C. A. Reed, Washington, D. C.
We are annually importing into the United States from $30,000,000 to
more than $52,000,000 worth of nuts. In this country, production is of
leading importance with but three species,—the Persian (English)
walnut, the pecan, and the almond. Of these together, we are producing
in the neighborhood of $26,000,000 worth of nuts. In addition to these
three species, two others now bid fair to become of considerable
importance within the next decade. These are the filbert of the
Northwest and the Eastern black walnut. In the Northwest, the filbert is
receiving intensive attention at the hands of a considerable number of
skilled horticulturists. The species is making rapid strides and in a
short while will probably rank fourth in importance with reference to
the extent to which it has been developed horticulturally. Possibly
because of the extent to which it is common over the United States, the
black walnut might properly now be rated as fourth as that nut has as
great, if not a greater, range and is of interest to more people in this
country than is any other one species of nut. It remains, however, to be
seen how rapidly it will be developed by the pomologists.
The view before you is one which some of you have seen before. It was
taken in the famous Vrooman orchard of Persian walnut trees at Santa
Rosa, California. This is the largest and most noted orchard of
Franquette variety in the country. It is from this orchard that scions
have been obtained for the propagation of a great part of the Franquette
orchards in this country.
In the Willamette Valley of Western Oregon, the walnut has received a
large amount of attention during recent years; its development there has
made rapid strides, and in the better soils, the trees grow rapidly and
ordinarily bear very well. The photograph before you was taken in
February, 1920, in an orchard near Hillsboro. It was situated on low but
rich land and I regret to say that it was practically wiped out of
existence by an unusual cold spell occurring from the 12th to the 15th
of December in 1919. During that spell, the temperatures went down in
some points of the Willamette Valley to 24 degrees below zero. As nearly
as could be told at the time the picture was taken the trees were all
killed to the snowline which was from a foot and a half to two feet
above ground. The owner has since reported that he cut the trees down to
that line.
To some extent, the Persian walnut is grown in the eastern part of the
United States. It was introduced here long before it was on the Atlantic
Coast, but this side of the Rocky Mountains, it has nowhere become of
great commercial importance. The photograph before you was taken in
1911. It shows a seedling orchard of twenty-three Persian walnut trees
in Bucks County in the northwestern part of Pennsylvania. The orchard
then appeared to be in first-class condition with no sign of
winter-injury, but so far as we have been able to ascertain, the trees
have never borne important crops of nuts.
This tree before us is the parent, or original tree of the Nebo variety
from Southern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a variety first propagated
by Messrs. Rush and Jones. It is one of the old historical trees of that
section, and while the nut it produces is very good in many respects,
for various reasons, the variety is no longer being propagated to great
extent.
This is the parent Rush tree, another variety now not propagated as much
as formerly, but one which, nevertheless, is a good sort and regarded as
being well worthy of planting about the home grounds in sections of the
eastern part of the country to which the species is adapted.
The Persian walnut is evidently quite at home from the eastern shore of
Maryland up through Delaware and New Jersey to Long Island and lower
Connecticut. From this strip west inland to well toward York and
Harrisburg in Southern Pennsylvania, it is by no means uncommon. To some
extent, it is grown in Western New York and close to Lake Erie in
Northern Ohio. There are some trees in Eastern Michigan and a very few
in what is known as the Niagara Peninsula of Ontario, but with few
exceptions, the crops they bear are uncertain.
The tree before us is the parent of the Aurand variety named in honor of
Mr. Geo. D. Aurand of Lewistown, Mifflin County, Pennsylvania. The
gentleman in the foreground is Mr. Aurand in the act of examining a
split in the bark caused by winter-injury. This trouble is fairly
prevalent over a great part of the east.
Leaving the walnut industry for the time being, we will take a fleeting
glance at the pecan industry. The greater part of our pecan crop comes
from wild trees in the Southwest. The view before us is typical of
Texas scenes especially in such towns as San Saba, Brownwood and others
where nuts are brought from the country in wagon loads much the same as
are cereals in the northern states. Pecan orchard development has taken
place almost wholly in states east of the limits of the native range. In
sections to which the pecan has been indigenous development has been
very slow. The greatest and most extensive development of any section
happens to be in Southwestern Georgia.
The view before us was taken in an orchard of Frotscher trees in
Thomasville some 20 miles north of the Georgia-Florida state line. The
trees were planted in 1905, set fifty feet apart, and last spring,
because of crowding, the alternate trees were removed. The lower limbs
had begun to die and the nuts from the lower branches had, for several
years, been inferior in both size and filling quality.
The trees in the orchard before you were three years planted when
photographed. This is an orchard in the Albany district of southwestern
Georgia. It is in the immediate Albany district that more pecan planting
has taken place than in any other one district of the whole South. It is
possible to go from Albany in most any direction and to pass through
orchards on both sides of the road with rows of pecan trees extending as
far as the eye can see in each direction.
There is more or less, of a prevailing idea that the pecan is a
California product but it is the exception rather than the rule to find
thrifty and productive trees in that state. The tree before you is one
which bore enough nuts during a recent year to bring $125 in the market,
at 20 cents a pound.
Coming considerably nearer home, we find the parent tree of the
Butterick variety situated on the Illinois side of the Wabash River a
short distance below Vincennes, Indiana. The range of the pecan, as the
most of you probably know, extends well up into Iowa along the bank of
the Mississippi River and also into Central Illinois along the Illinois
and other rivers and north to Terre Haute, Indiana, along the Wabash.
The Butterick has been regarded as one of the most promising northern
varieties. Reports which seem to be fairly well authenticated are to the
effect that this fine tree has since partially died because of having
its roots cut in the digging of a ditch.
