[Illustration: Eat more nutsCarl Weschcke author]

GROWING NUTS IN THE NORTH

A personal story of the author's experience of 33 years with nut culturein Minnesota and Wisconsin. Includes his failures as well as finalsuccesses. 

Scientific as well as readable for the amateur horticulturist with manyillustrations. Tells how to grow and to propagate nut bearing trees andshrubs. 

By CARL WESCHCKE

Published

WEBB PUBLISHING CO. 

ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA, U. S. A. 

1953

Copyright 1954

CARL WESCHCKE

ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA

Introduction

GROWING NUTS IN THE NORTH

Only a few books have been written on the subject of nut trees and theirbearing habits, and very little of that material applies to theirpropagation in cold climates. For these reasons I am relating some ofthe experiences I have had in the last thirty-two years in raising nuttrees in Wisconsin. To me, this has been a hobby with results bothpractical and ornamental far beyond my original conception. I hope thatthe information I am giving will be of help and interest to those who, like myself, enjoy having nut-bearing trees in their dooryards, and thatit will prevent their undergoing the failures and disappointments Isometimes met with in pioneering along this line. Since my purpose is togive advice and assistance to those whose interest parallels mine byrelating my successes and failures and what I learned from each, I haveincluded only those details of technique which are pertinent. 

It is a fine thing to have a hobby that takes one out-of-doors. That initself suggests healthful thought and living. The further association ofworking with trees, as with any living things, brings one into theclosest association with nature and God. I hope this book may helpsomeone achieve that attitude of life, in which I have found such greatpleasure and inner satisfaction. 

Anyone wishing to make a planting of a few nut trees in his dooryard ora small orchard planting should join the Northern Nut Growers'Association. This Association can be joined by writing the currentsecretary, but since that office may be changed from time to time, persons applying for membership should write George L. Slate of GenevaExperiment Station, Geneva, New York, or Dr. H. L. Crane, PrincipalHorticulturist, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of PlantIndustry, Beltsville, Maryland, or the Author. The first president wasDr. Robert T. Morris, New York City, N. Y. , 1910-1911, the Associationbeing founded by Dr. W. C. Deming of Westchester, New York, who calledthe first meeting in 1910. 

Each year a report was printed of the proceedings of the Annual Meetingand exclusive of the 1952 meeting, the Reports which are in substantialbook form number forty-two. Most of these Reports can be obtained bywriting to the secretary, the total library of these Reportsconstituting one of the best authorities for nut tree planting in thenorthern hemisphere of the United States than any extant. 

The author acknowledges with thanks the consistent encouraging praisefrom his father, Charles Weschcke, of the work involved in nut growingexperiments, also for his financial assistance, thus making thepublication of this book possible and available to readers at a nominalprice. 

The editor of the greater part of this book, Allison Burbank Hartman (adescendent of the great Luther Burbank), is entitled to great praise andthanks for the interest and work she put forth. 

Grateful acknowledgment is made to William Kuehn, the artist. He hadbeen associated with the author in Boy Scout work, also became a part ofthe nut growing experiments in Northern Wisconsin, which work wasinterrupted by World War II. 

Acknowledgment is hereby made with gratitude to Dr. J. W. McKay of theU. S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C. ; Harry Weber ofCincinnati, Ohio; Ford Wilkinson, Rockport, Ind. ; Fayette Etter, Lehmasters, Pa. ; Dr. W. C. Deming, Litchfield, Conn. ; Clarence A. Reed, Washington, D. C. ; Dr. J. Russell Smith, Swarthmore, Pa. ; George S. Slate, Urbana, Ill. ; Herman Last, Steamboat Rock, Iowa, and many otherprofessors and horticulturists who lent their time and effort assistingme in my experiments throughout the years. And last but not least, theauthor is indebted to his secretary, Dorothy Downie, for tirelessefforts in re-writing the manuscript many times which was necessary incompiling this book. 

GROWING NUTS IN THE NORTH

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 First Encounters

Chapter 2 First Attempts

Chapter 3 Black Walnuts

Chapter 4 Hazels and Filberts

Chapter 5 Hazels and/or Filberts

Chapter 6 Pecans and Their Hybrids

Chapter 7 Hickory the King

Chapter 8 Butternut

Chapter 9 Pioneering With English Walnuts in Wisconsin

Chapter 10 Other Trees

Chapter 11 Pests and Pets

Chapter 12 Storing and Planting Seeds

Chapter 13 Tree Planting Methods

Chapter 14 Winter Protection of Grafts and Seedlings

Chapter 15 Tree Storage

Chapter 16 Suggestions on Grafting Methods

Chapter 17 Grafting Tape Versus Raffia

Chapter 18 Effects of Grafting on Unlike Stocks

Chapter 19 Distinguishing Characteristics of Scions

Chapter 20 Hybridizing

Chapter 21 Toxicity Among Trees and Plants

Conclusion

Chapter 1

FIRST ENCOUNTERS

Almost everyone can remember from his youth, trips made to gather nuts. Those nuts may have been any of the various kinds distributed throughoutthe United States, such as the butternut, black walnut, beechnut, chestnut, hickory, hazel or pecan. I know that I can recall very well, when I was a child and visited my grandparents in New Ulm and St. Peter, in southern Minnesota, the abundance of butternuts, black walnuts andhazels to be found along the roads and especially along the Minnesotaand Cottonwood river bottoms. Since such nut trees were not to be foundnear Springfield, where my parents lived, which was just a little toofar west, I still associate my first and immature interest in this kindof horticulture with those youthful trips east. 

The only way we children could distinguish between butternut and blackwalnut trees was by the fruit itself, either on the tree or shaken down. This is not surprising, however, since these trees are closely related, both belonging to the family _Juglans_. The black walnut is known as_Juglans nigra_ and the butternut or white walnut as _Juglans cinera_. The similarity between the trees is so pronounced that the mostexperienced horticulturist may confuse them if he has only the trees infoliage as his guide. An experience I recently had is quite suggestiveof this. I wished to buy some furniture in either black walnut ormahogany and I was hesitating between them. Noting my uncertainty, thesalesman suggested a suite of French walnut. My curiosity and interestwere immediately aroused. I had not only been raising many kinds ofwalnut trees, but I had also run through my own sawmill, logs of walnutand butternut. I felt that I knew the various species of walnut verythoroughly. So I suggested to him:

"You must mean Circassian or English walnut, which is the same thing. Itgrows abundantly in France. You are wrong in calling it French walnut, though, because there is no such species. "

He indignantly rejected the name I gave it, and insisted that it wasgenuine French walnut. 

"Perhaps, " I advised him, "that is a trade name to cover the realorigin, just as plucked muskrat is termed Hudson seal. "

That, too, he denied. We were both insistent. I was sure of my ownknowledge and stubborn enough to want to prove him wrong. I pulled adrawer from the dresser of the "French walnut" suite and asked him tocompare its weight with that of a similar drawer from a black walnutsuite nearby. Black walnut weighs forty pounds per cubic foot, whilebutternut weighs only twenty-five. He was forced to admit the differenceand finally allowed my assertion to stand that "French walnut" wasbutternut, stained and finished to simulate black walnut. Since it wouldhave been illegal to claim that it was black walnut, the attractive butmeaningless label of "French walnut" had been applied. Although it isless expensive, I do not mean to imply that butternut is not anexcellent wood for constructing furniture. It ranks high in quality andis probably as durable as black walnut. I do say, though, that it wasnecessary for me to know both the species names and the relative weightsof each wood to be able to distinguish between them indisputably. 

An instance in which the nuts themselves were useless for purposes ofidentification occurred when I sent some black walnuts to the Divisionof Pomology at Washington, D. C. These were the Ohio variety which I hadgrafted on butternut roots. The tree had been bearing for three or fouryears but this was the first year the nuts had matured. During theirbearing period, these black walnuts had gradually changed in appearance, becoming elongated and very deeply and sharply corrugated likebutternuts although they still retained the black walnut flavor. Becauseof this mixture of characteristics, the government experts had greatdifficulty in identifying the variety, although the Ohio was well knownto them. 

Another variety of black walnut, the Thomas, I have also known to beinfluenced by the butternut stock on which it was grafted, when in 1938, one of my trees bore black walnuts whose meat had lost itscharacteristic flavor and assumed that of the butternut. 

[Illustration: _A--Genuine original Ohio Black Walnut from parent tree_

_B--Nut produced by grafting Ohio on Butternut_]

I also liked to pick hazelnuts when I was a boy. These are probably theleast interesting among the wild nuts since they are usually small andhard to crack. There is much variation in wild hazels, however, and manypeople may recall them as being reasonably large. One of the two speciesabundant in Minnesota, _Corylus cornuta_ or Beak hazel, has fine, needle-like hairs on its husk which are sure to stick into one's fingersdisagreeably. When the husk is removed, _Corylus cornuta_ resembles asmall acorn. It does not produce in southern Minnesota and centralWisconsin as well as the common hazel, _Corylus Americana_, does, nor isits flavor as pleasing to most people. It is lighter in color than thecommon hazel and has a thinner shell. Of course, some hazels areintermediate or natural hybrids between these two species, and if thenuts of such hybrids are planted, they generally revert to one of theparents when mature enough to bear. This natural hybridization occursamong all plants, between those of the same species, the same genera orthe same family. It is very rare between plants of different families. The process is a very important one in horticulture and I shall explainsome of the crosses which are well-known later in this book. 

Chapter 2

FIRST ATTEMPTS

When I was about fifteen years old, my family moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where my home now is and where my experimental work with nutswas begun. St. Paul is in the 45th north parallel, but although it isfarther north, it is as favorable for the growth of nut trees as New Ulmor St. Peter, because it lies in the Mississippi River valley and isfarther east. Bodies of water and altitudes have as great an influenceon plant life as latitude; at least, they can have, and these arefactors that must be understood thoroughly. Soil conditions also vitallyaffect plant life, particularly deep-rooted trees such as nut treesusually are. Each has its own requirements; hickory, Japanese heartnutand Persian walnuts favor an alkaline soil, which chestnuts, wantingacid will not grow in; chestnuts thrive best in a slightly acid, well-drained soil; hazels will grow in either alkaline or acid soil aswill black walnuts and butternuts; almonds need a light sandy soil, similar to that suitable to plums, pecans do well in either rich riverbottoms, which may be slightly acid, or in clay soil on high hillsideswhich are alkaline. A deep, sandy or graveltype soil is usually acceptedby the chestnuts even though it may not be slightly acid, and successfulorchards have been grown on a deep clay soil on hillsides. 

It is not always easy to obtain black walnuts and butternuts to eat. Hickory nuts have been a favorite of mine since I first tasted them andI often have found it difficult to procure fresh ones, ones that werenot slightly rancid. Because I liked eating these nuts, I thought Iwould try to grow some for my own consumption and so avoid having todepend on a grocer's occasional supply of those shipped in, always alittle stale. Raising nuts appealed to me economically too, sinceobviously trees would need little care, and after they had begun to bearwould supply nuts that could be sold at interesting prices. 

I turned the back yard of my home in St. Paul into an experimental plot. Here I set out some of each kind of tree I planted or grafted at my farmin Wisconsin. I had purchased a farm 35 miles east of St. Paul, beyondthe influence of the St. Croix River Valley. My experiments really beganthere. The farm was covered with butternut trees, hazel bushes, and awild hickory called "bitternut. " This last is well-named for I havenever found an animal other than a squirrel that could endure its nuts. Possibly the white-footed mouse or deer-mouse could--I don't know. Heusually eats anything a squirrel does. I learned to appreciate thesebitternut trees later and they became a source of experience andinterest to me as I learned to graft on them many varieties, species andhybrids of hickory. They served as a root-system and shortened thelength of time required to test dozens of hickory types, helping me inthat way, to learn within one lifetime what types of nuts are practicalfor growing in the north. 

Remembering the nut trees in southern Minnesota, I first thought toprocure black walnut and hickory trees from some farmer in thatdistrict. Through acquaintances in St. Peter, I did locate some blackwalnut trees only to find that it was impractical to dig and transporttrees of the size I wanted. A nursery near St. Paul supplied me withsome and I bought twenty-eight large, seedling black walnut trees. I wastoo eager to get ahead with my plans and I attempted, the first yearthese trees were planted, to graft all of them. My ability to do thiswas not equal to my ambition though, and all but two of the trees werekilled. I was successful in grafting one of them to a Stabler blackwalnut; the other tree persisted so in throwing out its natural sproutsthat I decided it should be allowed to continue doing so. That nativeseedling tree which I could not graft now furnishes me with bushels ofwalnuts each year which are planted for understocks. This is the namegiven to the root systems on which good varieties are grafted. 

In an effort to replace these lost trees, I inquired at the Universityof Minnesota Farm and was given the addresses of several nurserymen whowere then selling grafted nut trees. Their catalogues were so invitingthat I decided it would be quite plausible to grow pecans and Englishwalnuts at this latitude. So I neglected my native trees that year forthe sake of more exotic ones. One year sufficed; the death of my wholeplanting of English walnuts and pecans turned me back to my originalinterest. My next order of trees included grafted black walnuts of fouraccepted varieties to be planted in orchard form--the Stabler, Thomas, Ohio and Ten Eyck. 

I ordered a few hickories at the same time but these eventually died. Myexperience with hickories was very discouraging since they were myfavorite nuts and I had set my heart on growing some. I think I shouldhave given up attempting them had not one dealer, J. F. Jones, urgedthat I buy just three more hickory trees of the Beaver variety. He gaveme special instructions on how to prepare them against winter. I havealways felt that what he told me was indeed special and very valuablesince those three trees lived. Subsequently, I bought several hundreddollars worth of trees from him. More than that, we became friends. Ivisited him at his nurseries in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and he againdemonstrated his interest and generosity by giving me both horticulturalinformation and the kindest hospitality. My friendship with him was butone of many that I have formed while traveling and corresponding in theinterests of nut culture. True and lasting friends such men make, too, with no circumstances of selfish import to taint the pleasure of therelationship. 

Since I wanted to have many black walnut trees some day, I decided toplant ten bushels of black walnuts in rows. I thought I could latergraft these myself and save expense. The theory was all right but when Icame to practice it, I found I had not taken squirrels intoconsideration. These bushy-tailed rats dug up one complete bed whichcontained two bushels of nuts and reburied them in haphazard placesaround the farm. When the nuts started to sprout, they came up in thefields, in the gardens, and on the lawn--everywhere except where I hadintended them to be. I later was grateful to those squirrels, though, because, through their redistributing these nuts I learned a great dealabout the effect of soil on black walnut trees, even discovering thatwhat I thought to be suitable was not. The trees which the squirrelsplanted for me are now large and lend themselves to experimentalgrafting. On them I have proved, and am still proving, new varieties ofthe English walnut. 

The other eight bushels had been planted near a roadside and close tosome farm buildings. The constant human activity thereabouts probablymade the squirrels less bold, for although they carried off at least abushel of walnuts, about two thousand seedlings grew. I had plantedthese too close together and as the trees developed they became socrowded that many died. The remaining seedlings supplied me withroot-stocks for experimental work which proved very valuable. 

I have always suspected the squirrels of having been responsible for thefact that my first attempt to grow hickory seedlings was unsuccessful. Iplanted a quart of these nuts and not one plant came up. No doubt thesquirrels dug them up as soon as I planted them and probably theyenjoyed the flavor as much as I always have. 

In 1924 I ordered one hundred small beechnut trees, _Fagus ferruginea_, from the Sturgeon Bay Nurseries at Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. The companywas very generous and sent me three hundred of them. I planted thesetrees in a heavy clay soil with limestone running near the surface. Theygrew well the first year, except that there was heavy mortality duringcold weather. In working with these trees my lack of experience andhorticultural knowledge was against me. They could not tolerate the soiland within three years they were all dead. 

To give variety to the landscape at my farm, I planted several otherkinds of trees. Among these were Kentucky coffee-trees which havebeautiful bronze foliage in the spring and honey locusts. I planted fivehundred Douglas fir but unfortunately, I put these deep in the woodsamong heavy timber where they were so shaded that only a few lived. Later, I moved the surviving fir trees into an open field where theystill flourish. About two hundred fifty pines of mixed varieties--white, Norway and jack--that I planted in the woods, also died. 

I decided, then, that evergreens might do better if they were plantedfrom seeds. I followed instructions in James W. Toumey's "Seeding andPlanting in the Practice of Forestry, " in bed culture and spot seeding. In the latter one tears off the sod in favorable places and throws seedon the unprotected ground. In doing this, I ignored the naturalrequirements of forest practice which call for half-shade during thefirst two to three years of growth. Thousands of seedlings sprouted butthey all died either from disease or from attacks by cows and sheep. Oneshould never attempt to raise trees and stock in the same field. 

Because of these misfortunes, I determined to study the growth ofevergreens. I invested in such necessary equipment as frames and lathscreening. Better equipped with both information and material, I grewthousands of evergreen trees. Among the varieties of pine were:

 native White Pine --Pinus strobus Norway pine --Pinus silvestrus Mugho pine --Pinus pumila montana sugar pine --Pinus Lambertiana (not hardy in northern Wisconsin) Swiss stone --Pinus cembra (not hardy in northern Wisconsin) Italian stone --Pinus pinea (not hardy in northern Wisconsin) pinon --Pinus edulis (not hardy in northern Wisconsin) bull pine --Pinus Jeffreyi (hardy) jack pine --Pinus banksiana (very hardy) limber pine --Pinus flexilis (semi-hardy, a fine nut pine). 

Many of the limber pines came into bearing about fifteen years after theseed was planted. At that age they varied in height from three tofifteen feet. One little three-foot tree had several large cones full ofseed. Each tree varied in the quality and size of its seeds. Although itmight be possible to graft the best varieties on young seedling stocks, in all the hundreds of grafts I have made on pine, I have beensuccessful only once. I doubt that such a thing would ever be practicalfrom a commercial standpoint unless some new method were discovered bywhich a larger percentage of successful grafts could be realized. 

I cultivated the Douglas fir, white, Norway, and Colorado blue varietiesof spruce. Besides these, I planted balsam fir, red cedar, _JuniperusVirginiana_, and white cedar, _Arborvitae_. Practically all of thesetrees are still growing and many of them bear seed. 

I wish to describe the limber pine, _Pinus flexilis_, for it is not onlya good grower and quite hardy but it is also a very ornamental nut pinewhich grows to be a broad, stout-trunked tree 40 to 75 feet high. Theyoung bark is pale grey or silver; the old bark is very dark, in squareplates. The wood itself is light, soft and close-grained, having a colorthat varies from yellow to red. The needles, which are found in clustersof five, are slender, 1-1/2 to 3 inches long, and are dark green. Theyare shed during the fifth or sixth year. The buds of the tree are foundbunched at the branch tips and are scaly and pointed. The limber pinehas flowers like those of the white pine, except that they arerose-colored. Although the fruit is described as annual, I have foundthat, in this locality, it takes about fifteen months from the time theblossoms appear for it to reach maturity. That is, the fruit requirestwo seasons for growth, maturing its seeds the second September. Thecones of the limber pine, which vary from three to seven inches inlength, are purple, having thick rounded scales and being abruptlypeaked at the apex. The seeds are wingless or have only very narrowwings around them. 

With the idea of getting practical results sooner, since nut treesmature slowly, I interplanted my nut trees with varieties of apple, plumand cherry. Doing so also served to economize on ground, sinceultimately nut trees require a great deal of space for best growth. Walnut trees, for example, should be set 40 to 60 feet apart in eachdirection. 

[Illustration: _Pinus Flexilus nut seeds, Natural Size_]

I learned a variety of facts during these first years of trial anderror. I discovered, for instance, that iron fence posts rust away in anacid soil; that one must use cedar or oak. Conversely, in alkaline soil, iron will last indefinitely, but that the nitrogenous bacteria willquickly rot wooden posts. I found that the secret of growing hickoriessuccessfully lies in giving them plenty of room, with no forest treesaround to cut off their supply of sunlight and air. I learned that it isimpractical to graft a large forest tree of butternut or hickory. Incidental to that, I learned that a branch of a butternut tree whichlooks large enough to support a man's weight near the trunk, will not doso when the branch is green and alive, but that a dead branch of similarsize will. Contrariwise, even a small green limb of a bitternut-hickorywill bear my weight, but an old limb, though several inches thick, becomes so brittle after it is dead for several years that it will breakunder slight pressure. Fortunately, falls from trees do not usuallyresult in serious injuries but I did acquire quite a few bruiseslearning these distinctions. 

There is always a natural mortality in planting trees, but in thosefirst years, lacking badly-needed experience, I lost more than 75%. Nearly all of them started to grow but died during the first fewwinters. Those which survived were the start of a nursery filled withhardy trees which can endure the climate of the north. In looking back, I appreciate how fortunate I was in having sought and received advicefrom experienced nurserymen. Had I not done so, frequent failures wouldsurely have discouraged me. As it was, the successes I did have were anincentive which made me persist and which left me with faith enough inan ultimate success to go on buying seeds and trees and to make greaterand more varied experiments. 

Chapter 3

BLACK WALNUTS

I have spent more of my time cultivating black walnuts than any otherkind of nut tree and given more of my ground area over to them. Yet itwas with no great amount of enthusiasm that I started working with thesetrees. Obviously there could be nothing new or extraordinary resultingfrom my planting trees of this species either on my farm or at my St. Paul home, since there already were mature, bearing black walnut treesat both places. It was only with the idea that they would be anattractive addition to the native butternut groves that I decided toplant some black walnut seedlings. 

This did not prove feasible as I first attempted it. I had engaged a Mr. Miller at St. Peter to procure wild black walnut trees for me since theygrew near that town. He was to dig these trees with as much of the rootsystem included as possible and ship them to my farm. But the winterseason came before this had been accomplished and both Mr. Miller and I, deciding the idea was not as practical as we had hoped it would be, abandoned it. Later that same autumn I found that a nursery just outsideof St. Paul had several rows of overgrown black walnut trees which theywould sell me quite reasonably. I bought them and sent instructions tothe tenant at my farm to dig twenty-eight large holes in which to plantthem. Packed in straw and burlap, the trees weighed about 500 pounds, Ifound. This was much too heavy and cumbersome to pack in my old touringcar, so I hunted around for some sort of vehicle I could attach to mycar as a trailer. In an old blacksmith shop, I came upon an antiquatedpair of buggy wheels. They looked as though they were ready to fallapart but I decided that with repairs and by cautious driving, theymight last out the trip of thirty-five miles. So I paid the blacksmithhis asking price--twenty-five cents. The spokes rattled and the steeltires were ready to roll off their wooden rims but the axles werestrong. My father-in-law and I puttered and pounded, strengthened andtightened, until we felt our semi-trailer was in good-enough order. Itmight have been, too, if the roads in the country hadn't been rough andfrozen so hard that they hammered on the solid, unresisting tires andspokes until, almost within sight of the farm, one wheel dismallycollapsed. As the wheel broke, the trailer slid off the road into aditch, so that it was necessary to send on to the farm for the plowhorses to haul out the car, the trailer and the trees. The horsesfinished hauling the trees to that part of the farm where holes had beendug for them. I had told my tenant to dig large holes and large holes hehad certainly dug! Most of them were big enough to bury one of thehorses in. Such was my amateurish first endeavor. 

It was not until December of that year, 1919, that the twenty-eighttrees were finally planted. Although the ground was already somewhatfrozen and the trees poorly planted as a result, most of them started togrow in the spring. They would probably be living now if I had not beentoo ambitious to convert them from seedlings into grafted varieties suchas the Ohio, Thomas and Stabler, which I had learned of during awinter's study of available nut-culture lore. I obtained scionwood fromJ. F. Jones, part of which I put on these abused trees and the remainderof which I grafted on butternut trees. At that time, I must admit, I wasmuch more interested in trying the actual work of grafting than I was indeveloping or even conceiving a methodical plan to be worked out over aperiod of years. 

In order to facilitate my grafting work that spring, I pitched a tent inthe woods and lived there for a week at a time, doing my own cooking androughing it generally. Cows were being pastured in this part of thewoods and they were very interested in my activities. If I were absentfor a long time during the day, on my return I would find thatnoticeable damage had been done to my tent and food supplies by thesecurious cows. While preparing some scionwood inside the tent one day, Iheard a cow approaching and picked up a heavy hickory club which I hadfor protection at night, intending to rush out and give the animal aproper lesson in minding its own business. The cow approached the tentfrom the side opposite the door and pushed solidly against the canvaswith its nose and head. This so aggravated me that I jumped over to thatpart of the tent and gave the cow a hard whack over the nose with myhickory stick. It jumped away fast for such a big animal. This seemed toend all curiosity on the part of these cows and I was allowed to carryon my work in peace. 

