Shows exceptionally thin shell of Weschcke hickory variety. Drawing by Wm. Kuehn

One fall day in 1926, when I was at the home of a neighboring farmer, he offered me some mixed hickory nuts he had received from an uncle in Iowa. As he knew of my interest in nuts, he wanted my opinion of them. I looked them over and explained that they were no better than little nutmegs, having very hard shells and a small proportion of inaccessible meat. To demonstrate this, I cracked some between hammer and flatiron. My demonstration was conclusive until I hit one nut which almost melted under the force I was applying. The shape of this nut was enough different from the others to enable me to pick out a handful like it from the mixture. I was amazed to see how very thin-shelled and full of meat they were. Upon my request, this neighbor wrote to his uncle, John Bailey, of Fayette, Iowa, asking if he knew from which tree such fine nuts had come. Unfortunately he did not, because the nuts had been gathered from quite a large area. After corresponding with Mr. Bailey myself, I decided that I would go there and help him locate the tree, although it was nearly Christmas and heavy snowfalls which already covered the ground would make our search more difficult.

Carl Weschcke, Jr., hand holding Weschcke hickory in hull. 9/15/42 Photo by C. Weschcke

On my arrival in Fayette, I called on Mr. Bailey, who was glad to help me 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 have come, and arranged to go out there with him by bob sleigh. A rough ride of 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 the tree from which these particular nuts came than he had had before and we had 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, which identified it accurately. It was a large shagbark whose first living branch was fully sixteen feet off the ground and, since we had no ladder with us, I had to shin up the tree to cut off some of the smaller branches. This shagbark, true to its name, had rough bark which tore not only my clothes but some of the skin on my legs as well and whereas the climbing up was difficult, the coming down was equally so. Having contracted verbally with Mr. Fobes to buy the tree, I packed the branches I had cut in cardboard boxes with straw packing and carefully brought them home to St. Paul.

I wrote at once to my friend, J. F. Jones, of my expedition, telling him of my plans to propagate this hickory. I also sent him some of the nuts from the parent tree and samples of extra-good nuts from other trees growing near it so that he could give me his opinion of them. Mr. Jones responded by advising me about the kind of a contract to make with Mr. Fobes in regard to both the purchasing and propagation of the original hickory tree and he urged the latter enthusiastically. Of the Weschcke hickory nuts themselves, he wrote: "This is practically identical with the Glover. The Glover is usually a little larger but this varies in all nuts from year to year. This is a fine nut and if it comes from Iowa, it ought to be propagated. I suggest you keep the stock of it and propagate the tree for northern planting, that is for Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, etc., where most nuts grown here would not mature." A few years ago, I saw the Glover hickory nut for the first time and I also thought it much the 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 dried out during the winter to such an extent that they were worthless for spring grafting. This meant losing a whole season. The next fall I obtained more scionwood from Mr. Fobes and having kept it in good condition during the winter by storing it in a Harrington graft box shown by illustration, I was able to graft it in the spring. However, these grafts did not take hold well, only two or three branches resulting from all of it and these did not bear nor even grow as they should have. I was disappointed and discouraged, writing to Mr. Fobes that I did not believe the tree could be propagated.

This drawing illustrates how to build a Harrington graft storage box

In the fall of 1932, Mr. Fobes sent me a large box of scions and branches, explaining that he had sold his farm and, as the tree might be cut down, this was my last opportunity to propagate it. Without much enthusiasm, I grafted the material he had sent me on about a dozen trees, some of them very large hickories and I was most agreeably surprised to find the grafting successful and more than one branch bearing nutlets. These nuts dropped off during the summer until only one remained to mature, which it did in the latter part of October. But I waited too long to pick that nut and some smart squirrel, which had probably been watching it ripen as diligently as I had, secured it first. I made a very thorough search of the ground nearby to find the remains of it, for while I knew I would not get a taste of the kernel—the squirrel would take care of that—I was interested in finding out whether it followed the exact shape and thinness of shell of the first nuts I had examined. I finally did find part of it, enough to see that it was similar to the nuts from the parent tree.