Two years ago, Dr. J. B. Curtis (who is present in the audience) and
myself spent a week's vacation in Eastern Maryland. At Easton we were
greatly surprised to find what we agreed was the largest planted pecan
tree we had ever seen. During the past summer, this tree has been
photographed and its measurements taken: It has a girth measurement at
breast height of 15 feet. Its spread is 129 by 138 feet. Its height was
estimated at approximately 135 feet. It is not one of the largest pecan
trees of the country as larger trees are not uncommon in many sections
from Southern Indiana, south and west to Texas but they are native and
not planted trees. We know this to be a planted tree as there are no
native pecans in the state of Maryland. This tree bears with a fair
degree of regularity. We are told that in 1917 it yielded approximately
twelve bushels of nuts which, although small, were exceedingly good and
a delight to the children of the whole neighborhood.
Taking up the almond industry, the view before you is of interest
because of historical reasons rather than otherwise. It is one of the
few remaining large orchards planted by the late Mr. A. T. Hatch known
as father of the principal varieties of California today. Mr. Hatch
planted several hundred acres of almonds in the vicinity of Suisun about
midway between Sacramento and San Francisco but cold winds from San
Francisco Bay prevent almond trees in that section from being
commercially productive, and as result, the section has been abandoned
as an almond center. Nevertheless, this picture is of interest because
it was in these very orchards that were originated the famous Hatch
varieties, the Ne Plus Ultra, Nonpareil, I. X. L. and the Drake. A great
part of this orchard has since been topworked with prunes.
Almond orchards in bloom afford some of California's most beautiful
sights during February. The two trees in the foreground are typical
specimens of I. X. L. while in full bloom. The almond begins bearing at
about the same age as does the peach; at 5 or 6 years from the time the
trees are planted, they begin to pay a little more than the cost of
up-keep, and at 8 years, they are regarded as being in full bearing.
This scene was taken in one of the oldest orchards in the state of
California. The trees were planted in about 1870. The picture affords a
typical illustration of one of the methods of harvesting. The nuts are
being thrashed or "knocked" from the trees to heavy canvas sheets spread
upon the ground which are drawn from tree to tree by horse power. The
nuts are loaded loose in wagons or in sacks and taken to some central
plant where they are run through hulling machines and the nuts
separated from the hulls after which they are spread out in trays and
left in the sun to dry. At that season of the year, there is practically
no danger of dew or rain and, after being exposed for several days and
nights during which they are frequently stirred, they are taken to the
nearest exchange point, bleached and put forth into final shape for the
market.
A very important factor in the success of almond production is the
honey-bee. Bee keepers shift their hives from orchard to orchard during
the blossoming period making a profit out of the honey and at the same
time charging a rental to the orchard owners. The bees, of course,
attend to the matter of interpollination.
In some sections, it is necessary to equip the orchards with smudge or
fire pots which are kept filled with crude oil and fired at the moment
the temperature goes down to below the freezing point during the
blossoming period. In one district these pots were this last year fired
again and again but after all the temperature went down to a point such
that a great part of the crop was lost. We are told that it is possible
to raise the temperature 26 to 34 degrees. It is tedious work and a
dirty job. The oil is placed in the pots in the daytime and the firing
usually takes place in the latter part of the night, very often after 5
o'clock in the morning.
We come now to the filbert industry. One of the reasons why filberts
were planted in the northwest was because the native hazels grow there
with great vigor. This picture shows a typical stool of the native hazel
as it is commonly seen in the western parts of Oregon and Washington.
Not infrequently it attains a height of 30 or 35 feet and when trained
to single stems, the trees not infrequently develop trunk diameters of
from 6 to 8 inches.
The Mr. Vollertsen of the Northwest is Mr. A. A. Quarnberg of Vancouver,
Washington. In 1893 Mr. Quarnberg read an article by the late Professor
H. E. Van Deman in which the latter urged the experimental planting of
the filbert in the Northwest. Mr. Quarnberg ordered two trees of the Du
Chilly variety from Mr. Felix Gillett, a Frenchman and then proprietor
of the Barren Hill Nurseries, Nevada City, California. These were
planted in February of 1894 and are believed to have been the first
trees of that variety shipped to the Northwest. They are so close
together that they are considerably crowded but still they have done
fairly well, bearing in some years as much as 45 pounds together.
This is a view of the first filbert orchard planted in the Northwest. It
consists of three hundred trees mainly of the Barcelona and Du Chilly
varieties obtained from Mr. Gillett in January of 1901 by Mr. Quarnberg
and planted by him for a neighbor, Mr. John E. Norelius.
In this connection, it is interesting to note that the Barcelona variety
had already become fairly well established in the Northwest when Mr.
Quarnberg first introduced the Du Chilly to that section. The picture
before you is of one of the oldest Barcelona trees that has come to my
personal attention. It shows a tree in Portland measuring 45 inches in
circumference one foot above ground. It is perhaps the largest filbert
tree in the United States. When visited during the past September, the
limbs were bending down with nuts and an estimate was made that it would
have from 50 to 70 pounds of mature nuts.
The tree before us was another Barcelona of good size. In 1919 it
matured a crop of 45 pounds of nuts. However, unfortunately it was
caught by the cold spell already referred to and the tree about half
killed. It stands in a low place in an orchard of some fifty trees and
was one of the most seriously affected.
Returning to the East, we have before us a picture of an Italian Red
filbert tree in the orchard of Messrs. Vollertsen and McGlennon north of
Rochester, New York. It is a young tree not over two years old. Each
terminal has a cluster of nuts. Mr. Vollertsen is observing it closely
and thus far regards it favorably.
Mr. J. G. Rush of West Willow, Pennsylvania has brought out a native
hazel which offers considerable promise to nut planters. It is a
remarkably prolific variety and the nuts are both large and
thin-shelled. This picture illustrates something of its heavy bearing
tendency.