With beginner's luck, I succeeded with many of the butternut grafts, aswell as with some of the grafts on the twenty-eight planted blackwalnuts. However, all of the grafted black walnut trees ultimately diedwith the exception of one grafted Stabler. This large tree was amonument of success for twenty years, bearing some nuts every year andmaturing them, and in a good season, producing bushels of them. Oneother of these seedlings survived but as it would not accept any grafts, I finally let it live as nature intended. 

In 1921, I began ordering grafted black walnut trees, as well as graftedhickory trees from J. F. Jones, who had the largest and best known ofthe nurseries handling northern nut trees. Some of these grafted treeswere also planted at my home in St. Paul, using the two locations aschecks against each other. The site in St. Paul eventually provedunsatisfactory because of the gravelly soil and because the trees weretoo crowded. The varieties of black walnuts I first experimented withwere the Thomas, Ohio, Stabler and Ten Eyck, which were planted byhundreds year after year. If I had not worked on this large scale therewould be no reason for me to write about it today as the mortality ofthese black walnuts was so high that probably none would have lived toinduce in me the ambition necessary to support a plan involving lengthy, systematic experimentation. Some of these early trees survive today, however, and although few in number, they have shown me that theexperiment was a worthy one since it laid the foundation for resultswhich came later. In fact, I feel that both the time and money I spentduring that initial era of learning were investments in which valuabledividends of knowledge and development are still being paid. 

In grafting black walnuts on butternut trees, I very foolishly attemptedto work over a tree more than a foot in diameter and I did not succeedin getting a single graft to grow on it. Other younger trees, from threeto six inches in diameter, I successfully grafted. Some of these arestill living but clearly show the incompatibility of the two specieswhen black walnut is grafted on butternut. The opposite combination ofbutternut on black walnut is very successful and produces nuts earlierand in greater abundance than butternut does when grafted on its ownspecies. 

The expense of buying trees by hundreds was so great that after a year Idecided that I could very easily plant black walnuts to obtain the youngtrees needed as understocks. When they had grown large enough, I wouldgraft them over myself. I wrote to my friend in St. Peter, Mr. E. E. Miller, and he told me where I could obtain walnuts by the bushel. SoonI was making trips to the countryside around St. Peter buying walnutsfrom the farmers there. I planted about five bushels of these at theRiver Falls farm and the rest, another two bushels, at St. Paul. Soon Ihad several thousand young walnut trees which all proved hardy to thewinters. 

When pruning the black walnut trees purchased from Mr. Jones fortransplanting, I saved the tops and grafted them to the young trees witha fair degree of success. In a few years, I was using my own trees tofill up spaces left vacant by the mortality of the Pennsylvania-growntrees. I did not neglect seeding to provide stocks of the Eastern blackwalnut also, which is almost a different species from the local blackwalnut, but these seedling trees proved to be tender toward our wintersand only a few survived. After they had grown into large trees, thesefew were grafted to English walnuts. The difference between the Easternblack walnut and the local native black walnut is quite apparent whenthe two trees are examined side by side. Even the type of fruit isdifferent, although I do not know of any botanical authority who willconfirm my theory that they are different species. They are probably tobe considered as geographically distinct rather than as botanicallydifferent species. 

For several years I continued to graft black walnuts on butternut treeswith the intention of converting hundreds, perhaps thousands, of thesewild trees over to prolific, cultured black walnuts. I did not realizemy mistake in doing this until ten years had elapsed. I believed thatsince the tops were growing, the trees would shortly produce nuts. Todaythey are still growing, bigger and better, yet most of these graftedtrees bear no nuts, having only a crop of leaves. A few nuts result fromthese grafts, however, and some of the trees bear a handful of nuts fromtops of such size that one would expect the crops to be measured inbushels. The kind which bore the best was the Ohio variety. In anotherchapter, I shall relate parallel experience in hickory grafting which Icarried on simultaneously with grafting of black walnut on butternut. 

My first big disappointment in my black walnut orchard was when, inabout 1930, having a fairly good crop of nuts, I unsuccessfullyattempted to sell them to local stores. They were not interested inanything except walnut kernels and to them, a wild walnut kernel was thesame as a cultivated one as long as it was highly-flavored. This socooled my enthusiasm and hopes for a black walnut orchard that I ceasedexperimenting with them except to try out new varieties being discoveredthrough nut contests carried on by the Northern Nut Growers'Association. The 1926 contest produced a number of black walnutpossibilities, among them being such named varieties as the Rohwer, Paterson, Throp, Vandersloot, Pearl and Adams. 

The neglected and over-grown walnut seedlings now began to serve auseful purpose in grafting the new varieties which I obtained fortesting in this locality. These were propagated by obtaining scionwoodfrom the originators of the variety and grafting it on these seedlingtrees. My technical knowledge had increased by this time to such anextent that I was usually certain of one-half of the grafts growing. Thebehavior of the Rohwer and Paterson in 1937 invited nursery propagationon a greater scale than did other better-known types, because of theirqualities of hardiness and earlier-ripening. 

In the spring of 1937, these native seedlings were again offered to thespirit of propagation, when a large part of the scionwood of Englishwalnuts I had imported from the Carpathian mountains of Poland wasgrafted on them. The success of my grafting in this instance was onlyabout 1-1/2%, showing that something was decidedly wrong. Twoconclusions were possible: Either the scionwood had been injured bytransportation and the severe winter temperatures during January andFebruary of 1937 during which they were stored, or incompatibilityexisted between the imported walnuts and our local ones. My conclusionnow is that when these stocks are fifteen years old or more and arethrifty, they will support grafting of the Carpathian English walnutsmuch more successfully than they will in their first decade of growth. Results have shown that these local stocks will accept such grafts, however, and that crops of English walnuts will be produced. Thefertility of the soil must be maintained carefully, since the Englishwalnut top tends to overgrow its black walnut root-stock, and unlessnutritional substance for the support of these tops is fed to theroot-system, meager crops, if any, will result. 

I might note in comparison to the 1-1/2% success I had in this grafting, that during the same season I put several hundred scions of these sameEnglish walnuts on the Eastern black walnut stocks without a singlesuccessful graft occurring. 

In 1933 and 1934, many of these experimentally grafted walnuts, such asVandersloot, Paterson, and Rohwer as well as others, were planted inorchard formation. In digging these trees, we took care to get all ofthe root possible and to take a ball of dirt with the root. In spite ofthese precautions, some of the trees died, not having sufficientvitality and root development to withstand transplantation. This was aresult not only of the crowded condition under which the stocks hadgrown but also of the poor soil which had nourished them. The soil washeavy blue clay underlaid with limestone within two feet of the top ofthe ground. Enough trees were set out in orchard formation which aregrowing well and bearing annual crops, to give us the proof we need indrawing conclusions of superiority among these varieties. 

Black walnuts will keep for several years if they are properly dried andthen stored in a cool, but not too damp, place. Storing nuts in atticswhich are likely to become excessively hot in the summer time, causesrancidity sooner than any other method. Nuts keep very well in atticsduring the winter but they should be transferred to a basement duringhot weather. If the basement is very damp, though, nuts will mouldthere. For general storage, without having to move them from one placeto another for different seasons, nuts can be kept most practically in abarn or outside shed. The only precaution necessary under suchcircumstances is that they should be in a box or steel barrel to preventsquirrels and mice from feeding on them, since barns and sheds areeasily accessible to these animals. 

The kernels of black walnuts need not be discolored if the hulls of thefresh nuts are removed as soon as the nuts are ripe. At my farm, we havedone this with an ordinary corn-sheller. The nuts, having been hulledthis way, are then soaked in water for a few hours to remove any excesscoloring matter left on their shells, after which they are dried forseveral days out-of-doors, although not exposed to the sun since thismight cause them to crack open. Thorough drying is necessary beforesacking to prevent moulding. Kernels extracted from nuts treated thisway are very light in color like English walnuts. This enhances theirmarket value and they command a higher price when they are to be usedfor culinary purposes such as cake frosting and candies where there isexposure of large pieces or halves of the nut kernel. I find blackwalnuts are exceptionally delicious when used in a candy called divinityfudge. The strong flavor of the black walnut kernel although appreciatedby many people, is not as popular as that of the butternut, of whichmore is said in another chapter. 

The food value of black walnut kernels is high since they are composedof concentrated fat and protein, similar to the English walnut, thehickory nut and the pecan. There is also the advantage, which JohnHarvey Kellogg of Battle Creek, Michigan, has pointed out, that nuts area food of high purity being entirely free from disease bacteria. Onecould safely say of unshelled nuts that there is not a disease germ in acarload. 

There was a time when black walnut hulls were purchased by producers ofinsecticides. The black walnut hull, when dried and pulverized, producesa substance which gives body to the concentrated pyrethrum extract whichis the essential ingredient of many insecticides. 

One cannot leave a discussion of black walnuts without reflecting on thefurniture which has been possible only through the use of vast forestsof black walnut timber. Beautiful veneers have come from the burlwalnut, being formed by protuberances on the trunks of the trees nearthe surface of the ground. There is a variety of black walnut which wehave been experimenting with for quite a few years, called the Lamb, which has a beautifully figured grain. As this appears only in maturetimber, ours is not yet old enough to show it. 

I have found that the Ohio black walnut is prone to hybridize withbutternut trees in its vicinity and others have told me of itshybridizing with English walnut trees near it, which shows it to bealmost as vacillating in character as our Japanese walnuts or heartnuts. Ohio black walnuts, when planted, usually produce vigorous stocks, manyof which show hybridity of some sort. If one examines the nuts of theOhio and finds them dwarfed or deformed, he may be sure that they havebeen pollinized by something other than a black walnut. Planting suchnuts, then, will grow hybrid trees. Most of us have enough curiosity towant to try this as an experiment. 

Thomas walnut seedlings have produced more thrifty trees than Ohio nutshave. However, the best understocks are those produced from seeds ofnative grown trees. It is well understood that rarely does a specifictype such as the Ohio, Thomas or Stabler reproduce itself exactly fromseeds. In raising black walnut seedlings, my experience has taught methat the nuts should be planted in the fall and not too deep, one to twoinches below the surface being all the depth necessary. They may neversprout if they are four to six inches under ground. The black walnuttree is a glutton for food seemingly, it will use all the fertilizerthat it is given although, no doubt, there is a practical limit. It musthave plenty of food to produce successive crops of nuts, and barnyardmanure is the safest and most practical kind to use. This can be put onas a heavy mulch around the trees but some of it should also be spadedinto the ground. One must always remember that the feeding roots of atree are at about the same circumference as the tips of the branches sothat fertilizer put close to the trunk will do little good except invery young trees. Since 1936 we have been watching a small nativewalnut which came into bearing while in a nursery row. This tree boresuch fine thin-shelled easy-to-crack nuts and lent itself so readily tobeing propagated by graftage and had so many other good characteristicsthat we have selected it as representative of the black walnut varietiesfor the north and have named it the Weschcke walnut and patented thevariety. A list is here appended to show the order of hardiness andvalue based on our experience:

 1--Weschcke--very hardy--excellent cracking and flavor

 2--Paterson--very hardy--excellent cracking and flavor (originating in Iowa)

 3--Rohwer--very hardy--good cracker (originating in Iowa)

 4--Bayfield--very hardy--good cracker (originating in Northern Wisconsin)

 5--Adams (Iowa)--fairly hardy--good cracker

 6--Ohio--semi-hardy, excellent cracking and flavor (parent tree in Ohio)

 7--Northwestern--a new, good hardy nut

 8--Pearl--semi-hardy--good (from Iowa)

 9--Vandersloot--semi-hardy--very large

 10--Thomas--tender to our winters--otherwise very good (from Pennsylvania)

 11--Stabler--tender--many nuts single-lobed

 12--Throp--tender, many nuts single-lobed

A friend of mine, who lives in Mason, Wisconsin, discovered a blackwalnut tree growing in that vicinity. Since Mason is in the northernpart of the state, about 47° parallel north, this tree grows thefarthest north of any large black walnut I know of. I would estimate itsheight at about sixty-five feet and its trunk diameter at about sixteeninches at breast-height. Because of the short growing season there, thenuts do not mature, being barely edible, due to their shrinkage whiledrying. Some seasons this failure to mature nuts also occurs in suchvarieties as the Thomas, the Ohio and even the Stabler at my River Fallsfarm, which is nearly 150 miles south of Mason. Such nuts will sprout, however, and seedlings were raised from the immature nuts of thisnorthern tree. Incidentally these seedlings appear to be just as hardyin wood growth as their parent tree. I have also grafted scionwood fromthe original tree on black walnut stocks at my farm in order todetermine more completely the quality of this variety. Since grafted, these trees have borne large, easy to crack mature nuts and arepropagated under the varietal name (Bayfield) since the parent tree isin sight of Lake Superior at Bayfield, Wisconsin. 

Many of our best nut trees, from man's point of view, have inherentfaults such as the inability of the staminate bloom of the Weschckehickory to produce any pollen whatsoever, as has been scientificallyoutlined in the treatise by Dr. McKay under the chapter on hickories. Inthe Weschcke walnut we have a peculiarity of a similar nature as itaffects fruiting when the tree is not provided with other varieties toact as pollinators. It has been quite definitely established, byobservation over a period of ten or more years, that the pollen of theWeschcke variety black walnut does not cause fruiting in its ownpistillate blooms. Although this is not uncommon among some plants, suchas the chestnut and the filbert where it is generally the rule insteadof the exception, yet in the black walnuts species the pollen from itsown male (or staminate) flowers is generally capable of exciting theovule of the female (pistillate) flower into growth. Such species areknown as self-fertile. As in the case of ordinary chestnuts whichreceive no cross pollination, and the pistillate flowers develop intoperfect burrs with shrunken meatless, imperfect nuts, the Weschcke blackwalnut, when standing alone or when the prevailing winds prevent othernearby pollen from reaching any or but few of its pistillate bloom, goeson to produce fine looking average-sized nuts practically all of whichare without seed or kernels. Such therefore is the importance of knowingthe correct pollinators for each variety of nut tree. In theself-sterility of filberts the failure of self-pollination results in anabsence of nuts or in very few rather than a full crop of seedlessfruits such as the common chestnut and the Weschcke black walnutsproduces. This is the only black walnut that has come to the author'sattention where its pollen acting on its pistillate bloom has affectedthe production of nuts in just this way but the variety of black walnutknown as the Ohio, one of the best sorts for this northern climateexcept for hardiness, has often demonstrated that it has a peculiaritywhich might be caused by lack of outside pollen or because of the actionof its own pollen on its pistillate bloom. This peculiarity is the oftenfound one-sided development of the Ohio walnut kernel when the tree isisolated from other pollen bearing black walnuts. One lobe of the kernelis therefore full-meated while the other half or lobe is veryundernourished or it may be a thin wisp of a kernel as is the appearanceof the Weschcke variety in similar circumstances. 

[Illustration: _Stabler variety of Black Walnut grafted on a Minnesotaseedling stock bore many years but was winter killed. Photo by C. Weschcke_]

Cutting scionwood early one spring, I noticed that the sap was runningvery fast in the grafted Stabler tree previously referred to. Later whenI came back to inspect this tree, I noticed that the sap had congealedto syrupy blobs at the ends of the cut branches. My curiosity led me totaste this and I found it very sweet and heavy. I mean to experimentsome time in making syrup from the sap of this tree as I believe itssugar content to be much higher than that of the local sugar maple. Thismakes the Stabler a 3-purpose tree, the first being its nuts, the secondbeing the syrup, and the third being, at the end of its potentially longlife, a good-sized piece of timber of exceptionally high value. The treeis one of beauty, having drooping foliage similar to that of the weepingwillow. This is another point in its favor, its being an ornamental treeworthy of any lawn. However, the Stabler is now considered as a tendervariety and is not recommended for northern planting. 

[Illustration: _Stabler graft on old seedling grafted in May, 1938bearing in August of the same year. Photo by C. Weschcke_]

[Illustration: _Cut Leaf Black Walnut. Scions furnished by Harry Weberof Cincinnati, Ohio. Variety was hardy on Minnesota seedling for about 5years. Photo by C. Weschcke_]

The aesthetic value of the black walnut does not cease here since thereare some varieties which are exceptionally attractive. One of these isthe cut-leaf black walnut which has the ordinary compound leaf but whoseindividual leaflets are so scalloped and serrated that they resemble amale fern. Everyone who has seen one of these has evinced pleasurablesurprise at this new form of leaf and it may become very popular withhorticulturists in the future. Another interestingly different varietyis the Deming Purple walnut which, although orthodox in leaf form, has apurplish tint, bordering on red in some cases, coloring leaf, wood andnuts, resulting in a distinctly decorative tree. This tree was namedfor Dr. W. C. Deming who was the founder of the Northern Nut Growers'Association. Neither the Laceleaf nor Deming Purple are hardy for thisclimate but survived several years nevertheless before succumbing to oneof our periodical test winters. 

Chapter 4

HAZELS AND FILBERTS

In October 1921, I ordered from J. F. Jones, one hundred plants of whatis known as the Rush hazel which was, at that time, the best known ofthe propagated hazels. In ordering these, I mentioned the fact that Iexpected to get layered plants or grafted ones. Mr. Jones wrote me atonce to say that the plants he had were seedlings of the Rush hazelwhich are said to come very true to seed, but that if I did not wantthem as seedlings he would cancel the order. Rather than lacking aprofitable filler between the orchard trees, I accepted the order of onehundred plants and received from him a fine lot of hazels which tookgood root and began to grow luxuriantly. It was several years before anyof them began to bear and when one or two did, the nuts were not hazelsat all, but filberts and hybrids. In most cases these nuts were largerand better than those of the original Rush hazel. 

One of these seedlings grew into a bushy tree ten or twelve feet high. For several years it bore a crop which, though meager, was composed oflarge, attractive nuts shaped like those of the common American hazelbut very unlike the true Rush hazelnut. One year this tree began to failand I tried to save it or propagate it by layering and sprouting seeds. Unfortunately it did not occur to me at that time to graft it to a wildhazel to perpetuate it. I still lament my oversight as the tree finallydied and a very hardy plant was lost which was apparently able tofertilize its own blossoms. 

I ordered four Winkler hazel bushes from Snyder Bros. Of Center Point, Iowa, in March 1927, asking them to send me plants that were extrastrong and of bearing size. I planted these that spring but thefollowing summer was so dry that all four died. I ordered twelve moreWinklers in September for spring delivery, requesting smaller ones thistime (two to three feet). Half of these were shipped to me with bareroots, the others being balled in dirt for experimental purposes. Fourof the latter are still living and producing nuts. 

In April 1928, I planted a dozen Jones hybrid hazels but only two ofthem survived more than two years. I think the reason they lasted aswell as they did was that around each plant I put a guard made of lathsfour feet high, bound together with wire and filled with forest leaves. I drove the laths several inches into the ground and covered them withwindow screening fastened down with tacks to keep mice out of theleaves. Although somewhat winter-killed, most of the plants lived duringthe first winter these guards were used. The second winter, more plantsdied, and I didn't use the guards after that. 

The two Jones hybrids that lived produced flowers of both sexes forseveral years but they did not set any nuts. One day while reading areport of one of the previous conventions of the Northern Nut Growers'Association, I discovered an article by Conrad Vollertsen in which hestressed the importance of training filberts into a single truncatedplant, allowing no root sprouts or suckers to spring up since such acondition prevents the bearing of nuts. I followed his advice with mytwo Jones hybrids and removed all surplus sprouts. This resulted in moreabundant flowers and some abortive involucres but still no nutsdeveloped. In the spring of 1940, I systematically fertilized numerouspistillate flowers of these plants with a pollen mixture. On thebranches so treated, a fairly good crop of nuts similar to those of theorthodox Jones hybrid appeared. 

I had cut off a few branches from the Jones hybrids when I received themand grafted these to wild hazels. This had been suggested by RobertMorris in his book, "Nut Growing, " as an interesting experiment whichmight prove to be practical. It did not prove to be so for me foralthough the grafting itself was successful I found it tiresome toprune, repeatedly, the suckers which constantly spring up during thegrowing period and which are detrimental to grafts. Although they livedfor five years, these grafts suffered a great deal of winter-injury andthey never bore nuts. The one which lived for the longest time becamequite large and overgrew the stock of the wild hazel. This same plantproduced both staminate and pistillate blossoms very abundantly forseveral seasons but it did not set any nuts in spite of the many wildhazels growing nearby which gave it access to pollen. It is now knownthat this hybrid is self-sterile and must have pollinators of the rightvariety in order to bear. 

My next work with members of the genus Corylus was discouraging. InApril 1929, I bought one hundred hazel and filbert plants from ConradVollertsen of Rochester, New York, which included specimens of the Rushhazel and of the following varieties of filberts:

 Italian Red Merribrook Kentish Cob Early Globe Zellernuts White Lambert Althaldensleben Medium Long Bony Bush Large Globe Minnas Zeller Marveille de Bollwyller

Although many of these filberts bore nuts the first year they wereplanted, within two years they were all completely winter-killed. 

In 1932, I received ten filbert bushes from J. U. Gellatly of West Bank, British Columbia. These consisted of several varieties of Glover's bestintroductions and some Pearson seedlings. I planted them on the southside of a high stone wall, a favorable location for semi-hardy plants. They appeared to be thrifty and only slightly winter-killed during thefirst two years but by 1939, all but two of the bushes had died or weredying. Although as nut-bearing plants they have been of little value tome, their pollen has been of great service. 

I found an unusually fine wild hazel growing in the woods on my farm andin 1934, I began an experiment in hybridizing it. I crossed thepistillate flowers of the native hazel with pollen from a Gellatlyfilbert and obtained four hybrid plants, which I have called hazilberts. In the spring of 1940, three of these hybrids had pistillate flowers butno staminate blooms. As I was very eager to see what the new crosseswould be like, I fertilized the blossoms with a gunshot mixture ofpollen from other plants such as the Winkler hazel, the European filbertand the Jones hybrid hazel. Certain difficulties arose in making thesehybrids, mainly due to the curiosity of the squirrels who liked to ripopen the sacks covering the blossoms which were being treated. Deermice, too, I found, have a habit of climbing the stems of hazel bushesand gnawing at the nuts long before they are mature enough to use forseed. Later I learned to protect hybrid nuts by lacing flat pieces ofwindow screening over each branch, thus making a mouse-proof enclosure. Even after gathering the nuts I discovered that precautions werenecessary to prevent rodents from reaching them. The best way I found todo this is to plant nuts in cages of galvanized hardware cloth of 2 by 2mesh, countersunk in the ground one foot and covered completely by aframe of the same material reinforced with boards and laths. 

The most interesting hazilbert that has developed bears nuts ofoutstanding size, typically filberts in every detail of appearance, although the plant itself looks more like a hazel, being bushy andhaving many suckers. After more testing, this hybrid may prove to be adefinite asset to nursery culture in our cold northern climate, fulfilling as it does, all the requirements for such a plant. The secondhazilbert resembles the first closely except that its nuts, which arealso large, are shaped like those of Corylus Americana. The thirdhazilbert has smaller nuts but its shell is much thinner than that ofeither of the others. 

In reference to the hazilberts, I am reminded of certain correspondenceI once had with J. F. Jones. He had sent me samples of the Rush hazeland although I was impressed by them, I mentioned in replying to himthat we had wild hazels growing in our pasture which were as large orlarger than the Rush hazelnuts. I admitted that ours were usually verymuch infested with the hazel weevil. Mr. Jones was immediatelyinterested in wild hazels of such size and asked me to send him samplesof them. He wrote that he had never seen wild hazels with worms in themand would like to learn more about them. I sent him both good and wormynuts from the wild hazel bush to which I had referred. He was soimpressed by them that he wished me to dig up the plant and ship it tohim, writing that he wished to cross it with filbert pollen as anexperiment. I sent it as he asked but before he was able to make thecross he intended, his death occurred. Several years later, his daughterMildred wrote to me about this hazel bush, asking if I knew where herfather had planted it. Unfortunately I could give her no informationabout where, among his many experiments, this bush would be, so that theplant was lost sight of for a time. Later Miss Jones sent me nuts from abush which she thought might be the one I had sent. I was glad to beable to identify those nuts as being, indeed, from that bush. 

In the spring of 1939, I crossed the Winkler hazel with filbert pollen;the European hazel with Winkler pollen; the Gellatly filbert with Joneshybrid pollen. These crosses produced many plants which will be new andinteresting types to watch and build from. I have already made certaindiscoveries about them. By close examination of about forty plants, Ihave been able to determine that at least five are definitely hybrids bythe color, shape and size of their buds. This is a very strongindication of hybridity with wild hazel or Winkler. On one of theseplants, about one-foot high, I found staminate bloom which I considerunusual after only two seasons' growth. 