The grafts I made in 1932 have been bearing nuts every year since that time. The Weschcke hickory makes a tremendous growth grafted on bitternut hickory (Carya Cordiformis). The wood and buds are hardy to a temperature of 47° below zero Fahrenheit, so that wherever the wild bitternut hickory grow, this grafted tree will survive to bear its thin-shelled nuts. The nuts have a fine flavor and the unusual quality of retaining this flavor without becoming rancid, for three years. The only fault to find with them is the commercial one of being only medium in size, so that compared to English walnuts, for example, they become unimpressive. I have noticed time and again that the average person will pass over a small, sweet nut to choose a larger one even though the latter may not have as attractive a flavor. This is noticeably true in regard to pecans, when the large paper-shell types, which have a rather dry, sweet kernel, are almost invariably preferred to the smaller ones of finer flavor, which are plump and have slightly thicker shells.

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

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

Altogether I have grafted about 70 varieties of hickory and its hybrids on bitternut stocks in my attempts to increase the number of varieties of cultured hickory trees in the North. Most of those I worked with were compatible with the bitternut stock, but a few, perhaps a dozen, have indicated that they would rather not live on the bitternut and have died, either from incompatibility or winter-killing. Yet as a root system, the bitternut is the hardiest and easiest to transplant of any of the hickories and for these reasons it makes an ideal stock for the amateur nut-grower to use. I did try, in 1926, to grow some shagbark hickory stocks, which would be more compatible with those varieties I could not get started on bitternut. I planted half a bushel of shagbark hickory nuts from Iowa, but although they sprouted nicely, they were not sufficiently hardy and were winter-killed so severely that, after twelve years, the largest was not more than a foot high, nor thicker than a lead pencil. Some of these, about 50, were transplanted into the orchard and in other favorable locations. The largest of these, in 1952, is about 4 inches in diameter, 1-foot off the ground, and about 15 feet high. I have not grafted any yet and only one has borne any seedling nuts so far. I am now reconciled to using my native bitternut trees for most of my stock in spite of some disadvantages. A list of successfully grafted varieties is appended, and indicates to what extent this stock is a universal root stock for most of the hickories and their hybrids. A successful union, however, and long life, does not mean that good bearing habits will be established, since most of these trees grow in the woods in dense shade and poor surroundings. Some varieties have not borne many nuts, and some not at all. The following scions were cut this fall (in 1952) from successfully grafted trees deep in the woods:

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

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

For many years, I observed hickories and walnuts in bloom and hand-pollinated them, yet I overlooked many things I should have discovered earlier in study. It was only after ten years of observing the Weschcke hickory, for example, that I realized the importance of proper pollinization of it. In years when it produced only a few nuts, I had blamed seasonal factors, rains and soil conditions, but I now realize that it was due to lack of the right pollen. In the spring of 1941, I decided to make special pollen combinations with all the hickories then in bloom. The information I acquired in return was great reward for the work I did.

I selected branches of the Weschcke hickory trees bearing a profuse amount of pistillate (female) blossoms. I hand-pollinated these with a special apparatus (the hand-pollen gun described later in this book), using a magnifying glass so that both pollen and blossom could be plainly seen. In doing this, I found it most practical to wear what jewelers call a "double loupe," a light, fiber head-gear carrying lenses well-suited to such work. I treated the marked branches with pollen gathered from the Bridgewater, the Kirtland and the Beaver, all very good pollen-bearers. I also pollinated branches of the Cedar Rapids variety, which bears little pollen in this locality, with Kirtland pollen. However, the pollinization of the Cedar Rapids, which involved treating from 35 to 50 pistillate blossoms, resulted in only two mature nuts.

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

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

In further explanation, Dr. McKay submitted the drawings shown on page 57, and says:

Illustrations by Dr. McKay showing pollen degeneration in Weschcke hickory.

This substantiates the conclusion that I had arrived at previous to this report, that this hickory is able to mature its nuts early in the fall by 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 on bitternut which has proved unable to mature pollen and it is the Creager from Iowa.) I was immensely pleased to find that it responded very well to Bridgewater pollen, a high percentage of the blooms treated with it developing mature nuts. The results with the Kirtland pollen were almost equally good, the poorest showing coming from those branches treated with Beaver pollen on which only three mature nuts developed. (The Beaver is presumed to be a hybrid between bitternut and shagbark hickories.) Sixty-two nuts from these pollinizations were planted in the fall of 1941 in rodent-proof seed beds. In the spring, counting germination, I found 100% of these nuts had sprouted and grown into small trees during the season.