We come now to the black walnut. One of the first varieties propagated
was the Thomas. This picture is one of several hundred grafted trees of
that variety owned by Mr. E. A. Riehl of Godfrey, Illinois. As here
shown, they are very prolific and these hundred trees grown mainly on
hillsides and untillable lands are furnishing Mr. Riehl with a very fair
income. On the whole, the Thomas is a good variety. It cracks much
better than does the average black walnut but still there are some
others which are a shade better in the matter of cracking quality. The
picture before you shows the parent tree of the variety first known as
Rush but later changed to Herman in order to avoid confusion of names
with the Rush Persian walnut. This variety has been propagated to some
extent but according to recent accounts, the parent tree has been cut
down. The tree now before you is the parent of a well known variety, the
Stabler. It is situated in Montgomery County, Maryland, some 20 miles
from the city of Washington. Reports have it that this tree bore 30
bushels of nuts in one mythical year, but the present owner states that
the maximum yield of any year since he has known the tree has been 10 or
11 bushels of hulled nuts. The variety is being propagated by several
nurserymen and trees are available for planting.
Another variety now being propagated by the nurserymen is the Ohio, the
parent tree of which is some 20 or 30 miles out of Toledo in the state
after which it was named. This picture, (showing seven nuts) illustrates
a remarkable tendency on the part of young grafted trees to bear at an
early age. This tree in the nursery of Mr. Jones of Lancaster, Pa., was
grafted in May and photographed in September one year following. Of
course early bearing is not wholly desirable but in a way it will refute
the common belief that black walnuts are necessarily tardy in coming
into bearing.
Col. J. C. Cooper, McMinnville, Oregon, President of the Western Walnut
Growers Association has on his home grounds two black walnut trees grown
from nuts obtained in the East which were 6 years old when this picture
was taken. Each of these trees which you will notice are from 20 to 30
feet high bore approximately a peck of nuts during the year when
photographed.
The native butternut is a species which has been quite neglected by our
horticulturists but through the efforts of Mr. Bixby, a few varieties
have been brought out and are now being propagated by the nurserymen. In
spite of its thick shell, the flavor of the butternut is preferred by
many people to that of any other nut on the market. It is our most hardy
species of nut tree. It grows as far north as Maine and Nova Scotia. Two
or three recognized varieties are being propagated. Probably those which
will soonest be available for dissemination to the public are the Aiken
from New Hampshire and the Deming from Connecticut.
One of our most decorative native trees is the American beech. As fine a
specimen as is often seen is this one not far from Easton, Maryland
photographed during the past summer. It is an enormous tree and very
productive. It is one of forty or fifty trees on the grounds of one of
the numerous large estates of Eastern Maryland and was planted, so we
are told, in 1830. The lady giving this information said that her mother
had the trees dug up in the forest by slaves and hauled to their present
location in ox carts. Now, ninety years later, they form a magnificent
avenue of trees. Fine crops of nuts are borne each year. The nuts are
small and most too tedious to extract from the shell to be useful for
human consumption, but they go a long way in the finishing off of the
turkeys and other poultry in the fall.
Another species of nut which is quite neglected is the Japanese walnut.
It has been on trial in this country for perhaps fifty or seventy-five
years. It has indicated its adaptability to a wide range of the country;
it succeeds on a great variety of soils and it is both hardy and early
to come into bearing. It has this disadvantage, however,—the nuts are
small; but in flavor the kernals can hardly be distinguished from those
of the butternut. Very often it forms a most attractive tree and it
should be used to a much greater extent than it is on home lawns.
In Michigan, hickory and black walnut trees have been used along the
highways as avenue trees for a considerable period. In Pennsylvania
occasionally the Persian walnut is used as an avenue tree. One of the
beauty spots along the roadway of Lancaster County is this stretch of
roadway under the spreading branches of Persian walnut trees. Senator
McNary of Oregon thought so well of the beauty of the filbert that he
induced his brother to plant several trees on his lawn in the city of
Salem. It is no exageration to say that there are no prettier trees in
the city then are these before you.
To a considerable extent, nut raising is being combined with the poultry
industry in the Northwest. The poultry raisers claim that some kind of
trees are essential to furnish shade in the poultry yards. They say that
fruit trees are not desirable for the reason that at harvest time the
chickens not only pick and ruin the fruit but themselves get internal
disorders. Nut trees, they argue, fit in very well, as the chickens
cannot hurt the nuts nor the nuts the chickens. Furthermore, the trees
in chicken parks salvage a great deal from the chicken manure which
would otherwise be lost. The use of nut trees in this way is a practice
which it would seem could well be introduced to good advantage in the
eastern states.
Among the ornamentals, it is difficult to imagine a species which could
more effectively be used than the pecan. The picture before you was
taken of a comparatively young tree perhaps 30 or 40 years old on the
home grounds of a private citizen near Easton, Maryland at practically
our own latitude. It is a most beautiful tree.
Rightly used, the black walnut is also one of our most effective species
in the landscape. The picture before you is of a tree 51 years old. It
stands in front of the home residence of a sister to United States
Senator Charles L. McNary of Salem, Oregon. When photographed, this tree
measured 10 feet, 6 inches in girth at breast height. It would be hard
to imagine a more noble and graceful nut.
Along the roadways of California, we not uncommonly find the native
black walnut used as an avenue tree. It is very refreshing and cooling
on a hot day to drive under trees of the sort illustrated in the picture
before you. This avenue of trees is along the Lincoln Highway less than
a mile west of the University grounds at Davis.
The President: The next speaker on the program will be presented by Dr.
Morris.
Dr. Morris: They say that a biographer unconsciously writes his
autobiography. That is not tautology. Some one writing of the late Frank
N. Mayer said: "The plant hunter and explorer is the unsung Columbus of
horticulture." Our next speaker was the one who wrote that in Mr.
Meyer's biography. We all recognize it as autobiography. Emerson tells
us that every successful institution is the lengthened shadow of one
man. There were heroes before Agamemnon and botanists before Dr.