During the fall of 1941, I became interested in a phenomenon of fruitdetermination previous to actual fructification of the plant by detailedexaminations of its buds. I noticed, for instance, that large budsgenerally meant that the plant would produce large nuts and small budsindicated small nuts to come. The color of the buds, whether they weregreen, bronze green or reddish brown, could be fairly well dependedupon to indicate their hybridity in many cases. These tests were notwholly reliable but the percentage of indication was so high that I wastempted to make predictions. 

At that time, hazilbert No. 1 had not borne nuts. The bush resembled awild hazel so much that I had begun to doubt its hybridity. Uponexamining its buds, I found indications in their color that it was ahybrid, although the nuts apparently would not be large. It would be animportant plant to me only if its pollen should prove to be effective onthe other hazilberts. At the time this was only a wishful hope, becausethe pollen of the wild hazel, which this plant resembles, apparentlydoes not act to excite the ovules of either filberts or filbert hybridswith filbert characteristics. Pure filbert pollen seemed to benecessary. In 1942, its pollen did prove to be acceptable to the otherhazilberts and my hope for a good pollinizer was realized in it. 

From the conclusions I reached through my study of the buds, I madesketches of which I believed the nuts of No. 1 would be like in size andshape. In March 1942, these sketches were used as the basis of thedrawing given here. A comparison of this drawing with the photographtaken in September 1942, of the actual nuts of hazilbert No. 1 show howaccurate such a predetermination can be. 

I am convinced from the work I have done and am still doing, that we aredeveloping several varieties of hazilberts as hardy and adaptable todifferent soils as the pasture hazel is, yet having the thin shell andthe size of a European filbert. As to the quality of the kernel of sucha nut, that of the wild hazel is as delicious as anyone could desire. 

[Illustration: _3/4 Natural size Filberts_]

[Illustration: _3/4 Natural size Hazilberts and Winkler Hazel_]

[Illustration: _31/32 of actual size Hazilberts. Left to right: No. 3, No. 5, No. 4, No. 2_]

[Illustration: _No. 1 Hazilbert about 9/15/42. Note almost identicalsize and shape of this actual photograph of No. 1 compared topredetermined size and shape in drawing made almost one year previous tophotograph. Plant had not produced any nuts prior to crop of 1942_]

Chapter 5

HAZELS AND/OR FILBERTS

There is a certain amount of confusion in the minds of many peopleregarding the difference between filberts and hazels, both of whichbelong to the genus Corylus. Some think them identical and call them allhazels dividing them only into European and American types. I see noreason for doing this. "Filbert" is the name of one species of genusCorylus just as "English walnut" is the commercial name of one of themembers of the Juglans family. There is as much difference between awell-developed filbert and a common wild hazelnut as there is between acultivated English walnut and wild black walnut. 

For ordinary purposes the nuts sold commercially, whether imported orgrown in this country, are called filberts while those nuts which may befound growing prolifically in woodlands and pastures over almost thewhole United States but which are not to be found on the market arecalled hazelnuts. This lack of commercialization of hazelnuts should berecognized as due to the smallness of the nut and the thickness of itsshell rather than to its lacking flavor. Its flavor, which seldom variesmuch regardless of size, shape or thickness of shell, is both rich andnutty. The three main food components of the hazelnut, carbohydrate, protein and oil, are balanced so well that they approach nearer thanmost other nuts the ideal food make-up essential to man. The Englishwalnut contains much oil and protein while both chestnuts and acornsconsist largely of carbohydrates. 

One salient feature which definitely separates the species CorylusAmericana or wild hazel, from others of its genus, is its resistance tohazel blight, a native fungus disease of which it is the host. Controversies may occur over the application of the names "hazel" and"filbert" but there is no dispute about the effect of this infection onmembers of genus Corylus imported from Europe. Although there is widevariety in appearance and quality within each of the species, especiallyamong the European filberts, and although filberts may resemble hazelssufficiently to confuse even a horticulturist, the action of this fungusis so specific that it divides Corylus definitely into two species. Corylus Americana and Corylus cornuta, through long association, havebecome comparatively immune to its effects and quickly wall off infectedareas while filbert plants are soon killed by contact with it. Hybridsbetween filberts and hazels will usually be found to retain some of theresistance of the hazel parent. 

The ideal nut of genus Corylus should combine qualities of both hazelsand filberts. Such a hybrid should have the bushy characteristics of theAmerican hazel with its blight-resisting properties and its ability toreproduce itself by stolons or sucker-growth. It should bear fruithaving the size, general shape, cracking qualities and good flavor ofthe filbert as popularly known. The hybrids I am growing at my farm, which I call "hazilberts" and which are discussed later, seem to fulfillthese requirements. The plants may be grown as bushes or small trees. They are blight-resistant and their nuts are like filberts inappearance. Three varieties of these hazilberts have ivory-coloredkernels which are practically free of pellicle or fibre. They have agood flavor. 

A comparison of the ripening habits and the effect of frost on thevarious members of the genus Corylus growing in my nursery in the fallof 1940, is shown by these extracts taken from daily records of the workdone there. It should be noted that the summer season that year wasrainy and not as hot as usual, so that most nuts ripened two to threeweeks later than they normally do. 

 "September 7 and 8: Wild hazels ripe and picked at this time. (Their kernels showed no shrinkage by October 25. )

 September 14 and 15: I picked ripe nuts from hazilbert No. 5 which seems to be the first to ripen. Also picked half of the European filberts. (There was slight shrinkage in the kernels of the latter a few weeks later showing that they could have stayed on the trees another week to advantage. )

 All of the nuts of a Jones hybrid, which is a cross between Rush and some European variety such as Italian Red, could have been picked as they were ripe. Some were picked. 

 The almond-shaped filbert classified as the White Aveline type, was not quite ripe; neither were hazilberts No. 2 and No. 4, nor the Gellatly filberts. Wild hazelnuts at this time had dry husks and were falling off the bushes or being cut down by mice. 

 September 21 and 22: The remaining European filberts of the imported plants were picked. Also, I picked half of the White Aveline type nuts. 

 [Illustration: _Carlola Hazilberts No. 5, about 8/10/42. This is the earliest ripening and thinnest shell of the large type hazilberts, not the largest size however. Carlola Weschcke shown in picture. Photo by C. Weschcke_]

 September 28 and 29: We picked most of the nuts remaining on hazilbert No. 5 and the remainder of the White Aveline type. At this time we record a heavy frost which occurred during the previous week, that is, between September 22 and 28th. Since it froze water it was considered a "killing" frost. However, the damage was spotty all over the orchard, most things continuing to develop and ripen. Winkler hazels picked and examined at this time showed them far from ripe. Hazilberts growing next to limestone walls on the south side showed no signs of frost damage whereas the Winkler, on higher ground, showed severe damage to the leaves and the husks of the nuts which immediately started to turn brown. Leaves of other filbert plants in the vicinity showed no frost damage and the very few nuts that had been left on, such as those of the Jones hybrid, were undamaged. 

 October 5 and 6: Picked all of hazilbert No. 2 except the last two nuts. 

 Gellatly filberts were picked about October 10 and were ripe at that time. 

 October 11 to 13: Two English walnuts were picked and found to be as ripe as they would get. These as well as the black walnuts showed distinct signs of lacking summer heat needed for their proper development. The last two nuts on hazilbert No. 2 and the only nut on hazilbert No. 4 were picked at this time and were ripe. Chestnut burrs had opened up and the nuts enclosed were fully mature. 

 October 19 and 20: I found the last of the Winkler hazelnuts had been picked during the previous week, approximately October 14. These were left the longest on the bush of any hazel and still were not ripe although they were not entirely killed by the several frosts occurring before that time. They are always much later than the wild hazel. "

On October 20, I had an opportunity of comparing the action of frost onthe leaves of these plants. Those of the White Aveline type had notchanged color and were very green. The leaves of the Jones hybrid showedsome coloration but nothing to compare with those of the Winkler hazel, many of which had the most beautiful colors of any of the trees on thefarm--red, orange and yellow bronze. Hazilbert No. 1, which resembles awild hazel in appearance and habits of growth, had colored much earlierin reaction to the frost and was as brightly tinted as the wild hazeland Winkler plants except that, like the wild hazel, it had already lostmuch of its foliage. Some of the wild hazels were entirely devoid ofleaves at this time. Hazilbert No. 5 showed the best color effects withNo. 4 second and No. 2 last. 

The color of the leaves and the action of the frost on the plants duringthe autumn is another thing, in my opinion, that helps to differentiatebetween and to classify European filberts, American hazels and theirhybrids. My conclusion in regard to the effect of frost is that thereaction of the Winkler hazel is very similar to that of the wild hazelin color but exceeding it in beauty since its leaves do not drop as soonafter coloring. At this time, the leaves had not changed color on theimported European plants, the Gellatly filberts from British Columbia orthe White Aveline type. They had turned only slightly on the Joneshybrid. I think an accurate idea of the general hardiness of a plant isindicated by the effect of frost and by early dropping of leaves, usingthe sturdy wild hazel as the limit of hardiness and assuming that itshardiness is shown by both degree of coloration and early dropping ofleaves. 

In noting the action of frost on the Winkler hazel, I have mentionedthat it was more like that on the American hazel than on the Europeanfilberts. The Winkler has always been considered a native woodlandhazel, but, although it does show several similarities to CorylusAmericana, I have also noticed certain qualities which definitelysuggest some filbert heritage. I have based my theory on a study of theWinkler hazels which have been bearing annually at my farm for sixyears, bearing more regularly, in fact, than even the wild hazelsgrowing nearby. My comparisons have been made with wild hazels in bothMinnesota and Wisconsin and with European filberts. 

I found the first point of similarity with the filbert is in theinvolucre covering the nut. In the wild hazel, this folds against itselfto one side of the nut, while in the filbert it is about balanced and ifnot already exposing a large part of the end of the nut, is easilyopened. The involucre of the Winkler hazel is formed much more like thatof the filbert than that of the hazel. In Corylus Americana thisinvolucre is usually thick, tough and watery, while in the filbert it isthinner and drier, so that while a person may be deceived in the size ofa hazelnut still in its husk, he can easily tell that of a filbert. Thisis also true of the Winkler whose involucre is fairly thick but outlinesthe form of the enclosed nut. Another feature about the involucre of theWinkler which classes it with the filberts rather than the hazels is inits appearance and texture, which is smooth and velvety while that ofthe hazel is hairy and wrinkled. 

The staminate blooms of the Winkler hazel show similarity to those ofboth filberts and hazels. Sometimes they appear in formation at the endsof branches, much as those of the European filberts do, in overlappinggroups of three or four. Again, they may be found at regular intervalsat the axis of leaf stems very much as in the case of the Americanhazel. The buds on the Winkler hazel are dull red which is also true ofthose on the hybrid hazilberts, another indication of hybridity. 

The initial growth of the embryo nut is very slow in the Winkler as itis in the filbert, as contrasted with the very rapid development of thenative hazel embryo which matures in this latitude about one month aheadof the Winklers and some filberts. Although Winkler nuts are shaped likehazels and have the typically thick shells of hazelnuts, their size ismore that of a filbert usually three times as large as a native hazel. 

During the years between 1942 and 1945 many new hybrids between filbertsand hazels were produced. Four wild varieties of hazels, which hadunusual characteristics such as tremendous bearing and large size nutsand others having very early maturing or very thin shelled nuts wereused as the female parents in making the crosses. Pollen was obtainedfrom other parts of the U. S. Or from filbert bushes which were growingon the place. Crosses included pollen of the Barcelona, Duchilly, RedAveline, White Aveline, Purple Aveline, the Italian Red, Daviana andseveral hybrids between other filberts and hazels. By 1945 the number ofthese plants were in the neighborhood of 2000 and by 1952 considerableknowledge had been gained as to the hardiness, blight resistance to thecommon hazel blight (known scientifically as cryptosporella anomala), freedom from the curculio of the hazelnuts (commonly known as the hazelweevil) and resistance to other insect pests. Also, considerable datahad been accumulated by cataloging over 650 trees each year for fiveyears; cataloging included varied and detailed studies of their growth, bearing habits, ability to resist blight, curculio and other insects, the size of the nut, the thinness of the shell and the flavor of thekernel. Several books of all this detail were accumulated in trying tonail down several commercial varieties that would be propagated fromthis vast amount of material. Although some bushes produced good nuts atthe rate of as much as two tons to the acre, measured on the basis ofspace that they took up in the test orchard, the most prolific kindseemed to be the ones that had a tendency to revert to the wild hazeltype. The better and thinner-shelled types, more resembling thefilberts, seemed to be shy bearers so that there being a host of newplants to catalog (more than 1000) which had not indicated their bearingcharacteristics, we included these among the possible ideal plants wewere seeking. Although there were several plants that could beconsidered commercial in the original group of over 650 it has beenthought that the waiting of a few more years to ascertain whether therewould be something better in the next 1000 plants to bear that would beworthwhile waiting for and no attempt has been made to propagate theearlier tested plants. Some of these 650 tested hybrids proved to havenuts that were classed as Giants being much larger than the filbertsproduced by male or pollen parent such as the Barcelona, Duchilly orDaviana, and several times the size of the nuts of the female parentwhich was the wild hazel. 

[Illustration: _Wild Wisconsin Hazel discovered on Hazel Hills Farm nearRiver Falls. Note size of nuts in husks as compared to woman's hand. This plant became the female parent in over 1, 000 crosses by pollenfurnished from male blooms of Duchilly, Barcelona, Italian Red, White, Red, and Purple Aveline and many other well known filberts. Photo by C. Weschcke_]

Chapter 6

PECANS AND THEIR HYBRIDS

At the same time, October 1924, that I purchased Beaver hickory treesfrom J. F. Jones, I also procured from him three specimens each of threecommercial varieties of pecan trees, the Posey, Indiana and Niblack, aswell as some hiccan trees, i. E. , hybrids having pecan and hickoryparents. Only one tree survived, a Niblack pecan, which, after sixteenyears, was only about eighteen inches in height. Its annual growth wasvery slight and it was killed back during the winter almost the fullamount of the year's growth. In the 17th year this tree was dead. 

In September 1925, at a convention of the Northern Nut Growers'Association in St. Louis, Missouri, I became acquainted with a man whoseexperience in the nut-growing industry was wide and who knew a greatdeal about the types of hickory and pecan trees in Iowa. He was S. W. Snyder of Center Point, Iowa. (He later became president of theAssociation. ) In one of his letters to me the following summer, Mr. Snyder mentioned that there were wild pecan trees growing near DesMoines and Burlington. I decided I wanted to know more about them and atmy request, he collected ten pounds of the nuts for me. I found theywere the long type of pecan, small, but surprisingly thin-shelled andhaving a kernel of very high quality. 

I first planted these nuts in an open garden in St. Paul, but after ayear I moved them to my farm, where I set them out in nursery rows in anopen field. The soil there was a poor grade of clay, not really suitedto nut trees, but even so, most of the ones still remaining there havemade reasonably good growth. I used a commercial fertilizing compoundaround about half of these seedlings which greatly increased their rateof growth, although they became less hardy than the unfertilized ones. After five years, I transplanted a number of them to better soil, inorchard formation. Although I have only about fifty of the originalthree hundred seedlings, having lost the others mainly during droughts, these remaining ones have done very well. Some of these trees have beenbearing small crops of nuts during the years 1947 to date. The mostmature nuts of these were planted and to date I have 17 secondgeneration pure pecan trees to testify as to the ability of the northernpecan to become acclimated. 

I gave several of the original seedlings to friends who planted them intheir gardens, where rich soil has stimulated them to grow at twice therate of those on my farm. There were four individual pecan trees growingin or near St. Paul from my first planting, the largest being about 25feet high with a caliber of five inches a foot above ground. Althoughthis tree did not bear nuts I have used it as a source of scionwood forseveral years. These graftings, made on bitternut hickory stock, havebeen so successful that I am continuing their propagation at my nursery, having named this variety the Hope pecan, for Joseph N. Hope, the manwho owns the parent tree and who takes such an interest in it. 

[Illustration: _Shows the use of a zinc metal tag fastened by 16 or 18gauge copper wire to branch of tree. _]

By the year 1950 the tree had such a straggly appearance, although stillhealthy and growing but being too shaded by large trees on theboulevard, that Mr. Hope caused it to be cut down. The variety is stillgrowing at my farm, grafted on bitternut stocks and although blossomingit has never produced a nut up to this time. 

Another tree given to Joseph Posch of the city of St. Paul, Minnesota, had made even better growth and was luxuriantly healthy and in bloomwhen it was cut down by the owner because the branches overhung thefence line into a neighbor's yard. This was done in about 1950. 

Another tree given to Mrs. Wm. Eldridge of St. Paul still flourishes andis quite large (in 1952 at breast height, 6 inches in diameter) butbeing in a dense shade, it has not borne any nuts. 

The fourth tree, given to John E. Straus, the famous skate maker, presumably exists at his lake residence north of St. Paul. I have notseen it in the last seven or eight years. 

Although they are not as hardy as bitternut stocks, I have found thewild Iowa pecan seedlings satisfactory for grafting after five years'growth. I use them as an understock for grafting the Posey, Indiana andMajor varieties of northern pecan and find them preferable to northernbitternut stocks with which the pecans are not compatible for long, as arule, such a union resulting in a stunted tree which is easilywinter-killed. Although the Posey continued to live for several yearsour severe winters finally put an end to all these fine pecans. The rootsystem of the seedling understock continued to live, however. 

I chanced to discover an interesting thing in the fall of 1941 whichsuggests something new in pecan propagation. There were two small pecansgrowing in the same rows as the large ones planted fifteen yearspreviously. When I noticed them, I thought they were some of this sameplanting and that they had been injured or frozen back to such an extentthat they were mere sprouts again, for this has happened. I decided tomove them and asked one of the men on the farm to dig them up. When hehad dug the first, I was surprised to find that this was a sprout fromthe main tap root of a large pecan tree which had been taken out andtransplanted. The same was true of the second one, except that in thiscase we found three tap roots, the two outside ones both having shootswhich were showing above the ground. Another remarkable circumstanceabout this was that these tap roots had been cut off twenty inches belowthe surface of the ground and the sprouts had to come all that distanceto start new trees. All of this suggests the possibility of pecanpropagation by root cuttings. These two pecans, at least, show a naturaltendency to do this and I have marked them for further experimentationalong such lines. 

On the advice of the late Harry Weber of Cincinnati, Ohio, an eminentnut culturist, who, after visiting my nursery in 1938, became veryanxious to try out some of the Indiana varieties of pecans in ournorthern climate, I wrote to J. Ford Wilkinson, a noted propagator ofnut trees at Rockport, Indiana, suggesting that he make someexperimental graftings at my farm. Both Mr. Wilkinson and Mr. Webergathered scionwood from all the black walnut, pecan, hiccan and hickorytrees at their disposal, for this trial. There was enough of it to keepthree of us busy for a week grafting it on large trees. Our equipmentwas carried on a two-wheeled trailer attached to a Diesel-poweredtractor, and we were saved the trouble of having to carry personally, scions, packing material, wax pots, knives, pruning shears, tyingmaterial, canvas and ladders into the woods. Mr. Wilkinson remarked, onstarting out, that in the interests of experimental grafting, he hadtravelled on foot, on horseback, by mule team and in rowboats, but thatthis was his first experience with a tractor. 

When he saw the type of grafting with which I had been getting goodresults, Mr. Wilkinson was astounded. He declared that using a side-slotgraft in the South resulted in 100% failure, while I had more than 50%success with it. He was willing to discard his type of grafting formine, which was adequate for the work we were doing, but I wanted tocheck his grafting performance and urged him to continue with his own(an adaptation of the bark-slot graft to the end of a cut-off stub). Weboth used paper sacks to shade our grafts. Although results proved thatmy methods averaged a slightly higher percentage of successful graftingsin this latitude and for the type of work we were doing, his wouldnonetheless be superior in working over trees larger than four inches indiameter and having no lateral branches up to eight feet above ground, at which height it is most convenient to cut off a large hickorypreparatory to working on it. 

In the late fall of that year, we cut scionwood of the season's growthand inverted large burlap bags stuffed with leaves over the grafts, thebags braced on the inside by laths to prevent their collapsing on thegrafts. So we have perpetuated the following varieties:

 Hickories: Cedar Rapids, Taylor, Barnes, Fairbanks. 

 Hiccans: McAlester, Bixby, Des Moines, Rockville, Burlington, Green Bay. 

The Major and Posey pure pecans being incompatible on bitternut hickoryroots were grafted on pecan stocks, but they proved to be tender to ourwinters and the varieties were finally lost. 

[Illustration: _Largest planted pecan in World having a record. About 17ft. Circumference breast height, 125 ft. Spread and 125 ft. Height. Verysmall worthless pecans. Easton, Maryland. Photo by Reed 1927_]

Other experiments I have made with pecans include an attempt to growSouthern pecans from seed, but they seem to be no more hardy than anorange tree would be. It is certain that they are not at all suited tothe climate of the 45th parallel. In 1938, I received from Dr. W. C. Deming of Connecticut, some very good nuts from a large pecan tree atHartford, Connecticut. Of the twelve pecans I planted, only sixsprouted, and of these, only one has survived up to this date and is nowa small weak tree. Apparently, the seedlings of this Hartford pecan arenot as hardy as those from Iowa. 

[Illustration: _Iowa seedling Pecans. Tree planted in 1926 as seed. First crop October 29, 1953. 7/8 of actual size. Nuts were fullymatured. Photo by C. Weschcke_]

Of the hiccans, hybrids between hickory and pecan, there are severalvarieties, as I mentioned before. Of these, the McAlester is the mostoutstanding, its nuts measuring over three inches in circumference andabout three inches long. Horticulturists believe that this hybrid is theresult of a cross between a shell-bark hickory, which produces thelargest nut of any hickory growing in the United States, and a largepecan. I have experimented a number of times with the McAlester and myconclusion is that it is not hardy enough to advocate its being grown inthis climate. There are other hiccans hardier than it is, however, suchas the Rockville, Burlington, Green Bay and Des Moines, and it iscertain that the North is assured of hardy pecans and a few hardyhybrids, which, although they do not bear the choicest pecan nuts, makeinteresting and beautiful lawn trees. Indeed, as an ornamental tree, thepecan is superior to the native hickory in two definite ways: by itsexceedingly long life, which may often reach over 150 years ascontrasted with the average hickory span of 100 years, and by itsgreater size. One pecan tree I saw growing in Easton, Maryland, in1927, for example, was then seventeen feet in circumference atbreast-height, one hundred twenty-five feet in height and having aspread of one hundred fifty feet. The wood of the pecan is similar tothat of the hickory in both toughness and specific gravity, although forpractical purposes, such as being used for tool handles, the shagbarkhickory is enough harder and tougher to make it the superior of the two. 

I was pleasantly surprised on October 30, 1953 when a pecan seedling ofthe Iowa origin, which had not yet borne any nuts, showed a small crop. These nuts were fully matured and were of sufficient size so that theycould be considered a valuable new variety of pecan nut for the North. Aplate showing a few of these pecans illustrates, by means of a ruler, the actual size of these pecans, and the fact that they matured so wellby October 30 indicates that in many seasons they may be relied upon tomature their crop. No other data has been acquired on this variety andwe can only be thankful that we can expect it to do a little better insize as successive crops appear, which is the usual way of nut trees. Also, by fertilizing this tree we can expect bigger nuts, as isgenerally the case. The shell of this pecan is so thin that it can beeasily cracked with the teeth, which I have done repeatedly, andalthough small is thinner-shelled than any standard pecan. 

Chapter 7

HICKORY THE KING

The acknowledged autocrat of all the native nuts is the hickory. Perhapsnot all the experts admit this leadership but it is certainly theopinion held by most people. Of course, when I speak of the hickory nutin this high regard, I refer to the shagbark hickory which, as a wildtree, is native as far north as the 43rd parallel in Minnesota andWisconsin, and somewhat farther in the eastern states. 

