J. F. Jones, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Pecans have been grown in the South for a good many years, and, with the advent of budded and grafted trees of superior varieties in more recent years, the industry made great strides and now that the product of some of these grafted orchards is coming on the market and selling readily at high prices, the economic value and importance of the pecan is becoming to be more fully appreciated.
The success of the pecan in the South, led some planters in the northern states to make experimental plantings of these southern varieties but they have proven disappointing, as might be expected, since our seasons are too short for the nuts to mature, even where the trees are hardy. I have seen the Stuart, one of the largest southern pecans, when grown in Lancaster and Adams Counties, Pa., not half as large as the Indiana sorts and with little or no kernel. The Schley, one of the finest southern pecans, when grown in Adams Co., Pa., is so small that no one would recognize it and it has no kernel at all.
In very recent years, largely through the efforts of a few progressive men in Indiana, fine varieties of the pecan have been discovered in Indiana and Kentucky, and these varieties are being propagated and planted over the northern states generally. While the discovery of these varieties and their propagation marked a big step forward in extending the cultural range of the pecan and making it possible to grow this nut several hundred miles north of the southern pecan belt, not unlike the southern varieties, the Indiana and Kentucky varieties are necessarily limited in their range of adaptability, and it is perhaps not safe to recommend them for planting, except possibly in the more favored localities, north of the 40th parallel and south thereof and possibly in the elevated or mountain sections they should not be recommended for planting north of latitude 38 degrees. The advantages of securing varieties for propagation therefore from as far north as possible is obvious.
I have examined a good many sample pecans from Missouri and Kansas, some of which are excellent, but, aside from possibly being a little hardier in tree, they have no advantage over the fine Indiana and Kentucky varieties that we already have, unless of course, they should be better adapted to planting in the western states.
In its natural range, the pecan is found growing farther north along the Mississippi River, in Iowa and Illinois, than anywhere else in the country, and naturally we turned to these pecan forests hoping to find a variety bearing nuts of a size and quality to merit propagation and dissemination north of the belt where it is safe to recommend the planting of the Indiana varieties. As a result of correspondence with an Iowa nurseryman in the fall of 1914, I engaged the services of a competent man to gather pecans for me at Muscatine, Iowa. Following my instructions, this man searched the woods in that locality to find what I wanted for propagation and as a result, nuts were sent me from several trees which were carefully marked so that in case scions were wanted from any of the trees, they would be readily identified. This man seemed to be very enthusiastic about the nuts he sent me, and, as he had made a business of gathering pecans, and he knew the pecans in that section well, I felt that he had sent me the best that he had there. None of the pecans sent had sufficient size and merit to propagate however, and I gave the matter up. Fortunately, Mr. G. H. Corsan, Toronto, Canada, was endeavoring the same fall or winter to get pecans to grow trees that would succeed in Canada and he bought pecans from a dealer in Burlington, Iowa. Upon receiving this lot of nuts, Mr. Corsan was astonished at their large size, as he expected that pecans from the northern limit of the pecan to be of small size. Thinking that this party had sent him southern pecans, Mr. Corsan wrote him at once that he did not want southern pecans, explaining that he wanted them for planting. This party replied that the nuts sent him were genuine Iowa pecans. Knowing my interest in the matter, Mr. Corsan wrote me during the spring of 1915, giving me the facts in the case and urged that I go to Burlington the next fall and look up a variety for propagation. Fall came on, but with it, so much to do and with short help, due to war conditions, that I had to give up the trip, but, at Mr. Corsan's suggestion, I took the matter up with Mr. Ed. G. Marquardt, Burlington, Iowa, with the result that the matter was placed in his hands, with the assurance from Mr. Marquardt that he would do the very best he could for us. Mr. Marquardt employed a man who had made a business of gathering pecans there and who knew the trees bearing the largest nuts, and with the help of this man, finally located a tree 20 miles north of Burlington bearing very large pecans of thin shell and splendid quality. Although most of the nuts had been gathered, the husks on the ground indicated it had been bearing good crops. This tree was marked and some of the nuts sent to me. These pecans I considered remarkably fine for so far north. They were fully as large as the Indiana, with even a thinner shell and a full kernel of excellent quality. With the help of Mr. Marquardt, scions were secured from this tree the following spring, and grafting proved very successful, which we consider very fortunate, as this land was cleared during the war and this tree met the fate of others, being turned into lumber and it is no more.