Fairchild, but with the beginning of the new century there came into
existence the development of a new idea, that of exploration in foreign
countries for the purpose of bringing to us their valuable plant
products. It was one of those things which we may say makes the whole
world kin because the economists tell us that basically the food supply
is fundamental to all subsequent human activities. Dr. Fairchild
organized the machinery of exploration for purposes of introduction into
this country of valuable plants from foreign lands. There is perhaps at
the present time no one who serves better as peace maker than does the
one who gives the world more food. From the economist's standpoint the
food supply subtends all advances in civilization. Now the hour is late
and we all know what Dr. Fairchild has done. Any remarks on my part are
made because they belongs to the form of polite procedure rather than
because of need for telling of things which Dr. Fairchild has
accomplished.
Dr. Fairchild: Ladies and Gentlemen of the Northern Nut Growers
Association. When I face men and women who are doing things in
agriculture I feel a peculiar degree of embarrassment. I do not know why
but I suppose it is because what I have done, what little I have done in
bringing in these new things, has never enabled me to get to the bottom
of any of the things that I have brought in. In other words I feel that
I am in the presence of a number of men who know down to the very
smallest minutiae the business that they are engaged in. Now I do not
know these minutiae about plants. I wish I did. There is nothing more
fascinating in the world than to take one crop and learn to know it
"down to the ground." It is coming to be one of the greatest things in
the imagination of man, this grappling with the fundamental problems of
agriculture which are wrapped up in the varieties of the plants that we
grow. I have had a very severe education in that matter of varieties and
I want to congratulate you as a body of men and women who are
individually going to find out what these best varieties are.
I suppose that the talk that Mr. Reed and I had in a bamboo grove out in
Chico., California, when we were trying to find out uses for the bamboo
and Reed said: "Well, the pecan and almond growers want to knock the
nuts off their trees with these bamboo poles," is what led up to this
talk, and I want to thank Mr. Reed for the opportunity to show slides of
a few of the new plants which we are working on in the Department of
Agriculture.
We brought in so many of them, (47,000 different kinds) in these 22
years that the office of Plant Introduction has been in operation that
Mr. Reed suggested that the nut growers would like to have thrown on the
screen pictures of the nuts of foreign countries. I said that we did not
have any. Then I began to dig into our own literature, project reports,
experimenters cards, correspondence and the other recording machinery
that we have and I found that we had a good many. I want to make it
perfectly plain to you that what I am going to do tonight is simply to
open a door and show you the possibilities of some of these foreign
nuts. There are a great many more that we have not succeeded in landing
on the shores of America, and if any one of you will come to my office
on 13th and F streets I will throw all the correspondence and
photographs on the table and let you look through it.
It has been said that the Department's work is badly organized. Yes, it
is badly organized. But I do not know how you are going to very well
organize with a small body of men a group of projects every one of which
is a life job for a man, especially when you cannot get the men, and
when you do get them they do not stay on the job for life. So there is
the great difficulty. Mr. Littlepage has hit the nail on the head. The
Department of Agriculture is not well organized but it is not an easy
thing to organize experimental work on at least 150 different kinds of
industries with the money and the men we have. The fact that the
investigations require the men to be on the land close to their work and
that we are all in city buildings, is a great handicap. We have scarcely
a tree or shrub or plant of any kind that bears on our work within two
or three miles of the Department of Agriculture building. We need the
land. We need a great many more men, and we need more money.
I landed in Greece in 1901. In Athens I saw them selling on the streets
these pistache nuts which I opened with my fingers. The kernels are a
brilliant green. I had never seem them before. I had heard of them. They
were sold around the streets by the Greek peddlers and called
pistachios. The pistache or pistachio industry is one which I wish some
young, energetic man of seventy would take up. I say 70 because it
requires a young man of seventy to take up one of these nut industries,
the boys of 26 are too old. Some young fellow of seventy should go into
the pistache industry and find out what there is in it and develop it
into a great industry. The American Consul in Palestine told me six or
eight years ago that there was no plant culture in all Palestine that
paid so well as a pistache orchard. Trees have been known to yield as
much as 40 to 50 dollars apiece. The Grecian pistaches are different
from those of Tunis and Algeria and others of the Mediterranean
countries. There are a good many different varieties.
This picture shows a piece of praline made of pistaches. This is sold on
the streets of Athens and compares very favorably with our pralines made
in New Orleans from the kernel of the pecan.
Mr. Chisholm, who was connected with the Consulate in Athens and who
spoke Greek very well, took me out and showed me what these pistache
trees looked like and when I found this miscellaneous lot of grafted
pistache trees I made an arrangement to purchase the whole collection
and send it to this country. I had great difficulty in getting the
American Consul in Piraeus to help me ship them. I could not wait
indefinitely and it took a good while to have them dug and packed. I
asked him if he would send them and he said he was very busy. I told him
this was a matter which concerned the people of the United States and if
he did not have time to do it I would telegraph to the Secretary of
Agriculture and tell him that the Consul in Athens was too busy to ship
these plants. Finally he consented to ship them and this was the first
shipment of grafted pistache trees to arrive in America. They were badly
grafted, badly packed and badly prepared and I think only one of this
whole collection survived and is now growing in the Gallespie grounds at
Montecito, California.
Mr. Kearney ought to be here tonight and Mr. Swingle and Dr. Rixford.
These three men have given more attention to the pistache than I have.
Mr. Kearney was studying the date palm industry of Southern Tunis and in
connection with it he made a study of the pistache industry of the
desert region of the coast of Tunis. This picture represents an Arab
standing beside an old pistache tree that probably is forty or fifty
years of age. It represents the pistache in its winter dress. They are
deciduous trees. They plant one male tree to about twenty females. We
have had a great real of difficulty in propagating these pistache trees.