Wild hickory nuts have been commercialized only to a slight extent. Itscrops are almost entirely consumed in the locality in which they aregrown by those people who find great pleasure in spending fine autumndays gathering them. The obvious reason why hickory nuts have not beenmade a product of commerce lies in the nut itself, which is usually verysmall and which has a shell so strong and thick that the kernel can betaken out only in small pieces. The toughness of the shell makescracking difficult, too, and since only rarely is one found that can bebroken by a hand cracker, it is necessary to use the flatiron-and-hammermethod. It is quite possible, though, that some day the hickory willrival or exceed its near relative, the wild pecan, in commercial favor. The wild pecans which formerly came on the market at Christmastime inmixtures of nuts were just as difficult to extract from their shells asthe wild shagbark hickory nuts are now. By means of selection andcultivation, the pecan was changed from a small, hard-to-crack nut tothat of a large thin-shelled nut whose kernel was extractable in wholehalves. Among many thousands of wild pecan trees were a few which boreexceptionally fine nuts, nuts similar to those now found at everygrocery store and called "papershell" pecans. These unusual nuts werepropagated by grafting twigs from their parent trees on ordinary wildpecan trees whose own nuts were of less value. These grafted trees wereset out in orchards where they produce the millions of pounds ofhigh-grade pecans now on the market. 

The question which naturally occurs is, "Why hasn't this been done withhickory nuts?" Hundreds of attempts have been made to do so, by thegreatest nut propagators in the United States. They have been successfulin grafting outstanding varieties of hickory to wild root stocks but thetime involved has prevented any practical or commercial success, sincemost grafted hickories require a period of growth from ten to twentyyears before bearing any nuts. This length of time contrasts veryunfavorably with that required by grafted pecans which produce nuts onquite young trees, frequently within three to five years after grafting. This factor of slow growth has set the pecan far ahead of the tastyshagbark hickory. Experimenters have long thought to reduce the timerequired by the hickory to reach maturity by grafting it to fast-growinghickory roots such as the bitternut or the closely related pecan. Bothof these grow rapidly and the bitternut has the additional advantage ofgrowing farther north and of being transplanted more easily. It hasalways been thought that when a good variety of shagbark hickory hadbeen successfully grafted to bitternut root stocks, orchards of hickorytrees would soon appear. This takes me to my discovery of the varietynow known as the Weschcke hickory, which I have found fulfills thenecessary conditions. 

[Illustration: _Shows exceptionally thin shell of Weschcke hickoryvariety. Drawing by Wm. Kuehn_]

One fall day in 1926, when I was at the home of a neighboring farmer, heoffered me some mixed hickory nuts he had received from an uncle inIowa. As he knew of my interest in nuts, he wanted my opinion of them. Ilooked them over and explained that they were no better than littlenutmegs, having very hard shells and a small proportion of inaccessiblemeat. To demonstrate this, I cracked some between hammer and flatiron. My demonstration was conclusive until I hit one nut which almost meltedunder the force I was applying. The shape of this nut was enoughdifferent from the others to enable me to pick out a handful like itfrom the mixture. I was amazed to see how very thin-shelled and full ofmeat they were. Upon my request, this neighbor wrote to his uncle, JohnBailey, of Fayette, Iowa, asking if he knew from which tree such finenuts had come. Unfortunately he did not, because the nuts had beengathered from quite a large area. After corresponding with Mr. Baileymyself, I decided that I would go there and help him locate the tree, although it was nearly Christmas and heavy snowfalls which alreadycovered the ground would make our search more difficult. 

[Illustration: _Carl Weschcke, Jr. , hand holding Weschcke hickory inhull. 9/15/42 Photo by C. Weschcke_]

On my arrival in Fayette, I called on Mr. Bailey, who was glad to helpme hunt out the tree in which I had so much interest. We called A. C. Fobes, the owner of the farm from which the nuts were believed to havecome, and arranged to go out there with him by bob sleigh. A rough rideof six or seven miles brought us to the farm and we began our quest. Once there, Mr. Bailey had a more definite idea of where to look for thetree from which these particular nuts came than he had had before and wehad not been at our task for more than an hour before it was located. There were still quite a few nuts on the ground beneath it, whichidentified it accurately. It was a large shagbark whose first livingbranch was fully sixteen feet off the ground and, since we had no ladderwith us, I had to shin up the tree to cut off some of the smallerbranches. This shagbark, true to its name, had rough bark which tore notonly my clothes but some of the skin on my legs as well and whereas theclimbing up was difficult, the coming down was equally so. Havingcontracted verbally with Mr. Fobes to buy the tree, I packed thebranches I had cut in cardboard boxes with straw packing and carefullybrought them home to St. Paul. 

I wrote at once to my friend, J. F. Jones, of my expedition, telling himof my plans to propagate this hickory. I also sent him some of the nutsfrom the parent tree and samples of extra-good nuts from other treesgrowing near it so that he could give me his opinion of them. Mr. Jonesresponded by advising me about the kind of a contract to make with Mr. Fobes in regard to both the purchasing and propagation of the originalhickory tree and he urged the latter enthusiastically. Of the Weschckehickory nuts themselves, he wrote: "This is practically identical withthe Glover. The Glover is usually a little larger but this varies in allnuts from year to year. This is a fine nut and if it comes from Iowa, itought to be propagated. I suggest you keep the stock of it and propagatethe tree for northern planting, that is for Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, etc. , where most nuts grown here would not mature. " A few years ago, Isaw the Glover hickory nut for the first time and I also thought it muchthe same as the Weschcke in shape, as is also the Brill. 

Because I did not know how to preserve the scions I had cut, they driedout during the winter to such an extent that they were worthless forspring grafting. This meant losing a whole season. The next fall Iobtained more scionwood from Mr. Fobes and having kept it in goodcondition during the winter by storing it in a Harrington graft boxshown by illustration, I was able to graft it in the spring. However, these grafts did not take hold well, only two or three branchesresulting from all of it and these did not bear nor even grow as theyshould have. I was disappointed and discouraged, writing to Mr. Fobesthat I did not believe the tree could be propagated. 

[Illustration: _This drawing illustrates how to build a Harrington graftstorage box_]

In the fall of 1932, Mr. Fobes sent me a large box of scions andbranches, explaining that he had sold his farm and, as the tree might becut down, this was my last opportunity to propagate it. Without muchenthusiasm, I grafted the material he had sent me on about a dozentrees, some of them very large hickories and I was most agreeablysurprised to find the grafting successful and more than one branchbearing nutlets. These nuts dropped off during the summer until only oneremained to mature, which it did in the latter part of October. But Iwaited too long to pick that nut and some smart squirrel, which hadprobably been watching it ripen as diligently as I had, secured itfirst. I made a very thorough search of the ground nearby to find theremains of it, for while I knew I would not get a taste of thekernel--the squirrel would take care of that--I was interested infinding out whether it followed the exact shape and thinness of shell ofthe first nuts I had examined. I finally did find part of it, enough tosee that it was similar to the nuts from the parent tree. 

The grafts I made in 1932 have been bearing nuts every year since thattime. The Weschcke hickory makes a tremendous growth grafted onbitternut hickory (Carya Cordiformis). The wood and buds are hardy to atemperature of 47° below zero Fahrenheit, so that wherever the wildbitternut hickory grow, this grafted tree will survive to bear itsthin-shelled nuts. The nuts have a fine flavor and the unusual qualityof retaining this flavor without becoming rancid, for three years. Theonly fault to find with them is the commercial one of being only mediumin size, so that compared to English walnuts, for example, they becomeunimpressive. I have noticed time and again that the average person willpass over a small, sweet nut to choose a larger one even though thelatter may not have as attractive a flavor. This is noticeably true inregard to pecans, when the large paper-shell types, which have a ratherdry, sweet kernel, are almost invariably preferred to the smaller onesof finer flavor, which are plump and have slightly thicker shells. 

Previous to finding the Weschcke hickory, I experimented with severalvarieties of hickory hybrids. In March 1924, I purchased twelve Beaverand twelve Fairbanks hybrid hickories from J. F. Jones. I planted thesetrees in April of that year but of the lot, only two Beaver trees livedto bear nuts. One of these is still growing on my farm, in thin, claysoil underlaid with limestone, and it bears nuts annually. It is only afair-sized tree but I think its slow growth has protected it from theusual amount of winter damage. I also ordered from Mr. Jones, in July1924, 12 Marquardt hiccans, 12 Laney, 12 Siers, 34 Beaver and 30Fairbanks. The last four are hybrids between species of hickories. Outof the whole order, amounting to one hundred trees, none remains alivenow. 

The Marquardt hiccan mentioned above was the subject of dispute amongnut culturists for a time but it has been definitely agreed now, thatthe Marquardt was never actually propagated, the tree having been lostor cut down before scions were taken from it. Substitutes were takenfrom the Burlington, a hybrid whose nut is similar to the Marquardt andwhose foliage and other attributes are thought to be like it. The nameof Marquardt persisted for several years, however, and it has beenentirely discarded only recently. The Burlington is now known to be therepresentative of that part of Iowa. However, I grafted some of the topsof the Marquardt trees from Jones to bitternut trees at the time that Itransplanted them; several of the grafts made successful growth andresulted in several trees growing deep in the woods. After 28 yearsthese grafts are still alive and certainly have established their rightto be called compatible with bitternut hickory stocks. Close examinationof the branches, leaves and buds, particularly the leaf-scars, indicatethat this hiccan is enough different and more hardy than the Burlington, which also grows well on the bitternut, to discredit the story that theMarquardt is lost. It will not be determined, however, that this is thegenuine Marquardt until it has fruited. 

Altogether I have grafted about 70 varieties of hickory and its hybridson bitternut stocks in my attempts to increase the number of varietiesof cultured hickory trees in the North. Most of those I worked with werecompatible with the bitternut stock, but a few, perhaps a dozen, haveindicated that they would rather not live on the bitternut and havedied, either from incompatibility or winter-killing. Yet as a rootsystem, the bitternut is the hardiest and easiest to transplant of anyof the hickories and for these reasons it makes an ideal stock for theamateur nut-grower to use. I did try, in 1926, to grow some shagbarkhickory stocks, which would be more compatible with those varieties Icould not get started on bitternut. I planted half a bushel of shagbarkhickory nuts from Iowa, but although they sprouted nicely, they were notsufficiently hardy and were winter-killed so severely that, after twelveyears, the largest was not more than a foot high, nor thicker than alead pencil. Some of these, about 50, were transplanted into the orchardand in other favorable locations. The largest of these, in 1952, isabout 4 inches in diameter, 1-foot off the ground, and about 15 feethigh. I have not grafted any yet and only one has borne any seedlingnuts so far. I am now reconciled to using my native bitternut trees formost of my stock in spite of some disadvantages. A list of successfullygrafted varieties is appended, and indicates to what extent this stockis a universal root stock for most of the hickories and their hybrids. Asuccessful union, however, and long life, does not mean that goodbearing habits will be established, since most of these trees grow inthe woods in dense shade and poor surroundings. Some varieties have notborne many nuts, and some not at all. The following scions were cut thisfall (in 1952) from successfully grafted trees deep in the woods:

 Bixby hiccan (pecan by shellbark) grafted in 1938 Burlington hiccan (pecan by shellbark) grafted in 1938 Green Bay hiccan (pecan by shellbark) grafted in 1938 Des Moines hiccan (pecan by shellbark) grafted in 1938 Burton hiccan (pecan by shellbark) grafted in 1939 McAlester hiccan (pecan by shellbark) grafted in 1938 Anthony Shagbark hickory grafted in 1938 Barnes Shagbark by mocker nut grafted in 1938 Brill Shagbark hickory grafted in 1936 Brooks Shagbark hickory grafted in 1938 Camp No. 2 Shagbark hickory grafted in 1938 (?) Deveaux Shagbark hickory grafted in 1936 Fox Shagbark hickory grafted in 1939 Glover Shagbark hickory grafted in 1936 Gobble Shagbark hickory grafted in 1940 Hand Shagbark hickory grafted in 1939 Harman Shagbark hickory grafted in 1939 Leonard Shagbark hickory grafted in 1939 Lingenfelter Shagbark hickory grafted in 1942 Manahan Shagbark hickory grafted in 1939 Milford Shagbark hickory grafted in 1939 Murdock Shagbark hickory grafted in 1941 Netking Shagbark hickory grafted in 1938 Platman Shagbark hickory grafted in 1938 Pleas Pecan by bitternut grafted in 1938 Schinnerling Shagbark hickory grafted in 1942 Stanley Shellbark hickory grafted in 1939 Swaim Shagbark hickory grafted in 1941 Taylor Shagbark hickory grafted in 1939 Triplett Shagbark hickory grafted in 1939 Woods grafted in 1939

The varieties below are growing in orchard or random locations out ofthe woods:

 Beaver Hybrid hickory grafted in 1924 Cedar Rapids Shagbark hickory grafted in 1926 Clark Shagbark hickory grafted in 1938 Fairbanks hybrid Shagbark by bitternut grafted in 1924 Herman Last Hybrid grafted in 1948 Hope pecan Pure pecan grafted to bitternut grafted in 1938 Kirtland Shagbark hickory grafted in 1936 Laney Pecan by shellbark grafted in 1936 Marquardt Hiccan grafted in 1924 Norton Hiccan grafted in 1938 River hickory Undetermined hybrid grafted in 1948 Rockville hiccan Pecan by shellbark grafted in 1926 Siers Mockernut by bitternut grafted in 1936 Stratford Shagbark by bitternut grafted in 1938 Weiker hybrid Shagbark by shellbark grafted in 1936

In addition to the above, several large and small trees of the Weschckevariety are located in orchard and random locations, some having beengrafted in 1926 and later. Also, there is a sprinkling of Bridgewatervariety, grafted in 1936 and later, all bearing each year. 

For many years, I observed hickories and walnuts in bloom andhand-pollinated them, yet I overlooked many things I should havediscovered earlier in study. It was only after ten years of observingthe Weschcke hickory, for example, that I realized the importance ofproper pollinization of it. In years when it produced only a few nuts, Ihad blamed seasonal factors, rains and soil conditions, but I nowrealize that it was due to lack of the right pollen. In the spring of1941, I decided to make special pollen combinations with all thehickories then in bloom. The information I acquired in return was greatreward for the work I did. 

I selected branches of the Weschcke hickory trees bearing a profuseamount of pistillate (female) blossoms. I hand-pollinated these with aspecial apparatus (the hand-pollen gun described later in this book), using a magnifying glass so that both pollen and blossom could beplainly seen. In doing this, I found it most practical to wear whatjewelers call a "double loupe, " a light, fiber head-gear carrying lenseswell-suited to such work. I treated the marked branches with pollengathered from the Bridgewater, the Kirtland and the Beaver, all verygood pollen-bearers. I also pollinated branches of the Cedar Rapidsvariety, which bears little pollen in this locality, with Kirtlandpollen. However, the pollinization of the Cedar Rapids, which involvedtreating from 35 to 50 pistillate blossoms, resulted in only two maturenuts. 

The Weschcke hickory has an abortive staminate bloom so that it mustdepend on some other variety for pollen. At the Northern Nut Growers'Convention, held at Hershey, Pa. In 1941, (where I had the honor ofbeing elected president of that venerable organization and succeededmyself thereafter for the next five years) I mentioned this abortivestaminate bloom of my hickory to my friend, Dr. J. W. McKay, AssociateCytologist of the U. S. Department of Agriculture at that time. He wasvery interested in this phenomenon and wanted specimens of the abortivecatkins for examination. These were sent to him in the spring of 1942. Iquote from Dr. McKay's report on his primary findings:

 "I have just made a preliminary examination of the catkins from your hickory tree received last May, and it seems that the individual staminate flower of the catkin produces 4-5 undersized stamens, the anthers of which are devoid of either pollen or pollen-mother-cells. So far I have made only temporary preparations of the crushed anthers in stain but careful study of these mounts discloses no sign of pollen grains or mother cells, so we may tentatively conclude that no pollen is produced by the tree; in other words it is male-sterile. The stage at which degeneration of the pollen-forming tissue occurs in the anthers and its nature will have to be determined by means of a longer and more elaborate technique and I will let you know what we find as soon as the results are available. It may be that pollen-mother-cells are not even formed in the anthers; the small size of these structures and their more or less shriveled appearance lead me to believe that this may be the case. 

 "So far as I know there is no instance among nut species comparable to that outlined above. We have two or three cases of male sterility in chestnut but in these no stamens are formed in the individual staminate flower. In one of the hybrid walnuts that I reported on at the Hershey convention, imperfect pollen grains are formed in the anthers but the latter structures never open, so no pollen is shed. 

 "Bear in mind that the above report is preliminary and other angles may turn up when permanent mounts are available for study. "

On December 14, 1943 I received a second, and final report from Dr. McKay from which I quote, as follows:

 "Dear Mr. Weschcke:

 The enclosed pencil sketches will give you an idea of the results obtained from sectioning four lots of material from the two samples of catkins that you sent, two lots from each sample. Since the sample collected May 25 at the time of catkin fall was old enough to contain mature pollen and showed only anthers of the two types described herewith I think we may safely conclude that the tree is male sterile because of the failure of the mother cells to function. It is odd that in some anthers the pollen-mother-cells develop (type 2) while in others they do not (type 1). For this we have no explanation; nor can we explain why the tree is male sterile. I am afraid these phenomena will remain a matter of conjecture for some time to come. Since sterilities of this and other sorts in most other plants are largely genetic, that is, controlled by one or more genes that are inherited in Mendelian fashion, it is likely that such is the case here. You and I will not live long enough, however, to grow the necessary number of generations of trees to clear up these matters. 

 "In the course of routine preparation of other material I plan to run up other lots from your samples, and I will let you know if anything different turns up. I believe we may safely conclude, however, that the results reported herewith are representative. "

In further explanation, Dr. McKay submitted the drawings shown on page57, and says:

 "Four lots of material were sectioned, two from the collection of May 6 and two from that of May 25. Of these, two gave anthers of type one, and two of type two. More material will have to be sectioned before we know which type is predominant. 

 "The anthers of type one are greatly shriveled, and a band of deeply-staining collapsed cells apparently represents the remains of archesporial or pollen-forming tissue. 

 "The anthers of type two are normal in appearance, but the pollen-mother-cells degenerate before pollen grains are formed. A comparison of the degenerate pollen-mother-cells of this plant with normal pollen-mother-cells is given below:"

[Illustration: Sections of anthers of the Weschcke Hickory Carya ovata

_Illustrations by Dr. McKay showing pollen degeneration in Weschckehickory. _]

This substantiates the conclusion that I had arrived at previous to thisreport, that this hickory is able to mature its nuts early in the fallby reason of not having to waste its energy in the production of pollen. (There is only one other variety of hickory which I have grafted onbitternut which has proved unable to mature pollen and it is the Creagerfrom Iowa. ) I was immensely pleased to find that it responded very wellto Bridgewater pollen, a high percentage of the blooms treated with itdeveloping mature nuts. The results with the Kirtland pollen were almostequally good, the poorest showing coming from those branches treatedwith Beaver pollen on which only three mature nuts developed. (TheBeaver is presumed to be a hybrid between bitternut and shagbarkhickories. ) Sixty-two nuts from these pollinizations were planted in thefall of 1941 in rodent-proof seed beds. In the spring, countinggermination, I found 100% of these nuts had sprouted and grown intosmall trees during the season. 

After finding the most suitable pollen for the Weschcke hickory, Irealized the necessity for including more than one variety of hickory ina planting, just as there should be more than one variety of apple orplum tree in an orchard. I think that it would always be well to havethree or more varieties of known compatibility within reasonabledistances, probably not more than 100 feet apart, nor less than 40 to 50feet for large hickories. 

Of the many varieties of hickory and hickory hybrids I have tested, about twenty have, by now, proved to be sufficiently hardy to recommendfor this latitude. These include:

 *Beaver hybrid hickory *Fairbanks hybrid hickory *Laney hybrid hickory Burlington hybrid between pecan and shellbark hickory Rockville hybrid between pecan and shellbark hickory Hope pecan pure pecan grafted on to bitternut roots Hand pure shagbark *Bridgewater pure shagbark Barnes hybrid hickory *Cedar Rapids pure shagbark *Weschcke pure shagbark *Deveaux pure shagbark *Brill pure shagbark *Glover pure shagbark *Kirtland pure shagbark *Siers thought to be a hybrid between the mocker nut and bitternut *Stratford hybrid (bitternut by shagbark) *Creager

 *Have produced mature nuts

There are three or four others that are hardy but all means ofidentification having been lost, it will be necessary to wait until theycome into bearing before their varieties will be known. As experimentscontinue, more varieties of worthy, hardy hickories and hiccans will befound which will justify completely the opinion of those of us whoalways hail as king of all our native nuts, the hickory. 

[Illustration: _1930--Weschcke Hickory as borne by parent tree atFayette, Iowa. _

_1939--After several years of bearing grafted on Northern Bitternuthickory at River Falls, Wis. _

_1940--Still further change in shape and size from graft on Bitternut. _

_1941--Change and increase in size now is so pronounced as to almostextinguish its original identity. _]

[Illustration: _Weschcke hickory nut natural size shows free splittinghull. Photo by C. Weschcke. _]

Chapter 8

BUTTERNUT

Like the hickory tree, the butternut shares in the childhoodreminiscences of those who have lived on farms or in the country wherebutternuts are a treat to look forward to each fall. The nuts, whichmature early, have a rich, tender kernel of mild flavor. Only thedisadvantage of their heavy, corrugated shells prevents them fromholding the highest place in popularity, although a good variety crackseasily into whole half-kernels. 

Butternuts grow over an extended range which makes them the mostnorthern of all our native wild nut trees, although their nuts do notmature as far north as hazelnuts do. Butternut trees blossom so earlythat in northern latitudes the blossoms are frequently killed in latespring frosts. Only when the trees are growing near the summit of asteep hillside will they be likely to escape such frosts and bear cropsregularly. I have found that really heavy crops appear in cycles innatural groves of butternut trees. My observation of them over a periodof thirty-two years in their natural habitat in west-central Wisconsinhas led me to conclude that one may expect butternut trees to bear, onan average, an enormous crop of nuts once in five years, a fairly largecrop once in three years, with little or no crop the remaining years. 

As a seedling tree of two or three years, the butternut isindistinguishable from the black walnut except to a very discerning andpracticed eye, especially in the autumn after its leaves have fallen. Asthe trees grow older, the difference in their bark becomes moreapparent, that of the butternut remaining smooth for many years, ascontrasted to the bark on black walnut trees which begins to roughen onthe main trunk early in its life. Bark on a butternut may still besmooth when the tree is ten years old. Forest seedlings of butternut, when one or two years old, are easily transplanted if the soil iscongenial to their growth. Although the tree will do well on many typesof soil, it prefers one having a limestone base, just as the Englishwalnut does. 

A butternut seedling usually requires several more years of growth thana black walnut does before it comes into bearing, although this varieswith climate and soil. It is impossible to be exact, but I think I maysafely say that it requires at least ten years of growing before aseedling butternut tree will bear any nuts. Of course, exceptions willoccasionally occur. 

As a butternut tree matures, it spreads out much like an apple orchestnut tree. Of course, it must have enough room to do so, animportant factor in raising any nut tree. Enough room and sunlighthasten bearing-age and insure larger crops of finer nuts. Graftingvaluable varieties of butternut on black walnut stock will also hastenbearing. I have had such grafts produce nuts the same year the graftingwas done and these trees continued to grow rapidly and produce annually. However, they were not easy to graft, the stubborn reluctance of thebutternut top to accept transplantation to a foreign stock being wellknown. This factor will probably always cause grafted butternut trees tobe higher in price than black walnut or hickory. The reverse graft, i. E. , black walnut on butternut should never be practiced for althoughsuccessful, the black walnut overgrows the stock and results in anunproductive tree. Specimens 25 or more years old prove this to be afact. 

Butternut trees are good feeders. They respond well to cultivation andlend themselves to being grafted upon, although, from my own experience, I question their usefulness as a root stock. I have found that when Igrafted black walnuts, English walnuts or heartnuts on butternut stock, the top or grafted part of the tree became barren except for anoccasional handful of nuts, even on very large trees. Since this hasoccurred throughout the many years of my nut culture work, I think itshould be given serious consideration before butternut is used as a rootstock for other species of nut trees. 

[Illustration: _Weschcke Butternut. Smooth shallow convolutions of shellallow kernels to drop out freely. Drawing by Wm. Kuehn. _]

I had the good luck to discover an easy-cracking variety of butternut inRiver Falls, Wisconsin, in 1934, which I have propagated commerciallyand which carries my name. A medium-sized nut, it has the requisiteproperties for giving it a varietal name, for it cracks mostly along thesutural lines and its internal structure is so shallow that the kernelwill fall out if a half-shell is turned upside down. I received one ofthose surprises which sometimes occur when a tree is asexuallypropagated when I grafted scions from this butternut on black walnutstock. The resulting nuts were larger than those on the parent tree andtheir hulls peeled off with almost no effort. Whether these featurescontinue after the trees become older is something I shall observe withinterest. 

