the order of Leguminosae and they tell us it is so
sweet, having between 21 and 22 per cent of sugar, that the native Arab
will desert his dates and rich diet, which is the ordinary diet of that
region, and take to the Yeheb whenever it comes into fruit. This Yeheb
shrub grows in the deserts of Italian Somaliland and ought to succeed in
our southwestern country. During the war there was attached to the
Italian Embassy the Italian Explorer Captain Vanutelli, who had the
distinction of having been captured by a savage chief in Abyssinia and
bound for over two months to a black Abyssinian slave. When I spoke to
him about this Yeheb nut he said, "Yes, I have eaten it. It is a
wonderful nut. Some day I will get you some of it." When the shipment
came there were two tons of nuts and I was a little surprised to say the
least. They were brought on camel back over the deserts. During the war
they took eight or nine months to get to Washington and when they
arrived they were all dead. Notwithstanding many attempts this nut is
not grown in the United States but we will have it. It is very
thin-shelled, the kernels come out whole and have a very sweet, delicate
flavor.
You have just come from Dr. Van Fleet's chestnuts. You know that this is
the Chinese chestnut (_Castanea mollissima_) which Meyer found in China.
Dr. Van Fleet would probably tell you this is not the way to prune them
if you want to increase the chances of these Chinese chestnuts
withstanding the bark disease. You are probably familiar with the fact
that Meyer discovered over in China on this species the original
chestnut bark disease which has destroyed our chestnuts in this country.
He found that this variety was highly resistant but not entirely immune
to the disease. Dr. Galloway, who is handling the propagation and
distribution of these Chinese chestnuts, for our office, wishes to have
it understood that in the distribution of these which we will make in
the spring we desire to have them sent out in blocks; we would rather
not distribute these Chinese chestnuts in single specimens but would be
very glad to consider offers from people who have a quarter or a half of
an acre that they want to plant. We want to get some idea of the
behavior of this species as an orchard crop.
This illustrates the way, as I understand it, that Dr. Van Fleet thinks
the trees should be treated, on the left; the way they should not be
treated on the right. They seem to be much more susceptible to the
disease when pruned up in this neat orchard fashion.
One of Meyer's photographs taken at Fanshan, northeast of Pekin, where
he found the chestnut bark disease. This is the way the trees appeared.
This gives you some idea of the size of Chinese chestnuts which he got.
Those back on the hills are all Chinese chestnuts on rather poor soil as
he explains in his description of the photographs.
This is an orchard of Chinese chestnuts as planted by the Chinese on the
richer soils of the low lands which show larger trees. Even when full
sized they do not compare with our American chestnut but are old enough
to show you that they have not been killed by this bark disease.
These trees show signs of the disease but that they have a high degree
of resistance is apparently beyond dispute. This shows the black scar
near the top which Meyer diagnoses as the remains of the chestnut bark
disease.
The scar there in the crotch of this chestnut tree indicates the degree
of resistance of this species. Just how it is going to behave here in
America no one can tell but that it would be possible to grow orchards
of these Chinese chestnuts with the care which you exercise in growing
pears or even peaches I think is a pretty safe guess.
Meyer remarks that this tree is probably a century old and with signs of
this disease on it. Here is one that he marks as between two and three
centuries old.
This, gentlemen, is the newest arrival in this country coming from East
Africa near Zanzibar. In Curtis's magazine there is published an account
of this nut after Mr. Playfair a British subject who had lived on the
island of Zanzibar. This is one of the most curious and most interesting
nuts that has been brought to our attention.
It is borne by a climbing vine the stem of which sometimes reaches six
or seven inches in diameter. The fruit is between two and one-half and
three feet long and eight inches in diameter, and bears between 250 and
264 of these large seeds about the size of chestnuts and with a delicate
flavored. In 1884 this Mr. Playfair sent some of these nuts to England,
but we have just discovered them so to speak. They will probably grow in
our tropical possessions and we must not overlook the fact that after
all there is a distinct drift in our agriculture towards the development
of that part of the globe which has been so overlooked by
horticulturists in the past. It is not at all impossible that some of
you who are here in this audience today will buy that Playfairia on the
markets.
I thank you very much indeed for your attention.
* * * * *
THE PRESIDENT: The hour is late. What Dr. Kellogg may have to say I know
will interest you all greatly but it might better be said tomorrow when
we are fresh and the attendance will probably be larger than it is this
evening. If there is nothing further to come before the meeting tonight
we will take a recess until 9:30 in the morning.
The convention adjourned until 9:30 a. m. Friday, October 8.
MORNING SESSION FRIDAY OCTOBER 8, 1920
The session was called to order by President Linton at 10 o'clock.
THE PRESIDENT: I wish first to beg the pardon of the membership of the
Association for the little time that I have been able to give to the
preparation of this particular paper. To illustrate how limited that
time has been, starting from Michigan prior to our meeting yesterday I
had less than twenty-four hours to get to Washington. It was necessary
that I should call a meeting together at a little town in Michigan where
the regular train did not stop. In order to get that train it was
necessary to send a man to buy a ticket to that particular point and as
he climbed off that train I climbed on. The conductor thought we should
be held up for a conspiracy for stopping a train of that character. On
reaching Detroit there were a few minutes between trains. After landing
in Buffalo I found that there were fifteen minutes to make connections,
and after getting on that train I found our good Brother Pomeroy aboard
and he had some fine drinks and other things from his home farm so that
it was really the midnight hour before I could commence on this
document.
PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS
HONORABLE WILLIAM S. LINTON, SAGINAW, MICHIGAN
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:
I well realize that it is an extreme honor that has come to me in having
been named as your President, conferring the privilege also of presiding
at this important meeting, your Tenth Annual Session. It has been my lot
for almost three score years to mingle largely in civic affairs through
organized efforts, for man's betterment along many lines. But with all
this experience I do not recall any single group, or undertaking of
greater possible and probable value to the people of this country and
especially the next and all future generations than the purpose for
which we gather today. It is of such vast importance that earnestly and
enthusiastically we find foremost in the work, "the best equipped, most
intelligent, progressive and successful Agricultural Department" of any
government on earth. We are signally honored by the co-operation of one
of the most important members of the President's Cabinet, the Secretary
of Agriculture, assisting in our program by the presence of leading
officials of his staff, all endeavoring in every possible way to supply
excellent sustaining foods to mankind, and to add from many choice
products of field or of forest, to the joy and comforts of living.