We have five different species of stock on which to grow them, and we
ought to learn all the best varieties in the world. But unfortunately
some of the best varieties in Sicily are infested with a moth which lays
its eggs in the twigs just below the leaf scar and it is impossible for
the entomologist to detect these eggs without destroying the buds. That
apparently trivial circumstance has made it impossible for us to get
these cuttings in from Sicily without sending a trained horticulturist
there for them. We never have had the money to send a man there who
could do it, a man who had had the necessary experience. As a
consequence we have not as big a collection of these pistache varieties
as we ought to have.
These men in the photograph are getting the scions for Mr. Kearney, and
I am glad to say that these particular scions which they cut are now
growing in California. Mr. Kearney also on this same trip visited the
Duke de Bronte estate on the slopes of Mount Etna. It was an estate
bequeathed by the King of Italy to Lord Nelson, who was made the Duke de
Bronte and it is still the property of the Nelson family. Mr. Beck, who
was the manager for this estate and with whom we have had correspondence
for nearly 18 years, gave us perhaps more information than we have
gotten from any other foreign source on the cultivation of the pistache.
The Trabonella, which was one of the best commercial varieties, came
from the Bronte estate on the slopes of Mount Etna, where pistache
growing is a paying industry. In Europe the nuts are very largely used,
outside of the Mediterranean region for making the pistache ice cream
because of the green color in the seed itself, and in the Mediterranean
region both the yellow and green varieties as we are coming to use them
in this country, as table nuts. The highest price is paid for the green
pistache nuts which are used in ice creams and confectioneries. Here are
two Sicilian horticulturists, one of them holding a bundle of bud
sticks. This Trabonella variety is now growing in America. We have
collected pistache nuts from many parts of the world. A very interesting
man by the name of Jewett who became acquainted with the late Ameer of
Afghanistan procured for us the Afghanistan pistache. I got in
correspondence with him through the Consul in Calcutta. Through a
mistake made in sending some of this correspondence direct instead of to
Calcutta it nearly cost him his life. I did not know the conditions
there and asked Jewett in my letter what the possibilities were of
sending an Agricultural explorer there. The letter fell into the hands
of the Ameer and aroused his suspicions. Jewett was one of the two
English speaking persons at that time in the country. One Sunday morning
my door bell rang, and Jewett came to my house in Connecticut Avenue
with two big saddle bags filled with seed sent by the Ameer. This
collection of pistache seeds with its Afghanistan label composed part of
the collection of seeds. Very few of the seeds grew however and the
seedlings, which like many nut trees do not come true to seed, have not
produced any varieties of particular value.
A year ago I had the pleasure of making a motor tour through California.
I went to see Leonard Coats, one of those real pioneers of 65 or 70
years of age, who has perhaps done as much for California horticulture
as any other one nurseryman, and he took me up into his orchard on the
hill side overlooking his nursery where no drops of rain had fallen
between the months of March and October when I was there and where they
only have 22 inches of rainfall anyway, and I found growing there this
collection of pistache trees which we had sent him about ten years ago.
The nuts are borne towards the ends of the branches. The tree is able to
withstand any amount of drought and as I sat there and he told me how
prohibition had wiped out the vineyards of the surrounding country, how
the Italians had deserted them and gone back to Italy, I could not help
feeling that in this beginning on his hillsides we had the possibility
of covering those thousands of acres of hillsides which exist in
California today, from which the grape vines have been taken out, with a
nut crop of the very first importance. These little beginnings are
really the most interesting things in life. I read in the paper today
that this is the ninety-fourth anniversary of the first railroad in
America and my mind went back to a conversation I had with Edward
Everett Hale when he told me that his father was the first man to bring
over an English locomotive to America. What do you suppose was the
principal objection that the people had to railway exploitation in this
country? They could not see how two trains could pass each other on the
same track. So his father brought over from England a little model
switch and put it down in his parlor and took people in there and showed
them that two trains could pass if one ran off on a siding. That story
of Edward Everett Hale has helped me to understand why it is that most
people hesitate to go ahead into any new industry always seeing some
impossibility in its development. I could probably prove to you beyond a
shadow of a doubt that not a single one of these nut trees I am showing
you tonight could ever be made a success. Notwithstanding that they are
successful.
This is one of the Sfax varieties from Tunis growing in our plant
introduction gardens at Chico. We had to establish gardens where we
could grow these trees and send out the young plants to growers and in
these gardens we have test nurseries or test orchards as we call them
where we grow these fruits. This is an Assyrian variety brought in by
old Dr. Fuller who spent some time as a missionary in Asia Minor and
became convinced of the importance of the pistache industry, and has
been one of the pioneers in these small beginnings. This is a six years
old tree. This is 15 years old a seedling tree near Fresno. It has borne
a good many crops of fair sized pistache nuts as large as the
Trabonella, the Sfax, the Tunis and the Alleppo and those forms which
are going to be the real pistaches of the future in this country. The
pistache in fruit is a most interesting sight. The nuts are pinkish.
They have the pinkness of the peach, almost, without the fuz and they
are covered with a thin skin which is taken off usually with the
fingers. The nut inside has a texture that makes it very attractive.
When they are first gathered it is very difficult to crack them with the
fingers but if they are put in the oven and roasted they open up and
leave a little suture into which you put your thumb nails and pry the
ends open.
This picture gives you some idea of the yield of the pistache. It is a
fair yielder, as much as fifty pounds of nuts having been borne by eight
or nine year old trees. Ours have not done as well as that. The price of
course ranges like the price of all other nuts. They sold last year for
75 cents a pound here in Washington. The kernels sell for $1.50.
This gives you a good idea of the pistache fruit with its outer shell,
the nut and the green interior. If any of you are going to California
and do not like the idea of taking up hazel nuts, walnuts and pecans, if
you will take up this industry we will help you all we can. It will grow
in Arizona, New Mexico, and we have records of them growing in Arkansas.