[Illustration: _Self hulling Butternut. Weschcke variety. Drawing by Wm. Kuehn. _]

The nearly self-hulling quality of these nuts makes them very clean tohandle. The absence of hulls in cracking butternuts not only does awaywith the messiness usually involved, but also it allows more accuratecracking and more sanitary handling of the kernels. In 1949 I noticed anew type of butternut growing near the farm residence. This butternutwas fully twice as large as the Weschcke and had eight prominent ridges. The nut proved to be even better than the older variety and we intend totest it further by grafting it on butternuts and black walnut stocks. Although hand-operated nutcrackers have been devised to crack these andother wild nuts, they are not as fast as a hammer. If one protects thehand by wearing a glove and stands the butternut on a solid iron base, hitting the pointed end with a hammer, it is quite possible toaccumulate a pint of clean nut meats in half an hour. 

The butternut tree is one whose lumber may be put to many uses. It islight but very tough and stringy and when planed and sanded, it absorbsvarnish and finishes very well. Although not as dark in natural color asblack walnut, butternut resembles it in grain. When butternut has beenstained to represent black walnut, it is only by their weight that theycan be distinguished. In late years, natural butternut has becomepopular as an interior finish and for furniture, being sold as "blondewalnut, " "French walnut, " or "white walnut, " in my opinion very impropernames. I see no reason for calling it by other than its own. Depletionof forests of butternut trees brings its lumber value up in price nearlyto that of fine maple or birch, approaching that of black walnut in someplaces. 

I have run several thousand feet of butternut lumber from my farmlandthrough my own sawmill and used it for a variety of purposes. It isprobably the strongest wood for its weight except spruce. I have used itsuccessfully to make propellers which operate electric generators forderiving power from the wind. Because butternut is so light and, properly varnished, resists weathering and decay to so great an extent, I have found it the best material I have ever tried for suchconstruction. In building a small electric car for traveling around theorchards, I used butternut rather than oak or metal, which saved atleast 100 pounds of weight, an important matter since the source of thecar's power is automobile storage batteries. 

Butternut is very durable in contact with the ground and is used forfence posts on farms where it is plentiful. Bird houses built of thiswood will last indefinitely, even a lifetime if they are protected withpaint or varnish. Butternut is like red cedar in this respect, althoughmuch stronger. Stories have been told of black walnut logs which, afterlying unused for fifty years, have been sawed into lumber and found tobe still in excellent condition. It is quite likely that the same couldbe said of butternut for these woods are very much alike in the degreeof their durability and resistance to weather. 

An incidental value butternut trees have is their ability to bleedfreely in the spring if the outer bark is cut. Therefore, they can betapped like maple trees and their sap boiled down to make a sweet syrup. It does not have the sugar content that the Stabler black walnut has, however. Another possible use is suggested by the shells of butternutswhich, even when buried in the ground, show great resistance to decay. Ihave found them to be still intact and possessing some strength afterbeing covered by earth for fifteen years. This indicates that they mightbe used with a binder in a composition material. Their extreme hardnessalso offers a good wearing surface. 

[Illustration: _Electrically operated wagon constructed of nativebutternut wood known for strength and light weight as well asdurability. Author's sons aboard. Photo by C. Weschcke 1941. _]

Not only good things can be said of the butternut tree and it would bewrong to avoid mentioning the deleterious effect that a butternut treemay have on other trees planted within the radius of its root system. Ihave had several experiences of this kind. One butternut tree on myfarm, having a trunk six inches in diameter, killed every Mugho pinewithin the radius of its root system. This amounted to between 50 and100 pines. Their death could not be attributed to the shade cast by thebutternut as Mugho pines are very tolerant of shade. As the firstbranches of the butternut were more than three feet off the ground, thepines could not have been influenced by the top system of the tree nordo I believe that it was due to fallen leaves, but rather directly tothe greatly ramified roots. Large evergreens, such as Colorado bluespruce, native white pine, limber pine and Jeffrey pine are known tohave been similarly influenced. While small butternut trees do not, inmy experience, have this effect, this may be explained by the fact thatthe radius of their root systems is much more limited. Most plants, other than pines, thrive within the influence of butternut roots, however, and it certainly does not damage pasture grass as some of thecountry's best grazing land is among such trees. The damage results froma chemical known as Juglone which is elaborated by the root system andwhen the roots of the butternut cross those of its evergreen neighbor, this acts as a poison to the evergreen and may kill it. 

[Illustration: _An 8-foot propeller of butternut wood is the prime moverfor wind power generator which in a brisk wind generated 110 volts and10 amperes at 300 RPM. _]

The butternut is attacked by one serious disease which is in the natureof a blight (melanconium oblongum), since it is transmitted throughspores. It usually attacks old trees, the branches of the top partdying, and the bark on the main trunk becoming loose. The diseaseprogresses slowly and I have seen large trees infected for twelve orfifteen years, continuing to bear fine crops. It does have a veryweakening effect, though, and eventually saps the life from the treelong before its natural span of life of about fifty years is over. 

Chapter 9

PIONEERING WITH ENGLISH WALNUTS IN WISCONSIN

The convention of the Northern Nut Growers' Association at Geneva, NewYork, in 1936, brought many interesting subjects to the attention of nutenthusiasts. None, however, commanded as much attention as an exhibit byPaul C. Crath, of Toronto, of walnuts from the Carpathian Mountains inEurope. There were more than forty varieties of walnuts represented init, in sizes ranging from that of a large filbert to that of a verylarge hen's egg, and in shape being globular, ovate or rectangular. Theexhibitor had these identified by varietal numbers until testing andpropagation should suggest appropriate names. In several talks whichRev. Crath gave during the convention, he described his trips andfindings in the walnut-producing sections of the Polish Carpathians. Thesubject remained in prominence during the three days of the conventionand the idea was suggested that the Association sponsor another trip toEurope to obtain walnuts growing there which Rev. Crath considered evenhardier and finer than the ones he had. The plan was tabled, however, for only two of us were eager to contribute to the venture. 

On my return home, I thought more about what a splendid opportunity thiswould be to procure hardy English walnuts to grow in this part of thecountry. I interested my father in the idea, and, with his backing, corresponded with Rev. Crath. This was not the first or the last timethat my father, Charles Weschcke, had encouraged me and had backed hisgood wishes and advice with money. A professional man and a graduate ofpharmacy and chemistry of the University of Wisconsin, he showed anunusual interest in my horticultural endeavors. The immediate outcomewas Rev. Crath's visit to my nursery at River Falls, to determinewhether material that he might collect could be properly tested there. To my satisfaction, he found that temperature, soil conditions and stockmaterial were adequate for such work. 

We contracted with Rev. Crath to reproduce asexually all the varietiesthat he could discover and ship to us, agreeing to finance his trip andto pay him a royalty whenever we sold trees resulting from the plantmaterial he sent us. We decided that the material which he was to gathershould include not only English walnuts but also the hazels or filbertsnative to Poland. The walnuts were to consist of about six hundredpounds of seeds, representing some forty varieties, several thousandscions and about five hundred trees. We planned that the filberts shouldconsist of both trees and nuts, but because of a total failure of thiscrop the year that Rev. Crath was there, only trees were available. 

Rev. Crath left Canada in October 1936, and spent all of the followingwinter in Poland. While he was there, I began the task of arranging forthe receipt of the walnuts and hazels he was to send, and so began awearisome, exasperating experience. First, it was necessary to obtainpermits from the Bureau of Plant Industry in Washington. Because of thevast quantity of material expected, these permits had to be issued inthe names of five people. Next, I engaged a New York firm of importers, so that no time would be lost in re-routing the shipment to the properauthorities for inspection. This firm, in turn, hired brokers who wereresponsible for paying all duty, freight and inspection charges. Icertainly thought that we had everything in such readiness that therewould be nothing to delay the shipment when it arrived. How wrong I was!

Although Rev. Crath had written me that the shipment had been sent on acertain Polish steamer, I learned of its arrival only from a letter Ireceived from the importing company, which requested that the originalbill of lading and invoice be sent to them at once, as the shipment hadalready been in the harbor for a week but could not be released by thecustoms office until they had these documents. I had received the billof lading from Rev. Crath but not the invoice, for he had not known thatI would need it. So my valuable, but perishable, shipment remained inport storage day after day while I frantically sought for some way tobreak through the "red tape" holding it there. Cables to Rev. Crath wereundeliverable as he was back in the mountains seeking more material. Indesperation, I wrote to Clarence A. Reed, an old friend, member of theNorthern Nut Growers' Association and in charge of government nutinvestigations in the Division of Pomology at Washington. Through hisefforts and under heavy bond pending receipt of the invoice, the walnutand filbert material was released and sent to Washington, D. C. As therewas too much of it to be inspected through the usual facilities for thiswork, it was necessary to employ a firm of seed and plant importers todo the necessary inspecting and fumigating. At last, terminating myconcern and distress over the condition in which the trees and scionswould be after such great delays and so many repackings, the shipmentarrived in St. Paul. There remained only the requirement of gettingpermission from the Bureau of Plant Inspection of the State of Minnesotato take it to Wisconsin, where, if there was anything left, I intendedto plant it. This permission being readily granted, we managed, by truckand, finally, by sled, to get it to the nursery about the middle of thewinter. 

The following spring, we planted the nuts and trees and grafted thescions on black walnut and butternut stocks. The mortality of thesegrafts was the greatest I have ever known. Of about four thousandEnglish walnut grafts, representing some twenty varieties, only onehundred twenty-five took well enough to produce a good union with thestock and to grow. Some of them grew too fast and in spite of myprecautions, were blown out; others died from winter injury the firstyear. By the following spring, there were only ten varieties which hadwithstood the rigor of the climate. Of the five hundred trees, only afew dozen survived. Fortunately, this was not one of our severe, "test"winters, or probably none of these plants would have withstood it. 

The walnuts which were planted showed a fairly high degree of hardiness. Of 12, 000 seedling trees, our nursery is testing more than 800 forvarietal classification. These have been set out in test orchardformation on two locations, both high on the slope of a ravine, onegroup on the north side, one on the south. It has been suggested thatfrom the remaining seedlings, which number thousands, we select 500 to1000 representative specimens and propagate them on black walnut stocksin some warmer climate, either in Oregon, Missouri or New York. Thiswould determine their value as semi-hardy trees worthy of propagation insuch localities. Such an experiment will probably be made eventually. 

The same year, 1937, in which I obtained the Polish nuts, I also boughtone hundred pounds of Austrian walnuts, to serve as a check. Eightypounds of these consisted of the common, commercial type of walnut, while the remainder was of more expensive nuts having cream-coloredshells and recommended by the Austrian seed firm as particularly hardy. Altogether these nuts included approximately one hundred varieties, twenty of which were so distinctive that their nuts could be separatedfrom the others by size and shape. 

About two thousand seedlings grew from this planting, most of whichproved to be too tender for our winter conditions. The seedlings grownfrom the light-colored nuts show about the same degree of hardiness asthe Carpathian plants. Many of them have been set out in experimentalorchards to be brought into bearing. 

After the first year, the English walnuts progressed fairly well. Largetrees, which had not been entirely worked over at first, were trimmed sothat nothing remained of the original top, but only the graftedbranches. The winter of 1938-39 was not especially severe and mortalitywas low, although it was apparent that all of the varieties were notequally hardy. Even a few of the scions grafted on butternut stocks weregrowing successfully. I had made these grafts realizing that the stockwas not a very satisfactory one, to learn if it could be used to producescionwood. As the results were encouraging, I decided it would beworthwhile to give them good care and gradually to remove all of thebutternut top. 

Each fall, the first two years after I had grafted all these walnuts, Icut and stored enough scionwood from each variety to maintain it if thewinter should be so severe as to destroy the grafts. Unfortunately, thegrafts had developed so well, even to the actual bearing of nuts bythree varieties, that in 1940 I did not think this precaution wasnecessary. Then came our catastrophic Armistice Day blizzard, the mostsevere test of hardiness and adaptability ever to occur in the north. Many of our hardiest trees suffered great injury from it, such trees, for instance, as Colorado blue spruce, limber pine, arborvitae; culturedvarieties of hickories, hiccans, heartnuts; fruit trees, includingapples, plums and apricots, which bore almost no fruit the next summer. 

Although not one variety of English walnut was entirely killed, all, except one, suffered to some degree, and it was not until late thefollowing summer that several varieties began to produce new wood. Thevariety which showed the greatest degree of hardiness is "Firstling, "originally known as Letter F. Although the primary buds on the Firstlingwere nearly all killed, very few of the small branches were affected andthe union itself suffered no injury. Second in hardiness is Kremenetz, much of its top being killed, but its union being only slightlyaffected. No. 64 was affected in about the same amount as Kremenetz. Increasing degrees of tenderness and, of course, decreasing degrees ofhardiness, were shown by the many other varieties, some of which maynever recover completely from the shock of that blizzard. The seedlingtrees suffered only slight damage so that I expect that they are hardyenough to produce fruit here. 

I cannot conclude this chapter without mentioning certain observationsI have made regarding hardiness, which, although they require morespecific study, I wish to describe as a suggestion for furtherexperimentation by either amateur or professional horticulturists. Mytheory is that a determination of the hardiness factor of an Englishwalnut tree can be made according to the color of its bark. I have seenthat a tree having thin bark which remains bright green late into thefall is very likely to be of a tender variety. Conversely, among theseCarpathian walnuts, I have found that varieties whose bark becomes tanor brown early in autumn show much more hardiness than those whose barkremains green. One variety, Wolhynie, whose bark is chocolate brown, isvery resistant to winter injury. Another, whose green bark is heavilydotted with lenticels, shows itself hardier than those having none oronly a trace of them. In testing almonds, I have found that trees whosebark turns red early in the fall are definitely more hardy than thosewhose bark remains green or tan. In observing apricots, I have learnedthat young twigs with red bark are more resistant to cold than thosewith brown. Of course, these findings cannot be considered as factsuntil further studies have been made. I hope that others will find theidea of investigating this more-than-possibility as interesting as I do. 

As the years increased, however, the growth of the seedling walnutsdecreased and some having made a nice tree-like form, with a trunk ofapproximately an inch in diameter, within a succession of years werereduced in size through the combination of winter injury and attacks bythe butternut curculio as well as a bacterial blight until by 1952 onlya fraction of the 12, 000 seedlings remained, certainly less than 1, 000. All of the originally grafted specimens are dead with the exception ofone variety which has been kept alive by constantly re-grafting it onblack walnut. We have not named this variety as yet, although it hasborne both staminate and pistillate bloom, it has never borne any ripenuts. Some of the seedlings, however, still show persistent traits ofhardiness and of insect resistance and we still have hopes that after 15years these trees will yet overcome the adversities of this uncongenialclimate for this species. 

Chapter 10

OTHER TREES

Heartnut

The heartnut is a sport of the Japanese walnut (Juglans sieboldiana). Since its nut is heart-shaped, it has the name of "cordiformis" added toits species name. There are many of these sports, some of which havebeen propagated under the varietal names of Faust, Lancaster, Fodermaier, Wright, Walters, Canoka, Okay and Gellatly. 

I think this is the most ornamental of all nut trees. In shape, it issimilar to an apple tree, spreading out rather than growing tall, butits long, compound leaves give it a tropical appearance. During theautumn these leaves do not color any more than do those of the blackwalnut. The tree produces long racemes of red blossoms and its staminateblooms are catkins eight to ten inches long, which, when fully ripened, swish in the wind and release clouds of yellow pollen. The heartnut treeholds the interest of its owner closely during that time when the nutsresulting from the racemes of blossoms are steadily increasing in size. I have seen as many as sixteen nuts on one stem and doubtless, theresometimes are more. The owner of such a tree, at least if he is at alllike me, will proudly exhibit it to all comers during the spring andsummer seasons. And then, at harvest time, after the nuts have graduallychanged from green to the dull yellow that indicates their maturity, hewill have the satisfaction of shaking them down for drying and storage. 

The heartnut kernel tastes much like that of the butternut and itsinternal structure is almost the same but the outside shell is smooth. Cultivated varieties usually crack easily and in such a way that thekernel is released in halves. From all this, it is easy to see that theheartnut is not only a beautiful tree but is definitely useful. 

In my own work with heartnuts I have found that, although they are to beclassed only as semi-hardy, there are a few varieties which are hardyenough for northern temperatures. Only testing will determine which onescan endure severe climates. In the spring of 1921, I planted a Lancasterheartnut grafted on a black walnut, but the weather was cold that seasonand it was killed down to the graft joint, where it threw out a sprout. This was weak and succulent by fall and the graft was entirely killedback that winter. I bought twelve more Lancaster heartnuts a year later. They were interspersed in the orchard among some black walnuts. Although a few survived the first winter, none ever lived to come intobearing. From time to time, I also experimented with seedlings sent tome by Professor James A. Neilson of Vineland, Ontario, who wasinterested in having them tested in this latitude. These, too, werealways unsuccessful. 

I had my first success with several unnamed varieties of heartnuts Ipurchased in 1933 from J. U. Gellatly of British Columbia. These weregrafted on black walnut stocks of considerable size. To insure theirsurviving the first winter, I built wooden shelters which completelyenclosed them, filling these shelters with forest leaves and protectingthem against mice with screen covers. No doubt this was a decided help;at least all of these heartnuts lived for many years until the invasionof the butternut curculio and the damage done by the yellow bellied sapsucker bird caused me the loss of all except one variety, the Gellatly. This variety I have perpetuated by re-grafting on other black walnutstocks and by spraying and covering the limbs with screen to prevent thesap sucker from working on it, still have it in the nursery and at myhome in St. Paul where a young tree on the boulevard bears each year. 

I have found that heartnuts are difficult to propagate, the number ofsuccessful grafts I have made being far below that of black walnuts onblack walnut stocks. The reason for this is not well understood any morethan is the fact, in my experience, that the Stabler walnut will graftreadily and the Ten Eyck persistently refuses to. A good feature thatthese grafted trees do have, however, is their early productiveness. Ihave seen them set nuts the second year after grafting and this has alsooccurred in trees I have sold to others. 

When a nut of J. Sieboldiana cordiformis is planted, it does notreliably reproduce itself in true type, sometimes reverting to that ofthe ordinary Japanese walnut, which looks more like a butternut and hasa rather rough shell as distinguished from the smooth shell of theheartnut. In hulling my heartnut crop for 1940, I noticed many deformednuts. 

The season had been a prolific one for nut production of all kinds, andI knew there had been a mixture of pollen in the air at the time thesenutlets were receptive (a mixture made up largely of pollen from blackwalnuts, butternuts, with some English walnuts). Since irregularities insize and shape indicate hybridity frequently and since heartnuts areeasily hybridized I have assumed that these were pollinized by themixture. I have planted these odd-shaped nuts and I expect them toresult in many new crosses of J. Sieboldiana cordiformis, some five toeight years from now. 

[Illustration: _Beautiful tropical looking Japanese Walnut (Juglanssieboldiana cordiformis). Variety Gellatly, from Westbank, B. C. , Canada. Photo by C. Weschcke. _]

To show how nature reacts to much interference I will follow through onthese nearly 100 small trees that resulted from this pollination. Theywere transplanted into an orchard on a side hill and well taken care offor several years, but during that time one after another was killed, apparently by winter conditions or perhaps the site was too exposed orthe soil may have been uncongenial. Today there remains but three trees, none of which have borne but all indicate that they are true heartnutsfrom the shape of the leaves and color of the bark and generalformation. In order to hasten their bearing, scions have been taken fromthese small trees and will be grafted on large black walnut stocks tobring them into fruitfulness much earlier than if they were left totheir own slow growth. This system of testing out seedlings long beforethey have reached a size sufficient to bear on their own roots isapplicable to all of the species of nut trees and is one way that theplant breeder can hurry up his testing for varieties after makingcrosses and obtaining young plants. 

[Illustration: _Natural size Heartnut. Photo 10/26/38 by C. Weschcke. Gellatly variety. _]

Beechnut

The beechnut, Fagus ferruginea, belonging to the oak family, is one ofthe giants of the forest, growing to great size and age. Even very oldbeech trees have smooth bark and this, in earlier and more rustic days, was much used for the romantic carving of lovers' names, as scars stillvisible on such ancient trees testify. The wood itself is dense andhard, even more so than hard maple, and is considered good lumber. Beechnut is one of the few nut trees with a more shallow and ramifiedroot system as contrasted with that of most, which, as in the oak, walnut and hickory, is a tap root system. This fact suggests that inthose localities where beeches grow wild, grafts made on such trees, andtransplanted, would survive and grow well. 

Perhaps one of the reasons why very little propagation is done withbeeches is that no outstanding variety has ever been discovered. Although the nut shell is thin and the meat sweet and oily, the kernelis so small that one must crack dozens of them to get a satisfyingsample of their flavor. This, of course, prevents their having anycommercial value as a nut. There is also the fact that the beechnut isthe slowest growing of all the common nut trees, requiring from twentyto thirty years to come into bearing as a seedling. Of course this couldbe shortened, just as it is in propagating hickories and pecans, bymaking grafts on root systems which are ten or more years old, asexplained in the chapter on heartnuts. However, I know of no nursery inwhich beechnuts are propagated in this way. 

My attempts to grow beechnut trees in Wisconsin have met with littlesuccess. About the year 1922, I obtained 150 trees from the Sturgeon BayNurseries. I planted these on level ground which had clay near thesurface with limestone about a foot under it. Although all of thesetrees seemed to start satisfactorily, some even growing about a foot, within two or three years they had all died. I decided they were nothardy but I now realize that the character of the soil was responsiblefor their gradual death; they should be planted in a limestone orcalcareous soil, preferably of the fine sandy type, the main requisitebeing plenty of moisture because of their shallow root system. Sincethen, I have purchased beechnut seeds several times from variousseedsmen, but none of these seeds has ever sprouted. I think this isbecause beechnuts, like chestnuts, must be handled with great care toretain their viability. 

In 1938, I ordered 100 beechnut trees from the Hershey Nurseries ofDowningtown, Pennsylvania. Although these trees were set in sandy soil, there are now only about five of them alive, and of these, only four aregrowing well enough to suggest that they will some day become big trees. 

Beechnuts must be protected against mice and rabbits as these species ofrodents are very fond of bark and young growth of these trees and I haveevery reason to believe that deer are in the same category. 

Oaks

Although the acorns produced by the red oak are very bitter andconsistently wormy, those from the white oak are more edible. In my ownexploring, I have found one tree, apparently a hybrid between the redand white oaks, which bears good acorns. The nuts, which are long andthin, are generally infested with weevils. If there were a demand forsuch a nut tree, I'm sure that it could easily be grafted on oak roots. During favorable seasons, when these edible nuts were of good size andfree from worms, I have carried them in my pocket and enjoyed munchingon them. I found that their flavor, like that of chestnuts, was improvedby roasting. 

Acorns are a balanced food and contain enough starch to make themreadily assimilated, except for their bitterness. They are a good foodfor farm animals and chickens. I have kept a flock of goats in goodcondition by feeding them acorns during the winter. It isn't necessaryto grind them for such use. I have read that Indians at one timeprepared acorns for their own use by storing them in bags submerged incold running water. This not only extracted the bitterness but also itprobably discouraged the development of weevil eggs. 

Oak trees are generally prolific and are regular bearers, but of course, what they are widely known and loved for is the beauty of their leavesin the autumn. No one doubts their esthetic value, which will keep themforever popular whether they come into demand as a grafted nut tree ornot. 

Chestnuts

Another of our ornamental nut trees is the chestnut, also of the oakfamily, classified under the genus Castanea, which grows into a large, beautiful tree with wide-spread branches. Chestnuts do not grow well onlimestone soil and always fail in the heavy blue clay so common on farmlands in this part of the country. It is best for their growth that thesoil be gravelly and slightly acid. 

The chestnut has always been a good timber tree. Its wood, although notas hard as the red oak, resembles it in grain. The beams of many oldpioneer homes are found to be chestnut. It is said that this is one offew woods to give a warning groan under too heavy a burden before itcracks or breaks. Chestnut wood is very durable in contact with thesoil, outlasting all others except possibly black walnut and cedar. Itcontains so much siliceous matter in its pores that it quickly dullschisels and saws used in working it. 