After finding the most suitable pollen for the Weschcke hickory, I realized the necessity for including more than one variety of hickory in a planting, just as there should be more than one variety of apple or plum tree in an orchard. I think that it would always be well to have three or more varieties of known compatibility within reasonable distances, probably not more than 100 feet apart, nor less than 40 to 50 feet 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 recommend for this latitude. These include:

There are three or four others that are hardy but all means of identification having been lost, it will be necessary to wait until they come into bearing before their varieties will be known. As experiments continue, more varieties of worthy, hardy hickories and hiccans will be found which will justify completely the opinion of those of us who always hail as king of all our native nuts, the hickory.

Weschcke hickory nut natural size shows free splitting hull. Photo by C. Weschcke.

Chapter 8

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

As a butternut tree matures, it spreads out much like an apple or chestnut tree. Of course, it must have enough room to do so, an important factor in raising any nut tree. Enough room and sunlight hasten bearing-age and insure larger crops of finer nuts. Grafting valuable varieties of butternut on black walnut stock will also hasten bearing. I have had such grafts produce nuts the same year the grafting was done and these trees continued to grow rapidly and produce annually. However, they were not easy to graft, the stubborn reluctance of the butternut top to accept transplantation to a foreign stock being well known. This factor will probably always cause grafted butternut trees to be higher in price than black walnut or hickory. The reverse graft, i.e., black walnut on butternut should never be practiced for although successful, the black walnut overgrows the stock and results in an unproductive tree. Specimens 25 or more years old prove this to be a fact.

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

Weschcke Butternut. Smooth shallow convolutions of shell allow kernels to drop out freely. Drawing by Wm. Kuehn.

I had the good luck to discover an easy-cracking variety of butternut in River Falls, Wisconsin, in 1934, which I have propagated commercially and which carries my name. A medium-sized nut, it has the requisite properties for giving it a varietal name, for it cracks mostly along the sutural lines and its internal structure is so shallow that the kernel will fall out if a half-shell is turned upside down. I received one of those surprises which sometimes occur when a tree is asexually propagated when I grafted scions from this butternut on black walnut stock. The resulting nuts were larger than those on the parent tree and their hulls peeled off with almost no effort. Whether these features continue after the trees become older is something I shall observe with interest.

Self hulling Butternut. Weschcke variety. Drawing by Wm. Kuehn.

The nearly self-hulling quality of these nuts makes them very clean to handle. The absence of hulls in cracking butternuts not only does away with the messiness usually involved, but also it allows more accurate cracking and more sanitary handling of the kernels. In 1949 I noticed a new type of butternut growing near the farm residence. This butternut was 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 to test it further by grafting it on butternuts and black walnut stocks. Although hand-operated nutcrackers have been devised to crack these and other wild nuts, they are not as fast as a hammer. If one protects the hand by wearing a glove and stands the butternut on a solid iron base, hitting the pointed end with a hammer, it is quite possible to accumulate a pint of clean nut meats in half an hour.

The butternut tree is one whose lumber may be put to many uses. It is light but very tough and stringy and when planed and sanded, it absorbs varnish and finishes very well. Although not as dark in natural color as black walnut, butternut resembles it in grain. When butternut has been stained to represent black walnut, it is only by their weight that they can be distinguished. In late years, natural butternut has become popular as an interior finish and for furniture, being sold as "blonde walnut," "French walnut," or "white walnut," in my opinion very improper names. I see no reason for calling it by other than its own. Depletion of forests of butternut trees brings its lumber value up in price nearly to that of fine maple or birch, approaching that of black walnut in some places.

I have run several thousand feet of butternut lumber from my farmland through my own sawmill and used it for a variety of purposes. It is probably the strongest wood for its weight except spruce. I have used it successfully to make propellers which operate electric generators for deriving 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 such construction. In building a small electric car for traveling around the orchards, I used butternut rather than oak or metal, which saved at least 100 pounds of weight, an important matter since the source of the car's power is automobile storage batteries.

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

An incidental value butternut trees have is their ability to bleed freely in the spring if the outer bark is cut. Therefore, they can be tapped 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 butternuts which, even when buried in the ground, show great resistance to decay. I have found them to be still intact and possessing some strength after being covered by earth for fifteen years. This indicates that they might be used with a binder in a composition material. Their extreme hardness also offers a good wearing surface.

Electrically operated wagon constructed of native butternut wood known for strength and light weight as well as durability. Author's sons aboard. Photo by C. Weschcke 1941.