They will stand a temperature below zero. Trees have been known to live
through several winters even in Southern Kansas.
In all these investigations we have found the stock problem is very
important. Here we have the Pistachia atlantica which has much smaller
seeds. It is this that we are using most commonly as a stock for the
pistaches that are being grown in California. Frank N. Meyer brought
back from China the seeds of the Chinese pistache, the hardiest of all
pistaches, a tree which has been almost hardy even as far north as
Washington and central Kansas. It is not only a nut tree but a
magnificent ornamental tree and grows to a very large size. We have used
it as an avenue tree leading to our plant introduction gardens in Chico
because it colors up so beautifully in the autumn and the spring. In the
spring the tips of these leaves and branches are a brilliant pink and in
the autumn it turns a gorgeous scarlet. It is destined to be one of the
best landscape trees of California in our opinion. It grows to be
centuries old.
Frank Meyer standing beside a tree which has stood three centuries at
least. Imagine what pleasure he would have had had he only lived to walk
under this great avenue in his old age.
The question of congeniality between the true pistache and the Chinese
pistache is shown here. We rather jumped to the conclusion, when we
found that the ordinary pistache overgrew the Chinese pistache, that
perhaps it was not so good a stock as we first thought, but I notice,
looking back at my photograph taken in Greece in 1901, that the regular
stocks used by the Greeks for the pistache are overgrown in the same way
by the true pistache. We have much larger trees than these now in Chico
and as the Chinese pistaches are very old and large trees we have come
to the conclusion that in all probability the pistache will be
successful on this Chinese stock.
I was walking through a market in Hong Kong in 1902 and I saw a few
bushels of nuts that I had never heard of or seen before. The nuts
looked like acorns but when I picked them up I found them as hard as
hickory nuts. I cracked one of them with a brick and it was almost as
hard to crack as a hickory nut. It was unmistakably an acorn, I thought,
and I bought a bushel of the nuts and sent them to this country. It is
called Pisania by botanists and it has many of the characteristics of an
acorn. The kernel of this nut comes out whole and for that reason it
would be very easily cracked by mechanical means. It has a sweetness
which does not suggest an acorn. It does not remind you of the acorn. It
is a commercial product in Southern China shipped down the West river
and it seemed to me well worth while trying to grow it in the United
States. We have had a great deal of trouble with it. We did not find the
right place for it at first. It was hardy here in Washington, even, for
a few seasons but the temperature at seventeen, eighteen and twenty
below zero finally killed it out. It is now growing down in Mississippi.
Here is a photograph sent me from Honkong, the only one I have of the
tree as it appears on the hills of Honkong. This tree which is now 11
feet tall on the place of Mr. Joe Williams at Langdon, Mississippi, is
one of the few that is now growing in the United States. There is one in
Southern California. It probably would be perfectly hardy along the Gulf
coast. Just how good a bearer it is going to prove I do not know but it
is very interesting even to register the fact that the plant is
established in the Southern States.
The Macadamia ternifolia, or Queensland nut, is not quite so well
known in Queensland as I thought it was. A very brilliant young man from
Australia, by the name of Johnston, passed through my office the other
day and I showed him the photograph of the Macadamia and to my chagrin
he did not know much about it, although he was a very good botanist and
a very keen man. He said "We do not pay much attention to these things
over there." That is really characteristic of many of the foreign plants
that we have brought in. They are not developed in their own countries
any more than some of the fruits which we have in this country are not
developed by us. Mr. Littlepage and I are going out in a day or two to
see if we can find some larger papaws. Now the papaw has been just as
badly neglected by the Americans as the Macadamia by the Australians and
it may be that the only way to get the papaw developed is to send it to
some other country and get them to develop it. We do not always develop
our own possibilities.
This is a tree grown in Avon Park, Florida. It interests me very much
because it looks as if it would be a good bearer, is suited to the sandy
lands of southern and central Florida, seems to be quite hardy and is a
beautiful nut. It will vie with any other edible nut that I know of.
This tree is in the Royal Palm Gardens in Palm Beach. The trees were
brought in by us about 1905 or 1906.
This is a tree in Cuba where it is perfectly at home.
This gives you an idea of the character of the nut in a bunch. This is
the nut. The shells when opened are as attractive as anything I know of.
This is a very thick walled variety. We have much thinner walled forms
that have come from Hawaii where it is now being grown. The dark part is
a maroon brown and the lighter part is a brilliant creamy yellow.
Altogether it is an extremely attractive nut, an excellent eating nut
and has very good food qualities. We have had them analyzed, and all the
data are at the disposal of you gentlemen at any time you wish to
consult our files.
One of the first pieces of foreign work I was asked to do for the
government was to get and import the hard-shelled almonds of Spain. Most
of you have eaten the Jordan almond and I imagine most of you think it
comes from California, but there are very few Jordans grown in
California and, so far as the investigations go which I have been able
to make in California in co-operation with the candy manufacturers, I
have discovered that the California growers are not growing the best
almond in the world. That the IXL and the Nonpareil and other almonds
are not considered sufficiently good for such men as Lowney to use in
the manufacture of their almond candies was a surprise to me. And the
reason? In the first place the skin of the kernel itself is too thick,
the nut is too brittle and it has not the flavor of the imported nut. I
was shocked the other day to read from cover to cover a bulletin on the
subject of Almonds, and to find that not one word was said of flavor. It
had to be a good cracker; but the marketable qualities did not take into
consideration the question of the flavor of the kernel, its hardness or
the thickness of skin.