The chestnut trees at my nursery were grown from mixed hybrid seedswhich I obtained from Miss Amelia Riehl of Godfrey, Illinois. Almost allof the seeds she first sent me, in 1926, spoiled while they were storedduring the winter. But Miss Riehl sent me more the following spring, many of which proved hardy. In 1937, the oldest of these trees producedstaminate bloom for the first time. I naturally expected a crop of nutsfrom it that year, but none developed. The same thing happened in 1938. I then wrote to Miss Riehl about it, also asking her where to look forthe pistillate blossoms. Her reply was a very encouraging one in whichshe wrote that the pistillate blossoms appear at the base of the catkinsor staminate blooms, but that it is quite a common thing for chestnuttrees to carry the latter for several years before producing pistillateblossoms. She also explained that it was very unlikely that the treewould fertilize its own blooms, so that I should not expect one tree tobear until other nearby chestnuts were also shedding pollen. Thisoccurred the next year and another chestnut close to the first one set afew nuts. It was not until 1940 that the tree which had blossomed first, actually bore nuts. 

In 1940, I crossed the pistillate blossoms of this tree with pollen froma Chinese variety called Carr, resulting in half a dozen nuts which Iplanted. 

Since the chestnuts in these parts do not bloom usually until early Julywe can expect chestnuts to be a more reliable crop than butternuts, forinstance, which bloom very early in the spring about May 1 to 15th. 

Having had this reward for my efforts I took much more interest inchestnut growing and ordered trees of the Chinese varieties, Castaneamollissma from J. Russell Smith, H. F. Stoke, and John Hershey. Some ofthese were seedlings and some were grafted trees, not over a dozen ofthem alive today and none have produced mature nuts. Seemingly they havenot been hardy although they have grown large enough to produce bothstaminate and pistillate blooms; they have never winter killed back tothe ground, however. 

Also, I have been planting nuts from all sources from which I couldobtain them, mostly of the Chinese chestnut type. Some of these nutswere results of crosses, and showed their hybridity in the youngseedlings that resulted there from. Today I have perhaps 150 of suchyoung seedlings which I am pampering with the hope of getting somethingworthwhile from them. One of the big thrills of chestnut growing was theresult of a chestnut that I picked up from a plant that was no higherthan 2 feet, growing at Beltsville, Maryland in the government testingground there, in 1937. My records show that this plant began to bearnuts in 1943 and have subsequently borne several crops in between thetimes that it was frozen to the ground and grew up again, which happenedat least three times. Like most chestnuts this one has to be pollinatedby taking the staminate bloom from a dwarfed chestnut nearby whose bloomcoincides with the blossoming of the female flowers of this Chinesehybrid. Chestnuts rarely set any nuts that produce mature seed fromtheir own pollen but depend on cross-pollination. The nut from thishybrid is also the largest of any that I have grown and to my taste is apalatable one. It may not rank among the best ones of known varietiestoday, but for our climate I would consider it unusually large and good. Experimentally, I have been able to produce new plants from this tree bylayering young shoots coming from the roots. This generally requires twoyears to make a well-rooted plant before they are cut off andtransplanted. This alternative of propagating by grafting or budding isconsidered a better method if it can be practiced, as it gives a planton its own roots instead of the roots of some unknown seedling stock. 

[Illustration: _Hybrid Chestnut; natural size, one of the two survivorsof several dozen trees sent by the U. S. Dept. Of Agriculture fortesting this far north. Fair size nut and it resembles the AmericanSweet Chestnut. Photo by C. Weschcke. _]

Another tree that surprised me when it came into bearing proved to bearone nut in a burr which led me to believe that it was a chinquapinhybrid. Later on, the habit of this tree changed somewhat and some ofthe burrs had more than one nut. I have found this to be the experienceof others who have observed so-called chinquapin trees of a hybridnature. It is my belief that the kind of pollen with which theseblossoms are fertilized directly influences the number of nuts in a burrand sometimes the size of the nuts, again showing the importance of thecross-pollinating varieties when setting out an orchard of trees. Thisparticular chinquapin type chestnut has upright growing habits differentfrom a tree bearing similar nuts but having a very dwarfed habit. All ofthe nuts of the latter after six years of bearing can be picked off thistree by standing on the ground. There are several other trees bearingchestnuts, some large and some small nuts, all of which are interestingto me and may be important in the future of the chestnuts this far northsince they indicate without doubt that the chestnut can accommodateitself to our climate, providing it has the right type of soil to growin. In 1952 I acquired a 20-acre adjoining piece of land which has amuch better chestnut growing site, being deep sandy soil, well drained, and yet not ever being dry. New varieties will be tested on this pieceand should give much better results than the old trees which alreadywere good enough to indicate success in chestnuts. 

[Illustration: _A hybrid chestnut presumed to be a cross betweenEuropean Chestnut (Castanea Sativa) and its American cousin (CastaneaAmericana). Actual size. Photo by C. Weschcke. _]

[Illustration: _Chinquapin hybrids from a tall growing tree. Nuts growin racemes of burrs with as many as 10 burrs on one stem. Photo by C. Weschcke. _]

Apricot

If it were not that an apricot is a nut as well as a fruit, I shouldhesitate to include a description of my work with it. But the apricotseed has a rich kernel which, in many countries, for example, China, isused as a substitute for the almond to which it is closely related. 

It was in 1933 that my aunt, Margaret Weschcke, told me of an apricottree growing in a yard on the Mississippi River bluff in St. Paul andsaid to be bearing fruit. I was quite skeptical until I saw the tree andalso saw fruit from it which had been preserved by the woman who ownedit. Convinced of the hardiness of the tree, I was anxious to obtainscionwood but it was not until late that winter that I receivedpermission to do so. It happened that a truck had broken off a largebranch from the tree while delivering coal, and the owner veryreasonably decided that taking a few twigs from it would not hurt it anymore. I not only took the small branches that she was willing tosacrifice from her tree but also as many as possible from the branchwhich had been torn off, as its terminals were still in a freshcondition. 

I grafted these scions on hybrid plum trees where they took holdreadily, and in 1938, they began to bear prolifically. The apricots, which I have named Harriet, in honor of my mother, are a fine-flavoredfruit, medium in size. Their cheeks are a mottled red with raisedsurfaces. Their pits are well-formed and fairly edible. Although theparent tree died the winter I took scions from it, my grafts have provedquite hardy, having received no injury when temperatures as low as 47°below zero have occurred. Since the parent tree died because its rootswere severely frozen, it would seem that the top of the tree, in thiscase, was more hardy than the root system. This does occur sometimes, although it is unusual. 

In developing the factor of hardiness further in this apricot variety, Ihave taken advantage of something I had observed about other fruittrees. When one combines parts of two trees by grafting, it is a simplething to select a hardy root stock from the available plants, just as Iselected hardy plum stock on which to graft my apricot scions. This isnot always possible in choosing scionwood, however, since scionwood isusually selected for such reasons as the quality of its fruit. It mayhappen that the top part of a tree is limited in its climatic scopebecause of its inability to withstand precipitate or otherwiseunfavorable temperatures. Having observed that certain grafted varietiesof fruit trees, such as the Wealthy apple, for instance, have graduallycome to be planted much farther north than they originally were, Ireasoned that this was because only the hardiest of them survived andthese hardy ones therefore became the mother blocks for future grafting. This was an inescapable procedure which acted as a method of budselection. I therefore assumed that by a careful choice of the hardiestamong surviving twigs of the most recent graft of the Harriet apricot, when particularly severe winter weather had caused some injury, I couldinduce extra-hardiness in future grafts. 

I also believe that I have added to the hardiness factor of the apricotby making frequent grafts. It is my theory that the root stock is ableto exert some influence over the top other than mere maintenance oflife. By frequently uniting a hardy stock with a less hardy top, I thinkthat the individuality of the top part may be somewhat broken down andthe extra characteristic of hardiness added to it. After the fifthre-graft of this apricot made in eight years, I am convinced by itsappearance and behavior that it is capable of becoming a reliableapricot for the region around St. Paul. Today the apricot still existsgrafted on plum at my nursery at River Falls, Wisconsin, and theweakness of the tree seems to be in the union between the top and theplum stock. If this union were not so corky and large and succulent itmight be less injured by our winters; therefore it is quite apparentthat the plum is not a congenial stock for an apricot, at least it doesnot produce a satisfactory union. I am now making tests with this samevariety by grafting it on more hardy apricot seedling stock such as theProf. N. E. Hansen of Brookings, South Dakota, introduces. 

Chapter 11

PESTS AND PETS

The pocket gopher is an herbivorous animal which attains approximatelythe size of a gray squirrel. It has a sleek, grey-brown coat of furwhich is almost as fine as that of the mole and would, I think, make agood quality fur except that the skin is too tender to stand eithersewing or the wear that fur coats have to undergo. I learned this bytrapping them and having a furrier try them out, as I knew that thequickest way to get rid of a pest is to eat it or use its hide. Since Ifound its hide to be of no practical value, I enjoined my troop of BoyScouts, a willing group of boys, to carry out my suggestions that theyskin and prepare one of these animals in a stew. Gophers are purelyherbivorous and I thought they should be quite edible, but as I am astrict vegetarian myself, I had to depend on them to make thisexperiment. The boys followed instructions up to the point of cooking, but by that time the appearance of the animal had so deprived them oftheir enthusiasm and appetites that I had no heart to urge them tocontinue. I am still of the opinion, however, that to meat-eatingpeople, the pocket gopher would taste as good as squirrel or pigeon. 

The first introduction I had to the devastating work that these animalscan do in an orchard was when I was working among my young apple andplum trees one spring. I noticed that the foliage was turning yellow onmany of them and upon investigation I found that the trees were veryloose in the ground. At first I thought that planting operations andheaving of the ground by frost in the spring might be the cause, but intesting the looseness of one of these trees, I found that I could pullit out of the ground easily. There I saw what appeared to be the marksof an axe. I was completely convinced that I had personal enemies whowent around nights chopping off the roots of my trees, for I knew thatmost of my neighbors were completely out of sympathy with my treecultivation. In fact, farmers living in that section of the country werealways poking fun at my nut tree plantings and orchard work, for theiridea of what was proper on a farm was a treeless field of plowed ground. As I thought of all these things, I pulled up many other trees; in fact, there were dozens that were chopped off so that they could be completelypulled out. Others still had one or two roots clinging to the maintrunk and these I carefully replanted so that they would continue tolive and grow. 

Not long after the tragic day on which I found all these ravaged trees, I noticed, winding in and out close to the young orchard trees, themounds which pocket gophers make when they tunnel under the ground. Ifollowed some of these by digging into them with a shovel, anddiscovered that they led to the roots of trees, the very trees that hadbeen chopped off and killed. My enemies were not human after all. 

Sending for a pamphlet from the U. S. Department of Agriculture, Istudied the material given about pocket gophers and their habits. I thenbegan their systematic eradication, using about twelve steel muskrattraps. I succeeded in trapping, in one season, over thirty of them, at atime when they were so prolific and their holes so numerous that I couldnot drive a horse through the orchard without danger of breaking one ofits legs. I also used poisoned grains and gases but I do not recommendthem. Trapping is the only method in which one obtains actual evidenceof elimination. It took me many years to force the gophers out of myorchards and I still must set traps every fall, during September andOctober when they are most active. Their habits are such that they domost of their tunnelling in the early fall months, before frost, duringwhich time they expose and isolate the roots on which they intend tofeed during the winter months when the ground is so hard that theycannot burrow further. This period is when they are most easily trapped. 

It was with the idea of establishing a balance of nature against theseanimals that I conceived the idea of importing bull snakes. Almosteveryone has heard of the bull snake, but its name is a poor one, for ithas the wrong connotation. These snakes are actually a fine friend tothe farmer since each snake accounts for the death of many rodents eachyear. Their presence certainly was of definite value in decreasing thenumber at my farm. Bull snakes have the long body typical ofconstrictors, sometimes reaching a length of nearly six feet atmaturity, and being at the most an inch and one-half in diameter. Thiscountry had a natural abundance of such snakes at one time but ignoranceand superstition have lessened their number so that it is now a rarething to find one. During the early days of automobiles, these huge bullsnakes, or gopher snakes, as I prefer to call them, would lie across thesunny, dusty roads, and drivers of cars delighted in running them down. Since they are very docile, they are the least afraid of man of anymembers of the local snake family. They are slow in movement until theysense the immediate presence of their natural food, which is live mice, rats, gophers, squirrels, young rabbits, and sometimes, though rarely, birds. Then it is they become alert, and the horny appendage on theirtails vibrates with a high-pitched, buzzing sound, simulating, althoughnot similar to, the sound of a poisonous rattlesnake. 

When I first brought some of these snakes to my farm, I loosed them andthey wandered off to a neighbor's premises where they were promptlyfound and killed. Later importations I confined to my basement, where Ibuilt an artificial pool with frogs and fish in it. However, I couldnever induce the bull snakes to eat any of these batrachians. Theywould, almost playfully, stalk the frogs, but at the moment when one waswithin reach, the snake would glide away. Neither would the snakes, unless force-fed, eat anything they had not caught themselves. 

My children were delighted to have the snakes there and made pets ofthem. Only once was one of the girls bitten when she attemptedforce-feeding. The bite was a mere scratch but we feared that it mightbe slightly poisonous. However, it healed so promptly that it was quiteapparent that the bull snake's bite is not toxic. I, too, have had myskin slightly punctured by their teeth, but always the wound healed withno more pain or trouble than a pin prick. Such is not at all the casewhen a person is nipped by a squirrel or gopher. I have purposelyallowed a pocket gopher to bite me, to determine what the effects are. The pain was severe and healing was slow. Once, bitten by a graysquirrel when I reached into a hollow tree to get it, I received such awound that fever started in my whole hand. Its teeth punctured afinger-nail and were stopped only by meeting the bone. Such bites Iconsider rather poisonous. 

Rabbits also committed much damage at my nursery by gnawing the bark ofmy trees, especially during times of deep snow. They did not bother thewalnuts particularly, but were very fond of hickories and pecan trees. On the smallest ones, they cut branches off and carried them away totheir nests. On larger trees, they gnawed the bark off of most of thelower branches. This was dangerous but seldom fatal, whereas the gnawingof mice, near the base of the trunks, was such that in some cases whencomplete girdling occurred, it was necessary to use bridge-grafting tosave the trees. This consists of connecting the bark immediately abovethe roots with the bark above the girdled portion, so that the tree canreceive and send the food substances it elaborates to its upper andlower parts. 

Rabbits and mice, therefore, had to be dealt with. Of course, one couldgo hunting for rabbits and later eat them. This was one task I had myemployees do. I, myself, was unwilling to take an active part in it, although still intent on saving my trees in spite of my pity for thelittle animals. Placing hundreds of cans in the orchard, with a pinch ofpoisoned wheat and oat mixture in each, helped to eradicate the mice. The bait was placed inside the cans to prevent birds from beingpoisoned, and the cans were tipped at an angle so that water would notenter them. 

To be absolutely sure of preventing mice damage, one should provide eachtree with a screen guard. I have made about 10, 000 screen protectors formy trees for this purpose. I have also trapped rabbits which we were notable to shoot and I conceived the idea of painting the traps with whiteenamel. When these were set on the snow around those trees which therabbits attacked, they worked very successfully. The traps were a sizelarger than the common gopher trap, but were not expensive. There areother ways of catching rabbits or curtailing their activities, but on mylist, shooting comes first, with trapping as a second effective measure. 

Squirrels, although they do no damage to the trees themselves, except onrare occasions, are a definite nuisance when they come in large numbersand cut down nuts before they are ripe. They do this to hickory nuts, and apparently are very fond of the half-ripened nuts. I have seensquirrels chew hickory buds and young sprouts of hickory grafts and Ihad to trap several before I stopped them from doing this to certainornamental trees in our garden. In fact, when one has a large nutorchard, squirrels will be attracted in number that preclude thepossibility of harvesting a crop unless measures are taken to banishthem. They are very active early in the morning and my experiencesindicate that two or three people should hunt them together, as they arevery clever at dodging a single hunter. I also have built galvanizedmetal guards around isolated trees which prevent squirrels from climbingthem. 

In speaking of mice, we have two important species commonly known as themeadow mouse and the other species known as the white-footed mouse. Themeadow mouse is the one that does so much damage to the orchard treesand young nursery stock if unprotected, and the white-footed mouse maybe responsible for some of this when present in great numbers, but ofthe white-footed mouse this much good can be said:

[Illustration: Drwg. By Wm. Kuehn. _Squirrel guards. _]

Much of its diet, especially of the mother mouse during the time thatshe is nursing her young ones, is made up of insects. A personalexperience accentuates this. Since these are such pretty littlecreatures, having such cunning ways, it was my ambition to catch acomplete family of mother and young ones which sometimes numbered ashigh as ten. My ambition was finally gratified and I was able to get amother of eight and her tiny mouslings, which have a habit of fasteningthemselves securely to her breasts while she runs about, and drags themall along in a most ludicrous fashion. At times, under thesecircumstances, the combined weight of the brood exceeds that of themother mouse but they are exceptionally strong creatures for their size, a mature mouse being able to jump out of a 3-foot barrel with one leap. In observing this brood of mice, I was particularly anxious to see whatkind of a diet they throve on and tried the mother's appetite withtidbits from the table. While she ate most everything, it soon becameapparent that something was wrong because the young ones became weaker, finally to the extent that they were unable to nurse, and one morning Ifound several on their backs with their feet feebly waving in the airindicating that they were dying of starvation. At about that time I wasdrying some hazelnuts on a flat back porch floor and in sweeping them upfound a lot of alive and dried up larvae which had escaped from theshells. Just for fun, I swept this material up and threw it into themouse cage. The reaction of this treatment was gratifying, for themother mouse pounced upon this insect life greedily devouringeverything. Within three days, the young mice were all in good healthand running around showing that the milk produced from the diet that Ihad been giving the mother was inadequate for the baby mice. It istherefore to their credit to state that these mice and probably at timesthe meadow mice do consume large quantities of larvae and grubs in thesurface soil, as well as mature active insects, such as crickets andgrasshoppers. 

HOW TO PREPARE RODENT PROTECTORS FOR TREES

1. Cut 6" strips from 24" wide roll of galvanized screen with a 12 x 12mesh. 

2. Cut strips in half to make two protectors from each strip. 

3. Make bundles of 25 each by running wire through protectors. 

4. Dip these bundles in a solution containing 5 pounds of red lead pergallon of linseed oil. Use from 3 to 5 gallons of this solution. 

5. Remove bundles and hang them on a pole with a drip pan beneath tocatch the solution, which can be used again. Allow bundles to drip for 8hours, then separate each protector and place on grass for a few days todry. 

6. Roll each protector around a 3/4" pipe or broomstick and it is readyfor the tree. 

[Illustration: Drwg. By Wm. Kuehn. _Preparation of screen guards. _]

In dealing with wild creatures, one must forebear condemning a wholespecies of animals merely because at times they become troublesome, forthe main purpose of their existence, like owls, hawks and crows, theymay be more beneficial than otherwise. 

A good word should be said here for skunks and moles. A great deal ofthe skunk diet is insect life. The same is true of the mole whose dietprobably consists of 75% insects, mostly in their larval state. This isan important feature of mole and skunk as they dig these insects outbefore they mature into winged female adults which may lay hundreds ofeggs. If these larvae should be allowed to develop into a mature wingedinsect that would lay eggs, this particular insect would multiply itselfhundreds of times over and it would take many more birds than at presentexist to take over the big job of keeping the balance between necessaryinsect life and a surplus which would be destructive to all plant life. We can never hope to eradicate all insect life which we deplore as beingdeleterious to the interests of mankind, and it is mighty well that wecannot do this for the insects are as important to us as all other life, for without them we would be unable to produce the vast quantities offoods that are now dependent upon such insect life. It is true thatthey take their toll of the food that they are instrumental insometimes producing but when one attempts to unravel the mystery ofbalance of nature one is confronted by the big question of how far to goin the eradication of both animals and insect pests. Before man'sinterference the wild crops were plentiful and balances were kept inharmony by vast multitudes of frogs and toads, birds and rodents, all ofwhich have been slaughtered and reduced by such amounts as to endangerman's food supply, forcing him to resort to poison sprays and othermeasures in order to hold destruction in check. All of this expense andtrouble he could have avoided if he had been sensible enough to observethe natural checks and foster the natural procedure of which nature isthe best guide. 

Chapter 12

STORING AND PLANTING SEEDS

Most nut tree seed requires ideal storage conditions to preserve itsgerminating power or viability. Under natural circumstances, such nutsas black walnuts, English walnuts, butternuts, hickory nuts, pecans, hazelnuts, filberts and almost all other nuts, will be planted bysquirrels, mice and other rodents. Although most of these will be eatenby the animals who buried them, a large percentage of the ones which arenot eaten will sprout. The sprouts which achieve maturity and bearingage, however, will be only a very small percentage--some say only afraction of 1%--of the number that sprouted. This is an expensive andwasteful method, horticulturally speaking, but it does indicate that itis best to plant nuts as soon as possible after they have properlyripened and been dried. 

After walnuts, hickory nuts, butternuts and hazels have been gathered, they should be dried until the hulls have lost most of their moisture. The husks should be removed from filberts before they are dried. Whilethis preparation is not essential, nuts are less likely to mold if theyare dried somewhat before they are planted. However, I have plantedfreshly-gathered black walnuts and butternuts and most of them sprouted. If nuts are to be stored in large quantities, the drying-out process isabsolutely essential and should be carried to the point of completelydrying the hulls. The system I followed in doing this is to gather thenuts after they have fallen and spread them out in the sunlight on roofsor floors where air can circulate around them. After the hulls are dry, such nuts as black walnuts, English walnuts and butternuts may be put inbarrels or burlap bags and stored in an unheated basement withoutseriously deteriorating. English walnuts are most safely stored whenthey are hulled before being packed in burlap bags. These bags should besuspended above the floor of the cellar by a rope or wire. These areadditional precautions which allow better circulation of air, furtherprevention of mold, and safety from mice and squirrels. 

Chestnuts, beechnuts and acorns require more care when they are to bestored, for their viability is very sensitive to dryness. I have foundthat these soft-shelled species of nuts should be treated in a differentmanner than the walnut and hickory types of seeds if we are to get themost out of their germination. Since chestnuts are very prone to moldingor rotting, the best way to maintain their viability and freshness overwinter is to stratify them in a can or box between layers of a peatmoss. This peat moss must be decidedly on the acid side and must bedampened, but must not be so wet that you can wring any water out of it. The best way to prepare this dry peat moss is to soak it in water andwring as much water out of it as possible by squeezing with your hands. Then mix it with half as much of the undampened peat. This will give youapproximately the right moisture coefficient. If stored in cans, thebottom of the can must be punctured with a few holes about 1/4 of aninch in diameter, well distributed on the bottom to act as a drain andto admit some slight circulation of air. The same thing should be donewith the cover. 

First, put down an even layer about 1-1/2 inches of this dampened moss, then put in a layer of chestnuts or other nuts to be stratified, placedevenly or well distributed but not touching each other. After the firstlayer, carefully sift in more dampened moss about 1 inch thick andrepeat the process until either the can is full or all the seeds havebeen stored. The last layer should be a 2-inch layer of peat moss beforethe cover is placed on. Now the important thing about all this is toplace this can in a storage room of low temperature and yet it shouldnot freeze solid. But in a temperature of from 32 to 40 degrees is idealand preferably it should be on the ground floor so as to maintain themoisture that is already stored in the seed and the moss. A mechanicalrefrigerator which would constantly dehydrate might eventually dry themout too much for good germination; otherwise such a refrigerator wouldbe ideal for the storage of small amount of seeds of this kind. 

It would be well from time to time to inspect these seeds to see whetherthey were in good condition and check the temperatures as well. If theystart to sprout all the better; they can then be planted with the sproutdownward and the nut barely covered with earth. Some years I have hadsprouts nearly six inches long on my chestnuts which had been so storedand care will have to be taken not to break the sprout whentransplanting the nuts. 

In planting nuts, great care must be taken not to plant them too deeply. Large nuts, such as black walnuts, butternuts and English walnuts, areoften planted with a small part of the nut still exposed. Certainly, thedepth of the soil over a nut should never exceed the thickness of thenut. Most seeds develop best when they are planted just under thesurface of the soil. The earth should be lightly tamped around theplanted seeds to eliminate air-pockets. A thin coating of manure, notmore than three inches deep, is valuable if large seeds are planted butit is detrimental to the development of small seeds and manure shouldnever be used for evergreens. Seeds of the nut pines, usually purchasedfrom seedsmen and received in a dry state, should be planted no deeperthan their own diameter in a light, sandy loam. A seed bed, incidentally, is a very necessary protection against rodents in the caseof nut pine seed. I have used a mixture of bone meal on such seeds withgood results. Four quarts of bone meal carefully worked into the firsttwo or three inches of the surface soil of a 4 x 12 seed bed greatlyincreases its fertility. Sifted hardwood ashes scattered over the bedafter the seed is in, will discourage cutworms and increase the potashcontent of the soil. 