Not only good things can be said of the butternut tree and it would be wrong to avoid mentioning the deleterious effect that a butternut tree may have on other trees planted within the radius of its root system. I have had several experiences of this kind. One butternut tree on my farm, having a trunk six inches in diameter, killed every Mugho pine within the radius of its root system. This amounted to between 50 and 100 pines. Their death could not be attributed to the shade cast by the butternut as Mugho pines are very tolerant of shade. As the first branches of the butternut were more than three feet off the ground, the pines could not have been influenced by the top system of the tree nor do I believe that it was due to fallen leaves, but rather directly to the greatly ramified roots. Large evergreens, such as Colorado blue spruce, native white pine, limber pine and Jeffrey pine are known to have been similarly influenced. While small butternut trees do not, in my experience, have this effect, this may be explained by the fact that the 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 the country's best grazing land is among such trees. The damage results from a chemical known as Juglone which is elaborated by the root system and when the roots of the butternut cross those of its evergreen neighbor, this acts as a poison to the evergreen and may kill it.

An 8-foot propeller of butternut wood is the prime mover for wind power generator which in a brisk wind generated 110 volts and 10 amperes at 300 RPM.

The butternut is attacked by one serious disease which is in the nature of a blight (melanconium oblongum), since it is transmitted through spores. It usually attacks old trees, the branches of the top part dying, and the bark on the main trunk becoming loose. The disease progresses slowly and I have seen large trees infected for twelve or fifteen years, continuing to bear fine crops. It does have a very weakening effect, though, and eventually saps the life from the tree long before its natural span of life of about fifty years is over.

Chapter 9

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

Rev. Crath left Canada in October 1936, and spent all of the following winter in Poland. While he was there, I began the task of arranging for the receipt of the walnuts and hazels he was to send, and so began a wearisome, exasperating experience. First, it was necessary to obtain permits from the Bureau of Plant Industry in Washington. Because of the vast quantity of material expected, these permits had to be issued in the 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 proper authorities for inspection. This firm, in turn, hired brokers who were responsible for paying all duty, freight and inspection charges. I certainly thought that we had everything in such readiness that there would 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 a certain Polish steamer, I learned of its arrival only from a letter I received from the importing company, which requested that the original bill of lading and invoice be sent to them at once, as the shipment had already been in the harbor for a week but could not be released by the customs office until they had these documents. I had received the bill of lading from Rev. Crath but not the invoice, for he had not known that I would need it. So my valuable, but perishable, shipment remained in port storage day after day while I frantically sought for some way to break through the "red tape" holding it there. Cables to Rev. Crath were undeliverable as he was back in the mountains seeking more material. In desperation, I wrote to Clarence A. Reed, an old friend, member of the Northern Nut Growers' Association and in charge of government nut investigations in the Division of Pomology at Washington. Through his efforts and under heavy bond pending receipt of the invoice, the walnut and filbert material was released and sent to Washington, D. C. As there was too much of it to be inspected through the usual facilities for this work, it was necessary to employ a firm of seed and plant importers to do the necessary inspecting and fumigating. At last, terminating my concern and distress over the condition in which the trees and scions would be after such great delays and so many repackings, the shipment arrived in St. Paul. There remained only the requirement of getting permission from the Bureau of Plant Inspection of the State of Minnesota to take it to Wisconsin, where, if there was anything left, I intended to plant it. This permission being readily granted, we managed, by truck and, finally, by sled, to get it to the nursery about the middle of the winter.

The following spring, we planted the nuts and trees and grafted the scions on black walnut and butternut stocks. The mortality of these grafts was the greatest I have ever known. Of about four thousand English walnut grafts, representing some twenty varieties, only one hundred twenty-five took well enough to produce a good union with the stock and to grow. Some of them grew too fast and in spite of my precautions, were blown out; others died from winter injury the first year. By the following spring, there were only ten varieties which had withstood the rigor of the climate. Of the five hundred trees, only a few 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 for varietal classification. These have been set out in test orchard formation on two locations, both high on the slope of a ravine, one group on the north side, one on the south. It has been suggested that from the remaining seedlings, which number thousands, we select 500 to 1000 representative specimens and propagate them on black walnut stocks in some warmer climate, either in Oregon, Missouri or New York. This would determine their value as semi-hardy trees worthy of propagation in such localities. Such an experiment will probably be made eventually.