This picture on the screen was taken in southeastern Spain. These are
the almond crackers of Spain and a poorer lot of people I have never
visited in my life. The little children, not over four years old,
instead of playing as ours play, carry around with them in their hands
little bundles of wheat straw which they braid with their hands as they
play, making sombreros which are shipped to the Argentine. It is a very
poor country where these grow. The soil Is very thin and very dry and
these almond trees grow on the hillsides. It was with an unpleasant
feeling that I took these cuttings from southeastern Spain, and brought
them to America. I got them from the trees that were bearing these
almonds, they were budded in California and we know where the trees are
growing in California from these buds.
This is a view in one of these hillside plantations of southeastern
Spain with two of the almond growers.
This is a view in the plains region near Valencia showing both the hard
shelled almonds and the soft shelled ones. The soft shelled are those
which are easily cracked with the fingers while the hard shelled have to
be broken with a hammer or an instrument. It is these hard shelled
almonds that we have been interested in getting.
I have not kept in touch with this almond situation as I would have if I
had been a specialist on almonds instead of spreading my energies out
over the whole field and it is time someone really got into the almond
business. I once traveled fifty miles from Bobadilla, Spain to the next
railway station between solid walls of seedling almonds in bloom. No
American has ever been to these seedling orchards to see what they are.
It should be possible to find in those rows that are now 25 years old
late flowering varieties which would be adapted to the conditions in
California or early flowering varieties which would cross pollinate the
Jordan almond. But we have not had the extra man with which to do this
and carry out the other things we have been obliged to do. The
interesting thing about this Jordan almond is that it behaves
differently in our country than it does over in Spain. You notice how
smooth each one of these almonds is. There is no sharp keel on the
Spanish grown Jordan almond at all. It is smooth all around. Here are
the almonds grown in California from the scions which I brought in. You
see how these "keels" are developed and the nut has also become more
pointed. We have not had an opportunity to investigate this thing
thoroughly, but I am convinced that this is an environmental effect. Dr.
W. A. Taylor has suggested that the fact that the Jordan flowers before
any other variety comes out may mean that the California nuts are the
result of self fertilization and this self fertilization may be the
cause of their different shape and texture. Either that or the bud wood
which I brought over from Spain was not representative of the Jordan
variety although I picked it from trees that were bearing these nuts and
I saw the nuts and they were typical. Of course it is possible that on
the bud stocks which I brought over there was this hereditary tendency
to produce these keels. However, we have made importations of the Jordan
almond since then with the same result. One of these was grown in
California in the desert region and one in Niles where John Rock, the
great pioneer horticulturist of California, had his orchards. Both of
them behaved in the same way. I sent some of the best kernels from these
imported Jordan almonds to Mr. Lowney, the candy manufacturer who
imports large quantities of Jordan almonds from Spain, and he reported
that he could not use them for his candy manufacture because they were
too hard and the skin too tough.
One of the most interesting experiences of my life was in 1903 when I
visited a French barber in a little town called Nevada City, California,
in the foothills of the Sierras. He had come over to this country
without a penny and had set up a barber shop in this little mining
village of Nevada City. He had saved from his fees for cutting people's
hair and shaving them, $3,000. He had bought a piece of barren hillside
which everybody laughed at him for buying; and he sent an order for
$2,500 worth of nut trees and fruit trees to a nursery firm in his old
home in France. He did this without even having an irrigating system
with which to irrigate those plants when they arrived. He told me with
tears in his eyes how he had worked night and day, carrying buckets of
water to save this collection of plants when it arrived from France.
When I visited Felix Gillett in his plantation there, which he called
the Barren Hill Nursery, I felt that I had never seen a more
delightful spot in my life. It was a kind of a paradise which he had
built up by his love for plants and his wonderful knowledge of the
varieties which he handled. He certainly was one of the great experts of
this country in the nut and fruit industry, particularly the nut
industry. It is his collection of hazelnuts which Mr. Reed spoke of as
having found its way into Mr. Quarnburg's hands. In fact I was at Mr.
Quarnburg's place a year ago last summer and learned that he got his
first start from this little French barber in the mountains of Nevada.
This is Felix Gillett standing beside the first Jordan almond tree in
America. The difficulty with the Jordan tree in this section was that it
flowered too early and too few crops were produced. We have tried a
good many sections for the almond and one of the problems, in my
opinion, is the development of stocks for it. Here is the IXL on one of
Meyer's Chinese stocks (Amygdalus davidiana). It does very well on
this stock in the region of San Antonio, Texas. But the future of this
almond business ought to have been told you by Meyer after he came back
from his trip in Western China. These bushes are of the Tangutian
almond, a little bush almond; growing occasionally 15 or 18 or 20 feet
in height and hardy. It was Meyer's plan, had he lived, to find some
place in Southwest Colorado in which to breed hardy almonds that would
cover those hillsides with a food producing plant. I believe had he
lived he would have done that for we have gotten together already for
the breeders a number of forms of great promise. Mr. Wight of the Office
of Pomological Investigations is now in California doing breeding work,
and I hope his life will be spared so that he can produce a practical
bush almond. My object in throwing this photograph on the screen is to
show you a hillside covered with a food producing plant which has never
yet received the attention of human beings, and yet if studied might
lead to the production of an entirely new type of almond which will
probably grow as far north as the Dakotas.
Jumping from the Dakotas to Florida I want to introduce to you the
Candle Nut or Kukui nut of the Hawaiian Islands which is growing in the
sandy regions of the tropical belt of Florida. If you will read the
literature you will find that it is referred to as a cathartic,
resembling in this respect the castor bean. The problem is whether the
candle nut as grown in Florida is poisonous or not. Prof. Simpson is
growing in his yard in Florida a tree of this Kukui nut and has eaten
these nuts for years, and he just sent me a couple quarts of them from
his tree and I have tried them on my friends with no injurious results
whatever. The thing to look out for is this fetish, this superstition of
poison. This is a very hard-shelled nut, very oily and resembles
somewhat the Brazil nut. If a market can be made for it, and there does
not seem to be any reason why there cannot, there is no reason that they
cannot be grown and they will be grown in southern Florida. That country
which in 1898 was a wilderness is now developing very rapidly as a
region of homes and what they want is plants that they can grow down
there that they can live upon.