Proper drying and storage are of no use if nuts are not planted wherethey will have protection against rodents, improper drainage, and otherhazards. To keep them from being eaten by rodents, nut seeds should beplanted under wire screens inside a deep frame. The seed beds I havemade for use in my nursery are four feet wide and twelve feet long. Byusing heavy galvanized hardware cloth 2 x 2 mesh, which means that ithas 1/2-inch square holes, is ideal for the top and sides of this frame. By using this wire cloth 2 feet wide, 18 inches is sunk under the groundsurface, and only 6 inches protrudes above. This is to prevent burrowingrodents from going underneath and extracting the seeds which you willfind they will do unless the screen protection goes down deep enoughinto the ground to discourage them. A stout frame of rot-resisting wood, such as cedar or fir should be placed on the inside of this countersunkscreen. This should also be 4 feet wide, 12 feet long so that a similarframe, which is removable, can be placed over this. The edges of theframe should match perfectly so that no rodents can reach the interiorof the seed bed without going down 1-1/2 feet under ground to burrowunder the countersunk screen. Several thousand evergreens or severalhundred walnut trees can be raised in a seed bed this size. 

The soil is now removed from the inside of this enclosure or stationarypart of the bed to the depth of 6 inches so that the plants will havehead room to develop leaves and stems and still be protected under thetop or removable frame part. The top frame made of the same material andcovered also by the 2 x 2 hardware cloth should be about 6 inches inheight so that there will actually be 18 inches of head room for theplants to grow in before touching the screen. 

[Illustration: _This 60 x 30 foot corrugated galvanized iron fence 3-1/2feet tall and sunk 6 inches into ground protects valuable hybridsagainst invasion by rodents. Photo by C. Weschcke. _]

There are several important points to remember in starting a seed bed. It must be in a well-drained site, so that the seeds will not be underwater or water-logged for any length of time. It should be in an openplace where sunlight is plentiful, unless evergreens are being grown. Evergreens must be in half-shade the first season to avoid a conditionknown as "damping off. " The top six inches of soil in the bed should bethe best garden soil obtainable, the growth resulting from using good, clean soil, free from weed seeds, being worth the trouble of preparingit. By having the bed in two parts, with a cover that may be taken off, proper weeding can be done when necessary. The cover should always bereplaced afterward, though, as rodents will sometimes attack the youngshoots and the remainder of the seed kernel. 

In the spring of the second season of growth, the young plants may bedug up and lined out in nursery rows. After two or three years more, they may be planted in permanent locations. 

Chapter 13

TREE PLANTING METHODS

Since nut trees usually have deep, well-developed root systems of thetaproot type, they are more difficult to transplant than such trees asplum, apple, elm or maple which have many small fibrous roots. Taprootshave a long, main trunk like a parsnip, from which lateral roots branch. These roots are heavy and may extend deep into the ground even in treesonly two or three years old. In moving such a tree, the lower part ofthe central taproot must, of course, be cut off, but as many of the sideroots as possible are retained. Because such roots have no fibrous orhair-root system, their handling during transplantation necessarilydiffers from that of the ordinary shade or fruit tree. 

If trees having a taproot system, such as the English walnut, blackwalnut, butternut, hickory or pecan, are received with bare roots, theyshould be treated in the following way: Immediately after the trees havebeen unpacked, their roots should be submerged in a barrel of water forseveral hours. After their thirst has been quenched, the roots should bedipped into a mixture of clay and water made to the consistency of thickpaint. With a heavy coating of wet clay around them, the roots may thenbe wrapped in wet burlap sacks. They are now ready to be transported totheir planting site. 

Selecting a favorable location for nut trees is very important. Theyshould never be planted at the bottom of a gulch or valley because, insuch places, frost pockets may occur which will interfere with bothblossoming in the spring and ripening of nuts in the fall. Nut treesgrow best near the summit of a hill. Although such soils are difficultto plant in, stony soil or soil overlaid with limestone results in goodgrowth. Shallow surface soil, underlaid with heavy clay, will usuallyslow down the growth of a young tree so that it remains dwarfed for manyyears. It is more satisfactory to have at least three feet of soilbefore clay is reached. If the soil is light and sandy, it will beimproved by adding black dirt immediately around the roots of each tree. 

As most nut trees ultimately grow to be very large, they should beplanted at least forty feet apart. The hole dug to receive each treeshould be wide and deep enough to accommodate the roots without bendingor twisting them. If the excavated soil is of poor quality, it should bediscarded, and good, rich soil brought in for setting the tree. Treesshould not be planted too deeply. The collar of a tree, which is adiscoloration of its trunk resulting from contact with the ground, indicates how much of the tree was previously underground. Although itis a good idea to plant so that this collar is a little lower than thesurface to allow access to extra moisture, the actual planting depthshould be about as it was previously in the nursery. All broken ordamaged parts on the roots should be trimmed smoothly with pruningshears. Such clean cuts will send out new rootlets to replace the lostones. After a tree has been set into the hole made for it, the soil, which should be thoroughly mixed with a quart of bone meal to increaseits fertility, is replaced a little at a time. It must be packed verysolidly about the roots with a rounded tamping stick to avoid leavingair pockets. I find it advisable to retamp the earth about each tree twoor three times during the first year's growing season, to insureintimate contact between soil and roots. 

Planting should be delayed if the soil is very wet. Trees will stay ingood condition for several days, if the burlap sacks are kept moistened. Wet, soggy soil is certain to shrink away from the roots and leave airpockets which will, in time, kill the trees. If trees are transplantedduring a very dry season, they should be thoroughly watered. To do this, remove several shovelfuls of dirt from the ground about a foot from thetree, being careful not to cut any roots. Fill this hole with water andafter the water has seeped away, fill it two more times. The tree shouldreceive about five gallons of water. Sprinkling with a hose does notsuffice. If dry weather continues, each tree should be watered in thisway every week. 

Nurserymen in the future will have to deal with this transplantingproblem in a different way than the old time nurserymen who handlesfruit trees. A suggested way to improve the root system and at the sametime make it easy to lift the tree with a ball of dirt, similar to theway an evergreen is transplanted, is to prepare a pocket of specialtransplanting soil previous to the lining out (which is the term used bynurserymen in setting out seedlings preparatory to grafting them innursery rows). A suggested balanced soil for making the method practicalis to use 1/2 by volume of peat moss; the other half should be rich, black sandy loam with very little clay mixture in it. In other words, each nut tree should be allowed about a bushel of soil for itsdevelopment, 1/2 bushel to be peat moss, the other half bushel to berepresented by rich black loam. This mixture will encourage manyfibrous roots to develop and when the tree is dug, approximately all ofthis bushel of soil will be retained around the roots. Having such ahigh proportion of peat moss makes it lighter than ordinary ground; sucha ball and the tree will weigh approximately from 100 to 125 poundswhich can be shipped by freight at a low rate and is well worth theextra price that nurserymen must ask for a specimen of this kind. Suchtrees have really never been unplanted and for this reason do not sufferthe shock which is inevitable in the usual transplanting process. Although pre-planted trees are more expensive to buy and to transport, their improved chances of living make them worth the price. The aboverecommendation is especially applicable to young grafted hickory treessince they are among the most difficult trees to transplantsatisfactorily. The English walnut (Persian), black walnut, butternutand especially the hickory are improved by the use of a handful ofground lime mixed with the soil in preparing these pockets which willlater constitute the ball surrounding the roots of the tree to betransplanted. 

There is a tendency in grafted trees to produce sprouts below the graft. Unless these are rubbed off, the grafted portion will become discouragedand the tree will revert to a seedling variety. Filberts should never beallowed more than two or three stems, or trunks, while one is morepreferable. If they are allowed to have more, they will produce a rankgrowth of wood but only a few, if any, nuts. I stress, by repeating, that trees should not be planted too deeply and that great care must betaken to eliminate air pockets. Extra effort and nursing of transplantedtrees during the first season will be repaid by their successfuldevelopment and growth. 

It is a wise precaution to place a protective screen around the trunk ofeach tree to prevent rodents from attacking it. Mice gnaw off the barknear the ground, sometimes girdling a tree and so killing it. Rabbitschew off branches and they, too, may girdle the upper part of a tree. Rabbits are very fond of pecan and hickory bark. In some places, it maybe necessary to encircle each pecan and hickory tree with a three orfour-foot rabbit fence until the tree is large enough to lose its appealto these nuisances. 

Compared with the number of insects which infest fruit trees, very fewattack nut trees. One of those which does is the walnut-leafcaterpillar. These appear as a closely congregated group of small wormswhich feed on the leaves of black walnut and hickory trees during thelatter half of the summer season. Very often they are all to be foundon a single leaf, which should be picked from the tree and crushedunderfoot. A simple spray of lead arsenate of the strength recommendedby companies selling spray material, will effectively rid trees of thesepests. Another insect often found in a nut orchard is the oak treegirdler, which also is active in the latter part of the summer. It oftencauses limbs as large as an inch in diameter to be cut through and tofall to the ground. By removing such freshly girdled branches andcutting into the hollow made by the larva, it is possible to find thelive worm and destroy it. A good way to combat this pest is to keep eachtree pruned of all dead branches and to burn all broken and dead woodeach fall. While some nut trees are subject to other insects, the twodescribed here are the most frequently found. Fortunately, they areeasily controlled if a watch is kept for them. 

Chapter 14

WINTER PROTECTION OF GRAFTS AND SEEDLINGS

It is not enough to make a successful graft and to watch it carefullyduring the growing season, picking all sprouts off the stock, sprayingit so that insects will not chew the tender leaves and bark, bracing itagainst windstorms and perching birds. Each graft must also be protectedfrom winter injury. For many years I have studied and experimented tofind a successful way of achieving such protection. To enumerate my manyexperiments, from simple to far-fetched, would be to write another bookquite as long as this one. My conclusion, now, is that there is littleone can do to assist nature in the process of acclimatizing graftedplants and seedlings. 

I have repeatedly noticed that the place where most damage is done bythe cold is at the union between stock and graft. For example, Iobserved this on the European walnuts, imported from Poland, grafted toMinnesota black walnut stocks. Although both the buds and the wood ofthe top remained fresh and green, the unions suffered severe, andsometimes total winter injury. In grafts where the latter occurred, thedead cells soon caused the wood to ferment and sour. Occasionally, asmall group of healthy cells succeeded in re-establishing circulationwith the unharmed, grafted top and the graft, continuing its growth, would eventually overcome the injury it had suffered. I have seen thisoccur with grafts of English walnut, apricot and pecan. 

A blackbird's nest in the crotch of a small tree suggested to me themost satisfactory guard I have yet found against this greatest ofdangers to all exotic, grafted varieties of nut trees. The nest, whichenclosed over half of the graft union, was partly composed of woolenfibers which its builder had gathered from barbed-wire fences that sheephad brushed against. On the exposed portion of the graft union, discoloration indicated injury and dead cells, but on that part coveredby the nest, all the cells were alive and green. I have improved on thebird's nest by wrapping a large wad of wool loosely around each graftunion. The value of wool is that it will not collect moisture and sostart fermentation. It allows the cells to breathe, yet protects theunion from the shock of temperature extremes. Birds will inevitablysteal some of the strands of wool but this activity in and about thetrees means a decrease in injuries from insects--a worthwhile exchange. 

When an unusually large swelling at the graft union appears, it iscertain that the plant needs protection such as I have described. Suchswellings result from a too-rapid multiplication of cells, a conditionwhich leaves the union weak and susceptible to injury. Although a unionis never entirely safe, even after many seasons of growth, each yearadds to the safety factor by the development of rough, cork-like bark. Isuggest the use of a woolen guard for several winters, by which timethis outer bark should be able to do its protective work alone. 

A successful but rather expensive method of winter protection, both tothe graft itself and its union with its host, is to enclose the entiretree with a box-like structure consisting of four corrugated aluminumroofing sheets set up on their ends and countersunk into the groundabout six inches. The purpose of countersinking these below the groundsurface is two-fold: it stiffens and braces the structure and preventsthe intrusion of mice and other rodents, which may also appreciate boththe shelter and possible food supply contained therein. By fasteningthese sheets together with a stout wire you can depend on the structureto stand up against wind and snow pressures. Fill the entire inside withforest leaves, oak leaves preferred, as their insulating quality is thebest and they are slow to rot and ferment. 

When working with semi-hardy plants in a cold climate, avoid fertilizingand cultivating the ground after the first of August. Doing sostimulates late growth and such growth is very likely to be badlyinjured during the winter months. If fertilizer is used, it should beearly in the spring, as soon as the ground is free from frost. Treeswhich persist in growing late into the fall are more subject to winterinjury. Protective measures to avoid their doing so by inducing anearlier dormancy, include keeping the soil around them dry and exposing, somewhat, the roots near the trunk of each tree. 

My last word of advice in raising what might be termed semi-hardy trees, is to grow them in sod, the ordinary quack grass, June grass, bluegrassor other natural grass sods which can be found on your planting site. Although this will probably hold back your tree development for a fewyears, until the roots are thoroughly established in the deeper soilbeneath the sod roots, it is surprising how many species of trees willthrive in sod and perish on open cultivated ground. I can give no betterexample of this than relating a circumstance which bears this out in amost convincing way. In 1941 I purchased about 250 filbert seedlingsfrom Samuel Graham of Ithaca, New York. These were planted out on afield site and practically all of the plants made good growth the firstyear. They were thoroughly cultivated. The next year a second batch ofplants of a like amount were purchased from the same man and of the samekind of seedlings. Mr. Graham told me that these were seedling treesfrom Jones hybrid seeds which he had growing in his orchard. Theseplants were put on heavy sod ground; all plants were protected byscreens, but the plants on the sod ground were subject to a very wetseason and it was necessary to build up the soil around some of theplants in order to save them from being drowned out. Today about 45plants are living on the sod culture and two or three barely alive existin the open field culture. Although the plants remaining alive on thesod culture plot are almost pure filbert strain they are therefore verysubject to the common hazel blight. Some have grown into bushes 10 feethigh which later were hit by blight and have been reduced to smallbushes. Others are producing good filbert-type nuts and are somewhatblight resistant, but the main fact to remember is that about 1/4 of theplants on sod culture lived, whereas not over 2% are alive of the openfield culture plants. The distance between these plantings isapproximately 1/8 of a mile. In addition to being placed in sod thesefilberts which have survived are sheltered by rows of evergreen treesboth on the south and on the north side which may be construed as ofsome assistance but is not altogether the reason for the tremendousdifference between the winter protection value of sod and open fieldculture. This is not the only example that I could cite but is one ofthe most outstanding ones which has come to my attention. Sod culture isnow being recommended to fruit orchardists in this part of the countryand in my own experience, I can highly recommend it for apples, plums, pears, mulberries and nut trees. 

Chapter 15

TREE STORAGE

If it is necessary to store trees through the winter months, one ofseveral procedures may be followed. If the trees are quite small, theirtops may be dipped in melted paraffin or beeswax, not hot enough toinjure the buds. If the trees are too large for this to be practical, wax may be painted on with a brush. Roots should be protected by heelingthem in dirt. 

An unheated cellar with a dirt floor is a very satisfactory place forstoring trees. Select a corner of the cellar far from any source of heator temperature change. Place the trees so that the roots are pointingtoward the basement wall. Cover the roots to a depth of six inches witheither sand or sandy loam, packing the soil firmly to eliminate airpockets. Lastly, cover the trees completely with burlap sacks. Onceevery two weeks, the earth around the roots should be watered. Treesmaintained in this way are conveniently ready to plant when the groundthaws out in the spring. 

Another and better method of storing trees is to plant them outside in atrench, preferably on the north side of a building, having first waxedthem as described above. One side of the trench should slope so that thetrees will lie in an oblique position with their branches touching theground. The roots of these trees should be covered with dirt, then moretrees set alongside them, until all have been planted and the earth madefirm about their roots. Trees will usually suffer no damage during suchwinter storage if their roots have been properly packed in sand or sandyloam. Six or more cans, each containing a little poisoned grain, shouldbe set among the branches. If these cans are laid on their sides, rodents will have easier access to the poison. The branches of the treesshould then be well covered with straw or hay, with heavy boards laid ontop to keep it from blowing away. If trees are received for plantingafter the ground has frozen, all that is necessary is to build a logfire on the side where they are to be heeled in. This will thaw out thesoil enough so that a trench can be made to accommodate them. 

Chapter 16

SUGGESTIONS ON GRAFTING METHODS

Grafting, including budding, may be defined as inserting a piece of woodwhich carries buds of a desired variety, on a root stock sufficientlycompatible to accept it, for the purpose of propagation. Methods vary, each nurseryman having one or more which he prefers, but the principleis always the same. 

Scionwood may be cut the fall before grafting is to be done, after thegrowing season has ended, but some prefer to cut the scions in earlyspring. This means that the scions must be stored until time to graft, and correct storage is so important that nurserymen make elaborateprovision for it. I have found that keeping scions underground in aHarrington graft storage box is the safest method. An illustration ofthis box is given, with directions for its construction and location. Asmall quantity of scions may be kept in an icebox (not a mechanicalrefrigerator), by cutting them into convenient lengths of one or twofeet, dipping them in melted beeswax, wrapping them in tar or asphaltpaper and placing them close to the ice. They will remain in goodcondition for several months if there is always a good supply of ice. Care must be taken in dipping the scions in melted wax, for if the waxis too hot it will injure the buds. It should never become so hot thatit smokes. I find it advisable to keep an unmelted piece of wax in theliquid wax to hold the temperature down. 

Another method of storing scions, after they have been dipped inbeeswax, is to place them on the earth of a cellar floor and cover themwith a few burlap sacks. They should never be allowed to become wet orthey will start to mold. If they are to be stored in this way, a watchmust be kept for mice which will molest them and destroy them if theyhave an opportunity. 

Although bud wood may be stored in any of the three ways mentioned, itshould not be waxed. Because of this, it is more likely to deteriorate. It must be examined frequently and if mold is found, the wood should bedipped in a Bordeaux solution. After drying, it may be placed in storageagain. It is a good plan to wrap bud wood in tar or asphalt paper whenstoring it. However, I have found that the best storage conditions forall scionwood that I have yet discovered is in the use of peat moss. Peat moss must be on the distinctly acid side in order to perform thefunction of storing scionwood. Most peat moss is generally acid; howeverthe simple litmus paper test with which every high school pupil isfamiliar, can be made. Having acquired good acid peat moss, dampen asufficient quantity to pack the scions in to give them liberalprotection. Do not make the bundles of scionwood too large, from 10 to20 scions in a bundle is better than a large number and much easier tohandle. The moss should be prepared exactly the same as advised instoring chestnuts (see chapter for storing seeds). In this case it isnot necessary to wax the scions at all. The moss should be applied bysifting it into the open spaces between the scions and a larger wad atthe base of the cuttings, not at the terminal or bud ends as these wouldbe better left unpacked. The package is now rolled into a cylinder, using tar paper or asphalt treated paper, and both ends left open. Donot use ordinary paper or wax paper as it will turn moldy. Cylinders oftar paper containing the packed scions should be placed in a damp roomlike a cellar with a dirt floor which is cold enough to keep potatoesand other roots in good condition throughout the winter. If the cellaris not a good storage cellar for roots and herbs it will not be goodenough for the scionwood as it will be too warm generally. Neithershould they be frozen solid, therefore if a good root cellar is notobtainable then these should be put in the Harrington graft box alreadydescribed or placed under the sawdust in an icehouse and close to theice. An old-fashioned ice refrigerator will also make a good storagebin, placing them close to the ice at all times. 

[Illustration: Drwg by Wm. Kuehn. _Making a scarf with a planepreparatory to grafting. _]

Selection of good scionwood and bud wood, a very important matter, ismade according to definite standards. Some plants graft better if woodis used that has two seasons' growth, but, in general, wood of thecurrent season's growth is used. It must have reached its maximumpossible maturity before it is cut. Also, some attention should be paidto the vigor of the growth which it has made during the season. Forinstance, in choosing between wood which has made only two or threeinches' growth and that which has made a foot or more of growth, bothbeing equally sound and mature, the more vigorous should be chosen. Attention should be paid to the development of the buds, which should beplump and never immature. 

It is advisable to label scions before they are stored to avoid theconfusion that will result if they are mixed. I find that the bestmethod of doing this is to get a sheet of zinc, from 20 to 30 gaugethick, and cut it into strips one inch wide by one and three-quartersinches long. I bore a small hole in one corner of each tag, throughwhich I thread 18-gauge copper wire, doubled and with the bottom loopfolded over (see page 40). In preparing these tags, it is important toremember that both wires must pass through the hole in the metal tag, otherwise, the slight movement due to winds will cause the metal to wearthrough. Two wires prevent this action indefinitely. Since a small wirecuts through a zinc tag in one or two years, heavy wire must be used. Wire such as I have indicated is satisfactory. I print the necessaryinformation on each tag with a small, steel awl, and such labels arestill legible after twenty-five years. Copper, brass or aluminum wouldalso make good tags, but these metals are more expensive. Of course, these tags may be used for small trees as well as grafts and scionwoodand it is always well to do a good job of labeling all work, since manyerrors may result from disregard to this important detail. 

In the north, the time to graft nut trees is when the cambium layer ofthe host, or stock, is active, which is usually during the entire monthof May. This cambium layer consists of those cells lying just inside ofthe outer bark, between it and the woody part of the tree. When thesecells are active, the inner side of the bark feels slippery and ajelly-like substance can be scraped from it. Although this is the statein which the stock should be for grafting, the condition of the scionsshould be almost the opposite, rather dry and showing no signs ofcambium activity. The bark should cling firmly to the woody part of thescions, whereas the bark of the stock should slip off readily. Anothergood and fairly satisfactory rule is never to graft the stocks of nuttrees until after the young leaves appear. 

In grafting young nursery trees not more than an inch in diameter, thewhole tree is cut off at any distance from the ground convenient to thenurseryman. Sometimes they are cut within a few inches of the ground, sometimes two or three feet. In my work, I like to keep the scions ashigh above the ground as I can. When the top of a stock is cut off, there is a great deal of sap pressure and the tree bleeds. It is a poorpolicy to attempt grafting while this is happening. Rather, one shouldcut the tops off, then wait for several days before inserting anygrafts. Tools must be kept very sharp. A good grafting knife issharpened on one side only, so that the blade is flat along the sidewhich lies next to the cut made on the scion when it is trimmed. Ifunaccustomed to handling a knife, one can obtain more accurate resultsby using a small plane. I do this by holding the scion firmly in myright hand and pulling it toward me, against the cutting edge of theplane which is held in the left hand. Illustrations show how this isdone. 

The only disadvantage in using a plane is that one must exchange it fora knife to make the receiving cut in the stock before inserting thegraft. This necessitates exposing the graft to the air for a longer timethan does using a single instrument. 

Spring budding is done during the same period as grafting. Bud wood isusually much larger in diameter than scionwood, for it is easier toremove buds from big branches than from wood only one-quarter inch indiameter. When budding is to be done, take along only enough wood forhalf a day's work, leaving the rest safely stored. A piece of woodhaving a bud is prepared as shown in the illustrations "A" and "B" (nextpage). A T-shaped slot is made in the stock to receive the bud, aprocess called "shield budding. " This is tied in place with eitherstring, raffia or gummed tape, as shown in "C" and "D" (next page). Thebud must be free to grow, and although it may be covered completely withwax, no part of the binding material should be close to it. Since it isnot necessary to cut off all the tree in budding, enough of it mayremain above the bud to brace the shoot that develops. Later, it may benecessary to cut back the tree to the bud so that a callus will form andcause the wound to heal properly. 

[Illustration: Drwg by Wm. Kuehn _Shield Budding. _]

Best results are obtained when a graft union is coated with meltedbeeswax. Another and cheaper wax may be made by combining four parts ofrosin, one part of beeswax and one-sixteenth part of raw linseed oil. Tothis is sometimes added a little lampblack to color the mixture so thatit can be seen on the graft. Again, care must be taken to preventinjuring the cells with wax that is too hot. 

I have used many kinds of tying materials, but the one which gives mebest results is gummed tape, which preparation I describe in anotherchapter. By wrapping it in spirals around a graft union, I have amaterial which holds the graft in place and at the same time excludesair. The rubber also seems to encourage the formation of that tissuewhich unites the stock and scion. In addition to tape, melted wax shouldbe brushed into those crevices and cracks which always occur in making agraft. 