The same year, 1937, in which I obtained the Polish nuts, I also bought one hundred pounds of Austrian walnuts, to serve as a check. Eighty pounds of these consisted of the common, commercial type of walnut, while the remainder was of more expensive nuts having cream-colored shells 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 separated from the others by size and shape.

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

After the first year, the English walnuts progressed fairly well. Large trees, which had not been entirely worked over at first, were trimmed so that nothing remained of the original top, but only the grafted branches. The winter of 1938-39 was not especially severe and mortality was low, although it was apparent that all of the varieties were not equally hardy. Even a few of the scions grafted on butternut stocks were growing successfully. I had made these grafts realizing that the stock was not a very satisfactory one, to learn if it could be used to produce scionwood. As the results were encouraging, I decided it would be worthwhile to give them good care and gradually to remove all of the butternut top.

Each fall, the first two years after I had grafted all these walnuts, I cut and stored enough scionwood from each variety to maintain it if the winter should be so severe as to destroy the grafts. Unfortunately, the grafts had developed so well, even to the actual bearing of nuts by three varieties, that in 1940 I did not think this precaution was necessary. Then came our catastrophic Armistice Day blizzard, the most severe 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; cultured varieties of hickories, hiccans, heartnuts; fruit trees, including apples, 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 the following summer that several varieties began to produce new wood. The variety which showed the greatest degree of hardiness is "Firstling," originally known as Letter F. Although the primary buds on the Firstling were nearly all killed, very few of the small branches were affected and the union itself suffered no injury. Second in hardiness is Kremenetz, much of its top being killed, but its union being only slightly affected. No. 64 was affected in about the same amount as Kremenetz. Increasing degrees of tenderness and, of course, decreasing degrees of hardiness, were shown by the many other varieties, some of which may never recover completely from the shock of that blizzard. The seedling trees suffered only slight damage so that I expect that they are hardy enough to produce fruit here.

I cannot conclude this chapter without mentioning certain observations I have made regarding hardiness, which, although they require more specific study, I wish to describe as a suggestion for further experimentation by either amateur or professional horticulturists. My theory is that a determination of the hardiness factor of an English walnut tree can be made according to the color of its bark. I have seen that a tree having thin bark which remains bright green late into the fall is very likely to be of a tender variety. Conversely, among these Carpathian walnuts, I have found that varieties whose bark becomes tan or brown early in autumn show much more hardiness than those whose bark remains green. One variety, Wolhynie, whose bark is chocolate brown, is very resistant to winter injury. Another, whose green bark is heavily dotted with lenticels, shows itself hardier than those having none or only a trace of them. In testing almonds, I have found that trees whose bark turns red early in the fall are definitely more hardy than those whose bark remains green or tan. In observing apricots, I have learned that young twigs with red bark are more resistant to cold than those with brown. Of course, these findings cannot be considered as facts until further studies have been made. I hope that others will find the idea of investigating this more-than-possibility as interesting as I do.

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

Chapter 10

In my own work with heartnuts I have found that, although they are to be classed only as semi-hardy, there are a few varieties which are hardy enough for northern temperatures. Only testing will determine which ones can endure severe climates. In the spring of 1921, I planted a Lancaster heartnut grafted on a black walnut, but the weather was cold that season and 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 killed back 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 into bearing. From time to time, I also experimented with seedlings sent to me by Professor James A. Neilson of Vineland, Ontario, who was interested in having them tested in this latitude. These, too, were always unsuccessful.

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

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

When a nut of J. sieboldiana cordiformis is planted, it does not reliably reproduce itself in true type, sometimes reverting to that of the ordinary Japanese walnut, which looks more like a butternut and has a rather rough shell as distinguished from the smooth shell of the heartnut. In hulling my heartnut crop for 1940, I noticed many deformed nuts.

The season had been a prolific one for nut production of all kinds, and I knew there had been a mixture of pollen in the air at the time these nutlets were receptive (a mixture made up largely of pollen from black walnuts, butternuts, with some English walnuts). Since irregularities in size and shape indicate hybridity frequently and since heartnuts are easily hybridized I have assumed that these were pollinized by the mixture. I have planted these odd-shaped nuts and I expect them to result in many new crosses of J. sieboldiana cordiformis, some five to eight years from now.