On the left is one of these trees which has a good many nuts on it. It
is in Miami, Florida. This is a branch of one of these Kukui nuts in
Miami.
This is probably the least known of any of the nuts. It is the Yeheb
nut. It belongs to the order of Leguminosae and they tell us it is so
sweet, having between 21 and 22 per cent of sugar, that the native Arab
will desert his dates and rich diet, which is the ordinary diet of that
region, and take to the Yeheb whenever it comes into fruit. This Yeheb
shrub grows in the deserts of Italian Somaliland and ought to succeed in
our southwestern country. During the war there was attached to the
Italian Embassy the Italian Explorer Captain Vanutelli, who had the
distinction of having been captured by a savage chief in Abyssinia and
bound for over two months to a black Abyssinian slave. When I spoke to
him about this Yeheb nut he said, "Yes, I have eaten it. It is a
wonderful nut. Some day I will get you some of it." When the shipment
came there were two tons of nuts and I was a little surprised to say the
least. They were brought on camel back over the deserts. During the war
they took eight or nine months to get to Washington and when they
arrived they were all dead. Notwithstanding many attempts this nut is
not grown in the United States but we will have it. It is very
thin-shelled, the kernels come out whole and have a very sweet, delicate
flavor.
You have just come from Dr. Van Fleet's chestnuts. You know that this is
the Chinese chestnut (Castanea mollissima) which Meyer found in China.
Dr. Van Fleet would probably tell you this is not the way to prune them
if you want to increase the chances of these Chinese chestnuts
withstanding the bark disease. You are probably familiar with the fact
that Meyer discovered over in China on this species the original
chestnut bark disease which has destroyed our chestnuts in this country.
He found that this variety was highly resistant but not entirely immune
to the disease. Dr. Galloway, who is handling the propagation and
distribution of these Chinese chestnuts, for our office, wishes to have
it understood that in the distribution of these which we will make in
the spring we desire to have them sent out in blocks; we would rather
not distribute these Chinese chestnuts in single specimens but would be
very glad to consider offers from people who have a quarter or a half of
an acre that they want to plant. We want to get some idea of the
behavior of this species as an orchard crop.
This illustrates the way, as I understand it, that Dr. Van Fleet thinks
the trees should be treated, on the left; the way they should not be
treated on the right. They seem to be much more susceptible to the
disease when pruned up in this neat orchard fashion.
One of Meyer's photographs taken at Fanshan, northeast of Pekin, where
he found the chestnut bark disease. This is the way the trees appeared.
This gives you some idea of the size of Chinese chestnuts which he got.
Those back on the hills are all Chinese chestnuts on rather poor soil as
he explains in his description of the photographs.
This is an orchard of Chinese chestnuts as planted by the Chinese on the
richer soils of the low lands which show larger trees. Even when full
sized they do not compare with our American chestnut but are old enough
to show you that they have not been killed by this bark disease.
These trees show signs of the disease but that they have a high degree
of resistance is apparently beyond dispute. This shows the black scar
near the top which Meyer diagnoses as the remains of the chestnut bark
disease.
The scar there in the crotch of this chestnut tree indicates the degree
of resistance of this species. Just how it is going to behave here in
America no one can tell but that it would be possible to grow orchards
of these Chinese chestnuts with the care which you exercise in growing
pears or even peaches I think is a pretty safe guess.
Meyer remarks that this tree is probably a century old and with signs of
this disease on it. Here is one that he marks as between two and three
centuries old.
This, gentlemen, is the newest arrival in this country coming from East
Africa near Zanzibar. In Curtis's magazine there is published an account
of this nut after Mr. Playfair a British subject who had lived on the
island of Zanzibar. This is one of the most curious and most interesting
nuts that has been brought to our attention.
It is borne by a climbing vine the stem of which sometimes reaches six
or seven inches in diameter. The fruit is between two and one-half and
three feet long and eight inches in diameter, and bears between 250 and
264 of these large seeds about the size of chestnuts and with a delicate
flavored. In 1884 this Mr. Playfair sent some of these nuts to England,
but we have just discovered them so to speak. They will probably grow in
our tropical possessions and we must not overlook the fact that after
all there is a distinct drift in our agriculture towards the development
of that part of the globe which has been so overlooked by
horticulturists in the past. It is not at all impossible that some of
you who are here in this audience today will buy that Playfairia on the
markets.
I thank you very much indeed for your attention.
The President: The hour is late. What Dr. Kellogg may have to say I know
will interest you all greatly but it might better be said tomorrow when
we are fresh and the attendance will probably be larger than it is this
evening. If there is nothing further to come before the meeting tonight
we will take a recess until 9:30 in the morning.
The convention adjourned until 9:30 a. m. Friday, October 8.
Morning Session Friday October 8, 1920
The session was called to order by President Linton at 10 o'clock.
The President: I wish first to beg the pardon of the membership of the
Association for the little time that I have been able to give to the
preparation of this particular paper. To illustrate how limited that
time has been, starting from Michigan prior to our meeting yesterday I
had less than twenty-four hours to get to Washington. It was necessary
that I should call a meeting together at a little town in Michigan where
the regular train did not stop. In order to get that train it was
necessary to send a man to buy a ticket to that particular point and as
he climbed off that train I climbed on. The conductor thought we should
be held up for a conspiracy for stopping a train of that character. On
reaching Detroit there were a few minutes between trains. After landing
in Buffalo I found that there were fifteen minutes to make connections,
and after getting on that train I found our good Brother Pomeroy aboard
and he had some fine drinks and other things from his home farm so that
it was really the midnight hour before I could commence on this
document.