It is usually advisable, although not necessary, to shade new grafts. Todo this, cover them with light-colored or white paper sacks. Never useglassine alone for it causes the grafts to overheat and so destroysthem. Whatever tying material is used, either to fasten on these bags orto support the grafts, it should be inspected at intervals during thesummer, as it may constrict the graft or stock and injure or cut off thecambium. 

After a scion begins to grow, it must be firmly braced against the forceof the wind, for a heavy gale can rip out grafts made years before. Laths make good braces for growing shoots. They may be attached to themain branch by stout waterproof twine such as binder twine, and thegrowing graft tied with soft muslin strips to the lath. As the graftgrows more muslin strips should be used to keep the excessive growthanchored to the lath. Grafts will often make three or more feet ingrowth in one season. 

It is important to remember that sprouts or buds which start from thestock must be rubbed off. If they are allowed to flourish, they mayprevent the scion from growing. When working over a tree several inchesin diameter, it becomes an art to keep the tree stock satisfied, yet toencourage the growth of the scions. In large trees, a few sprouts mustgrow to nourish the root system, but this is not necessary if the stockis one inch, or less, in diameter. 

Chapter 17

GRAFTING TAPE VERSUS RAFFIA

It is necessary that a person who is grafting trees and developinghybrids experiment not only with the plants he is interested in, butalso with the equipment and materials he uses. For more than twelveyears, I used raffia to tie the grafts I made, becoming more annoyed andirritated with its limitations each year. Finally, I began trying othermaterials, until I found one which I think is very satisfactory. This isa rubberized grafting tape. 

At my nursery, we make our own tape. We buy pure rubber gum, known asLotol NC-356, from the Naugatuck Chemical Company, at a cost of $7. 50for five gallons, F. O. B. Their factory. With this, we use unbleachedmuslin of an 80 x 80 mesh, or finer. As the muslin is usually a yardwide, we fold it and take it to a printing firm, where, for a smallcharge, it is cut into both one-half and three-quarter inch strips bybeing fed through a paper-cutting machine. We use the wider strips forheavy work on large trees which have three to five-inch stubs; thenarrower strips we use in the nursery, grafting young seedlings. 

First, pour about a gallon of the rubber compound into a twelve orsixteen-quart pail having a smooth, rolled edge. Next, separate a dozenor so of the strips of muslin. Then, set out a pair of rails on which todry the tape after it has been dipped. I make these rails by using two1" x 2" boards about twelve feet in length, nailed together at the endswith boards two feet long. This frame, resting on carpenter's horses orbenches, makes a good drying rack. 

Holding a piece of tape by one end, submerge it in the rubber solution, forcing it down with a spatula or knife. Swishing it around or moving itup and down several times helps to fill the pores with rubber. Drag itfrom the solution by pulling it sharply over the rolled edge of thepail, using the spatula on the upper side of the strip to scrape offsuperfluous rubber. A little practice soon enables one to judge theamount of rubber needed on the tape. There should not be so much that itdrips off. Hang the tape on the rack so that the ends are attached tothe rails, the tape sagging slightly in the center. Space the pieces oftape so that they do not touch, for, if they do, they will be verydifficult to separate later. After they have dried for twenty-fourhours, wind the tape on pieces of cardboard about one foot square, being careful not to overlap the tape. The tape is now ready forfield-work. 

I want to mention some of the advantages I have found in using thisrubberized tape rather than raffia. The tape is uniform throughout andis stronger than raffia. It does not fly around and frequently gettangled as the latter does. There is no necessity for keeping itslightly damp to be usable. It may easily be torn off at any convenientlength or it may be cut without injuring the edge of the grafting knife. A last advantage is that it is self-sealing since it overlaps on itselfslightly when wound around a graft union. Because of this, there is nonecessity for painting the finished graft with melted wax as isabsolutely vital when using raffia. Personally, I use wax in addition tothe tape for I feel that it is probably safer with that extraprotection. Also it gives me an opportunity to wax over the tip end ofthe scion when it is devoid of a terminal bud. 

The only disadvantage in using tape is its cost which, I must admit, isvery much higher than that of raffia. But if, by using tape, twice asmany grafts can be made each day, and if the resulting takes are 50%better, as they have been in my experience, then the cost is justifiedand raffia is actually the more expensive to use. 

Chapter 18

EFFECTS OF GRAFTING ON UNLIKE STOCKS

It is unquestionably a great shock to a tree when 90% of its top is cutoff. If it is healthy and vigorous, the root system will try to recover, using every means possible to do so. If a new top is grafted to it, thestock must either accept and nourish that foreign and sometimesincompatible new part, or give up its struggle for life. Nature and thetree stock usually accept the challenge and the graft begins to grow. Inan attempt to continue with its own identity, the stock will bring intoactivity adventitious buds. These are tiny microscopic buds imbedded inthe bark of a tree that are not apparent to the eye but are nature'sprotection against destruction of the individual plant. But these mustbe removed by the horticulturist to insure proper nourishment of thegrafts. 

Because the root system is striving hard to live, and because it isusually the stronger, it may force the top to accept certain of itscharacteristics. Occasionally, it may assume some qualities of theoriginal top. Such cooperation is necessary if either is to survive. First of all, the grafted scions must accept the vital quality ofclimatic hardiness, a powerful factor developed through ages spent in acertain climate. To hasten the acclimatization of a tender variety, Icut scionwood from such unions early in the winter, storing it untilspring. When these scions are grafted on new root systems, I find thatthey are much more readily accepted than the first grafts were. Thefollowing season, I allow the grafts of this later union to go throughtheir first winter of exposure. Early each spring I continue to cutscions from the most recent unions and graft them to new root systems, so hastening and setting the factor of hardiness through frequentasexual propagation. 

Because my observations of the effects of scion on root and vice versa, have not extended over a sufficient period of time, I think it ispossible that the changes I have seen may be only transient. In anycase, I do know that the phenomenon occurs, for I have seen manyexamples of it. 

One instance in which the stock was apparently affecting the scions, occurred in the case of several varieties of black walnuts which hadbeen grafted on wild butternut stock over a period of sixteen years. Thewalnut top flourished but tended to outgrow the butternut, so that thecaliber of the walnut was greater than that of the stock a few inchesbelow the graft union. I also noticed that, although the graft began tobear about as early as black walnuts do when they are grafted on theirown species, the nuts did not mature at all during the first few yearsof bearing. In 1938, after a favorable season, I found mature nuts onone variety, the Thomas. These nuts varied in size more than they dowhen grafted on black walnut. The most surprising thing about them, though, was that they did not have the characteristic black walnutflavor. When properly dried and cured, they could have passed as anentirely different nut since they tasted like neither the black walnut, the butternut nor the Persian walnut. 

The overgrowth of the Ohio black walnut, grafted on butternut, was evenmore apparent than that of the Thomas. These nuts were, as I have said, immature the first few years they appeared and they, too, lacked theusual black walnut flavor. In their case, however, the most strikingchange was in the shape and structure of their shells which wereelongated like butternuts, with corrugations typical of those found onbutternuts and nearly as deep and sharp. (See Illustration in Chapter 1, Page 5. )

In 1937, I made experimental graftings on native black walnut stocks ofthe Weschcke No. 4 butternut, a variety I found to be superior tohundreds of other native trees tested. The grafts grew luxuriantly andin 1940, produced about two pounds of nuts. These nuts wereapproximately 30% larger than those on the parent tree. They crackedwell and the kernels were similar to those from the parent tree. Theydefinitely distinguished themselves, however, by being a free-hullingnut, which is not true of the mother tree nor of most butternuts. Soonafter the nuts had dropped to the ground and were still green, they werehulled and their hulls peeled off like those of the Persian walnut, leaving the nuts clean and free from remnants. Apparently thisphenomenon was a transient one since later crops did not display thisfree-hulling feature. 

I have mentioned, elsewhere, the seedling apricot which came intobearing in St. Paul, and how I obtained grafts before it died during avery cold winter. I have grafted scions of this apricot on both hybridand wild plum stocks repeatedly and this apricot now exhibits a materialgain in hardiness. It overgrows the plum stock, but this does not seemto inhibit its bearing, the fruit growing to greater size than that ofthe mother tree. 

These are some of the instances in which I have seen stock exert adefinite, and, mainly a beneficial influence on its grafted top. It mayeasily be that these are only of a temporary nature and until I haveseen them maintained for many more years, I must consider them to betransient effects. 

Chapter 19

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS OF SCIONS

Loss of identification markings from my grafted trees has, on occasion, caused me much confusion. There was one time when I had from six to tenvarieties of hickories and their hybrids grafted on wild bitternuthickory stocks, totally lacking in identification. Although thisdisconcerted me considerably, I knew of nothing I could do except towait for the grafts to bear nuts and determine the varieties from these. As I continued my experimental grafting, I made sure that the tags Iused were not only indestructible, but also secured to the grafts insuch a way that the action of the wind could not wear them out nor causethem to drop off. 

Not long after this had happened, I received from Dr. Deming a shipmentof about twenty varieties of hickory scions. While I was preparing thismaterial for grafting, I noticed that each variety could be readilydistinguished by its appearance in general and, specifically, bydifferences in its leaf scars. I also noticed markings on the bark, particularly the stomata, which differed with each variety. Color andstripes added further differentiation. Although I also found variationsin the size and shape of the buds, I later discovered that these do notalways remain constant within a variety, but depend somewhat on eachseason's growth. For instance, a second growth sometimes develops duringa favorable season with a large number of lateral buds growing out of itlike spines. 

It seemed to me that if scions could be maintained in an approximatelyfresh state, they would furnish a key by which any variety of graftcould be determined as easily as it could by its nuts. I therefore setmyself to preserve scionwood in its fresh state. First, I cut five-inchpieces of plump, healthy wood, each piece having a terminal bud. Iplaced these buds downward in large test tubes which I then filled withpure, strained honey. Such models did very well for a time, but afterabout a year, the honey crystallized and of course the scions were nolonger visible. I emptied the tubes and washed them, cleaned the scionsin warm water, replaced them and refilled the tubes with pure glycerine. I submerged a thin, zinc tag, stencilled with the varietal name and bentto conform with the contour of the tube, inside of each one as a nameplate which could not easily be lost or removed. I also labeled eachcork with the name of the variety enclosed so that any one of themcould be located when looking down at a nest of tubes in a verticalposition. 

In order to display these preserved specimens at illustrated lectures, Ihad a rack made of redwood, of a size to hold twenty tubes. The tubescould easily be taken from the rack for closer observation by members ofan audience. I find this to be an interesting adjunct to various nutculture exhibits I make in trying to promote nut culture education. 

Since I was able to identify my unlabeled, hickory grafts by means ofthis catalogue of submerged scions, I consider it of great practicalworth. At the present time, I have about 50 hickory specimens, a goodcatalogue, although not a complete one. I see no reason why the samething could not be done with black walnut or any other kind of nutscions. 

Chapter 20

HYBRIDIZING

Working with nature to develop new varieties of trees is fascinatingalthough it requires infinite patience and study combined with skill andconcentration. A person without experience may taste of this pleasure, however, by trying his hand at cross-pollination, and there is no end tothe number of hybrids possible. 

In attempting to make crosses, one must necessarily understand thebotanical relationship between the trees to be crossed. Trees of thesame species cross readily in almost all cases; trees of the same genusare not as easily crossed; trees belonging only to the same family areusually difficult to cross. It is generally assumed that trees not inthe same family are impossible to hybridize. The plum serves as apractical example of this. The American wild plum crosses readily withalmost any other plum and particularly well with the Japanese plum. These crosses have resulted in such phenomenal fruit as the Underwoodplum, a cross made between species. If a cross were made between achestnut and a walnut, it would be between members of differentfamilies. I recommend to anyone who is attempting to cross-pollinate forthe first time, that he limit his work to crosses made within species. His chances of success will be greater and such success added to theexperience he is acquiring, will give him the background needed for moredifficult hybridizing. 

Crosses made between filberts and hazels usually produce great changesin the resulting fruit. J. F. Jones won considerable horticultural famefrom crosses he made between the wild American hazel known as the Rushhazel, and such varieties of the European filbert as the Italian Red andDaviana. Hazel and filbert cross readily and the resulting seedlingswill usually bear after only three or four years. For both thesereasons, they are good material for a beginner to work with. If the wildhazel is to be used as the female, or mother, of the cross, it isnecessary to pick off all the male blossoms, or staminate blooms. Thisshould be done long before they begin to expand. The pistillate, orfemale blossoms, should be enclosed in bags, about six of thethree-pound, common kraft bags should be enough. These are slipped overthose branches which bear female blossoms and are tied around a heavypacking of absorbent cotton, which has been wound around the branch atapproximately the place where the opening of the bag will be. Infastening the mouth of the bag around the cotton, I find that No. 18copper wire, wrapped several times around and the ends twisted together, is more satisfactory than string. This makes a pollen-tight house forthe pistillate blossoms but not one so air-tight as to cause any damageto either the plant or blossoms. 

In order to have pollen available at the proper time, it is necessary tocut a few filbert branches which bear staminate blooms and store them ina dark, cold place to prevent the pollen from ripening too soon. Irecommend keeping such branches in dampened sphagnum moss until it istime for the pollen to ripen, or if a cold cellar is available, buryingthe cut ends of large branches carrying male catkins one foot deep inclean, moist sand. When the pollen is wanted, the branches should beplaced in a container of water and set near a window where sunlight willreach them. Usually, after one day of exposure to bright sunlight, thestaminate blooms will expand and begin to shed their pollen. The pollenmay easily be collected by allowing an extended catkin to droop inside avial or test tube and then, as the catkin rests against its inner wall, tapping the outside of the tube sharply with a pencil to jar the pollengrains loose. A separate test tube must be used for each variety ofpollen to be experimented with. By following this procedure for severaldays with all the staminate blooms that have been gathered, theexperimenter should have enough pollen for work on a small scale. Thetest tubes containing this pollen should never be stoppered with corks, but with plugs of absorbent cotton, which will allow the passage of air. Pollen may be stored in this manner for several days, possibly as longas two weeks, if it is kept dry. By a close observation of the bloomingperiod of the wild hazels, one is able to determine the best time forplacing the filbert pollen on the pistillate blossoms. No attempt shouldbe made to do so until the male catkins of the wild hazel species are soentirely exhausted that no amount of shaking will release any grains ofpollen. When this condition exists, it is time to move the storedfilbert branches to strong sunlight. A quiet day should be chosen topollinize the hazels for two reasons. If there is a wind, it will blowaway the pollen and so make the work more difficult. A wind will alsoincrease the danger of the hazels being fertilized by native hazelpollen which may still be circulating in the air and which the flowersmay prefer to filbert pollen. 

When good conditions are present, then, the hybridizer proceeds to hiswork. A brush with which to transfer pollen from the vial to thepistillate blossoms is made by wrapping a little absorbent cotton aroundthe end of a match. The paper bag is removed from around a group ofhazel blossoms, a small amount of pollen is dabbed on each blossom andthe bag is immediately replaced, to remain on for two more weeks. Whenthe bags are finally taken off, the branches should be marked toindicate that the nuts will be hybrids. Before receiving pollen, eachpistillate blossom has, emerging from its bud tip, a few delicate red orpink spikes which are sticky enough to make pollen adhere to them. Within a few days after receiving pollen, these spikes may dry up andturn black, a fair indication that the pollen has been effective. If thepollen does not take hold, the spikes of the staminate blooms are sureto continue pink for a long time. I have seen them in the middle of thesummer, still blooming and waiting for pollen which would let themcontinue on their cycle. This ability of hazel flowers to remainreceptive for a long period allows the nut-culturist ample time toaccomplish his work. It is not so true with all members of the nut treegroup, some, such as the English walnuts, being receptive for such ashort period that only by very frequent examination and manyapplications of pollen can one be sure of making a cross. 

Early in the fall, the hybrid nuts should be enclosed in a wire screento prevent mice and squirrels from taking them before they are ripe. Such wire screens may be used in the form of a bag and fastened aroundeach branch. When the husks turn brown and dry, the nuts are ripe, andready to be gathered and planted. Careful handling of the nuts isadvisable to preserve their viability. They should be planted in anoutdoor bed which has been fully protected against the invasion ofrodents. A screen such as I described for other nut seed is satisfactoryfor these hybrid nuts but it need not be as large as that. After thenuts have sprouted and the plants have grown for one season, they may betransplanted into a permanent location where they should again be wellprotected against mice by a trunk screen, and against rabbits by drivinga stout stake deep into the ground on the south side of the tree andtying it to the tree. This use of a stake discourages rabbits fromcutting off the tree. 

There are innumerable other crosses that can be made as well as thosebetween hazels and filberts. It is possible, for example, to cross theEnglish walnut with the black walnut. Many such crosses have been madealthough none of them is known to have produced superior nuts. Thousandsof crosses exist between butternuts and Japanese heartnuts. Many ofthese are of some worth and are being propagated. Crosses betweenheartnut and butternut are easily made, following the same procedureused in crossing hazels and filberts, except that larger bags arenecessary for covering the female blossoms. Also, these bags should havea small, celluloid window glued into a convenient place, so that theprogress of the female blossoms toward maturity can be observed. 

When hybridizing walnuts, it is necessary to use a pollen gun instead ofremoving the bag from around the female blossoms and applying the pollenwith a cotton-covered applicator. Such a pollen gun can be made by usinga glass vial which does not hold more than an ounce of liquid. Anatomizer bulb, attached to a short copper or brass tube soldered into ametal screw-cap, is fitted to the vial. Another small copper or brasstube should also be inserted in the screw-cap close to the first one. The second tube should be bent to a right angle above the stopper andits projecting end filed to a sharp point. Without removing the bag fromaround the pistillate blossoms, the hybridizer forces the point of theatomizer through the cotton wadding between bag and branch. The pollenin the vial is blown through the tube into the bag in a cloud, coveringall the enclosed blossoms. It is advisable to repeat this on severalsuccessive days to make certain of reaching the female blossoms duringtheir most receptive period. 

[Illustration: _8 x 8 x 8 foot tightly woven sheet of unbleached muslinstretched over mother hazel plant during pollination period in theprocess of making controlled crosses between it and filbert parents. Photo by C. Weschcke. _]

[Illustration: THE WESCHCKE POLLEN GUN

Taper end of copper tube ... Not absolutely necessary, but it savespollen. 

Long fibre cotton wad wired to intake side of bulb to strain out foreignpollens that may be in atmosphere. 

De Vilbiss atomizer bulb. 

Pollen grains

Any small glass bottle with a wide mouth and screw cap. 

Tubes A and B--3/16" outside diameter copper tubing can be purchased atany garage. Solder both tubes to screw cover C. 

Drwg by Wm. Kuehn

_How to make pollen gun. _]

Chapter 21

TOXICITY AMONG TREES AND PLANTS

Although quack grass will grow luxuriantly up to the trunks of bothblack walnut and butternut trees, I know, from things I have seenmyself, that the roots of the latter and probably of the former have adeadly effect on members of the evergreen family. I have seen northernwhite pine and other pines, too, suddenly lose their needles and diewhen, as large trees, they have been transplanted to the vicinity ofbutternut trees. To save as many of these transplanted trees aspossible, it was necessary for me to sacrifice almost one hundred finebutternut trees by cutting them off close to the ground and pruning allthe sprouts that started. 

Other instances have also demonstrated to me this deleterious power ofbutternut trees over evergreens. For years, I watched a struggle betweena small butternut tree and a large Mugho pine. Gradually the Mugho pinewas succumbing. At last, when the pine had lost over half its brancheson the side near the butternut, I decided to take an active part in thefight. I cut off the trunk of the butternut and pruned off all of itssprouts. The butternut surrendered and died. The Mugho pine took newheart, lived and again flourished. 

At another time, I transplanted several thousand Montana pines, aboutthirty or forty of which came within the branch limits of a medium sizebutternut tree. Within a year, these thirty or more trees had turnedbrown and were completely dead, while those immediately outside thebranch area were dwarfed and not at all thrifty. The trees farther fromthe butternut were unaffected and grew consistently well. A similarcondition, although not to the same degree, developed under a white oakwhere more Mugho pines were growing. Another instance occurred when aplanting of several thousand Colorado blue spruce were lined out andfell within the area affected by two butternut trees. The spruce wereall dead within a few months. 

Many people have observed the detrimental effect of trees of the walnutfamily on alfalfa, tomatoes and potatoes, resulting in wilting anddying. It is the root systems of the walnut which are responsible forthis damage. Apparently, there is some chemical elaborated near thesurface of the roots, and sensitive plants, whose roots come in contactwith either roots or ground containing this factor, are injured andsometimes killed by it. One must therefore be very cautious abouttrusting these trees as protectors of many of the ornamental and gardenplants. I am certain, from my own observations, that their influence onevergreens is strongly antagonistic. 

On another basis is the association between catalpas and chestnut treesgrowing adjacent to one another. Constructive symbiosis apparentlydevelops when a young chestnut tree is planted within the radius of theroot system of a catalpa. The latter very definitely influences thechestnut tree to grow more vigorously than it otherwise would. 

I have recorded my observations of these antagonisms and friendshipsbetween trees and plants to show that they are a reality which should betaken into consideration in grouping and transplanting. Such warningsare infrequent because some people may mistake them as condemnations ofcertain favorite trees. I do not intend them as such, for these plantsare often valuable and worthwhile. This ability which they havedeveloped through the many years of their existence is a guarantee ofthe sturdiness and strength of their family and species, not at all aquality to be condemned. 

CONCLUSION

If I had written this book twenty years ago, I would have prophesied afuture for nut culture in the north, full of wonder, hope and profit. IfI had written it ten years ago, I should have filled it withdiscouragement and disillusion. Now, after growing such trees for morethan 30 years, I realize that the truth lies somewhere between theseextremes, but nearer the first. 

It is seldom practical to move native trees very far from their naturalrange, nor is it necessary to do so in this part of the north: We havefour fine, native nut trees: the hazel, the butternut, the black walnutand the hickory. In my experience, these four have completelydemonstrated their practical worth. 

If commercialization is the primary hope of the nut tree planter, heshould first consider the large, hardy hybrids, known as hazilberts, which I have produced between a large Wisconsin wild hazel and Europeanfilberts. Hazilberts equal the best European filberts in every way, without the latter's disadvantage of susceptibility to hazel blight andits lack of hardiness. They are as hardy as the common wild hazel andare more adaptable to environment and soil conditions than any othernative nut tree. They may be trained into trees or allowed to grow aslarge bushes. Like all other filberts and hazels, they, too, needcompanion plants for cross pollinization to obtain full crops of nuts. 

The butternut is also a very adaptable tree. No one who is acquaintedwith it, questions the quality of the butternut kernel. In a goodvariety, the nuts should crack out in halves and the kernels drop outreadily. 

So many good varieties of black walnuts are being propagated, I need notsay much about them, except that many of the best ones are not practicalfor this climate. Nurserymen who grow them can give the best adviceabout varieties to anyone selecting black walnuts for orchard planting. 

Hickories are the last of these native trees to be recommended from acommercial standpoint, as they are the most particular about soil andclimate. However, with improved propagation methods and plantingtechnique they should become some day as valuable as pecan plantationshave become valuable to the south. 

Considering the nut tree as a dooryard tree, an ornament rather than abusiness, makes it possible to include many more species as suitable forgrowing in the north. For this purpose, I suggest heartnuts, chestnuts, pecans and hiccans. The heartnut tree is always one to draw attentionand interest, picturesque in its leaves, blossoms and clusters of nuts. 

Last, but certainly not least in it potentialities, is the Englishwalnut. I am certain that we shall have some varieties of these whichwill be hardy enough to plant in the north. When these have beencompletely proven, they will be a delightful addition to the number oftrees flourishing here. What family would not receive enjoyment andsatisfaction from having, in its dooryard, a gracious English walnuttree, its spreading branches laden with nuts?

Although the commercial aspect of producing hazilberts is engrossing meat the present time, my greatest pleasure in nut culture still comes, asit always shall come, from actual work with these trees. It is both aphysical and mental tonic. I recommend nut tree culture to everyone whoenjoys spending his time out-of-doors, who is inspired by work of acreative nature, and who appreciates having trees, or even one tree, ofhis own. Suggested reading on Nut Tree Culture:

 Nut Growing by Morris Nut Growers' Handbook by Bush Tree Crops by J. Russell Smith The Nut Culturist by Fuller Improved Nut Tree of North America by Clarence Reed Annual Reports of N. N. G. A.