This variety has been given Mr. Marquardt's name. Coming from 20 miles north of Burlington, Iowa, in north latitude 41 degrees, I shall expect the Marquardt to succeed any where south of the Great Lakes. The Indiana and Busseron pecans originated farther north than any others of the Indiana group, the original trees of which are growing in the Wabash River bottom, west of Oaktown, Ind., about 10 miles south of latitude 39. Most of the Indiana and Kentucky varieties are from latitude 38 degrees, or approximately 200 miles south of where the Marquardt originated. The climate of Iowa is also considerably colder than is the same latitude farther east, due to the more open character of the country west and to the influence of the Great Lakes farther east. The pecans there are not only necessarily hardier, but have to mature their fruit in a shorter season, which is all important in a variety for northern planting, as it has been shown that the pecan is hardy in tree considerably north of where it will mature its fruit properly. Realizing the importance of the Iowa pecans for northern planting and realizing the building of the big power dam on the Mississippi River at Keokuk, Iowa, and the consequent raising of the water level for considerable distance up the river together with building of levees and clearing of the forests, threatened the destruction of many of the pecan trees and pecan forests, Mr. Bixby spent nearly a week during the past fall in the pecan forests and groves along the Mississippi River around Clinton, Ia., and Burlington, Ia. The facts of the following paragraphs (except the last two) I have taken from his notes:
These pecan trees at Clinton, Iowa, are the most northerly growing of the native pecans so far discovered. They are on the islands in the river and on the bottom lands, where the land at low water is only a few feet above the water level, and at high water, several feet under water. The trees certainly are not suffering from lack of moisture. The soil is alluvial, seemingly of unknown depths and must be very fertile, enriched as it is by the deposits left by the high waters each year, or sometimes, several times a year. No pecan trees under six inches in diameter were seen here, and they ranged from that size up to 24 inches in trunk diameter 85 feet tall. No trees bearing large pecan nuts were seen, although the flavor of the kernels of practically all of the trees was good. Crops of nuts were irregular and seemingly not so good as they were some years. None of the trees near Clinton were deemed worthy of propagation.
The pecans at Burlington are growing under similar conditions to those at Clinton, but they are much more numerous, there being thousands of them, some being larger than any seen at Clinton. Four trees, including the Marquardt, have been discovered and brought to the attention of the association by Mr. Ed. G. Marquardt and Mr. John H. Witte of Burlington. Cuts of these nuts, natural size, are shown opposite page 48. The Marquardt is being propagated by me and the other three varieties by Snyder Bros., Center Point, Iowa.
From the appearance of the leaves, buds and habit of growth of the Marquardt pecan, it seemed to me that the tree had hickory blood in it, although the nut did not suggest it; and I intended to look into this matter fully, on a trip to Iowa the past fall, but finding I could not go, I gave Mr. Bixby samples of the nuts, leaves and twigs and told him what I expected, and he had this in mind during his trip. He never found young pecan trees growing in the woods but did find them growing in large numbers on the levees and on the edges of cultivated fields. A careful examination showed a very considerable variation in leaf, bud and habit of growth and there seemed little question but that there were among them many hybrids between the pecan and the big bottom shellbark, Carya laciniosa, which is found growing on the bottom lands and the islands along with the pecan. As a matter of fact, two of the four Iowa pecans selected for propagation, the Burlington and the Greenbay, show unmistakable evidence of hybrid parentage in the nut, in the leaves and buds. The Marquardt gives no hint of such parentage in the nut, but the leaves and buds do suggest that it has hickory blood in its make up, and it is believed that this is so. The Witte is seemingly a pure pecan.
There has recently been much done near Burlington in reclaiming valuable, cultivatable lands from the river which formerly overflowed them each year so that people were afraid to plant crops and they were therefore abandoned to the forests. Levees have recently been built to keep the water off these lands in time of high water. Drainage ditches have been made behind them and pumping plants put in to pump the water out of them. The cost of these improvements, which has given to cultivation much very fertile land, has been assessed on the owners of the lands benefited, as is also the upkeep expense. Many owners had not the money to pay the assessments and have sold the land to those who are clearing off the timber. This means the clearing of thousands of acres of bottom land and the pecan is one of the principle trees on these bottom lands. This condition makes it necessary to locate and propagate at once, the best and most promising of these Iowa pecans and hybrids and observe their behavior afterwards in the young trees, instead of depending on the watching of the behavior of the original trees as has been the case in Indiana.
I feel reluctant to close this address without mentioning the good work done by Secretaries Deming and Bixby and other members of this Association in searching for varieties of nuts that may be superior to what we already have. Those of us who are propagating these trees, while we may feel the inspiration that comes from doing a work that benefits mankind, nevertheless, we hope and expect to make dollars and cents out of growing these trees, while this is not the case with some of the members of this Association who are not nurserymen and who do not expect to enter this field.
Dr. Deming, former Secretary of this Association, did much good work and secured some fine nuts worthy of propagation, through advertising and the offering of premiums, and Mr. Bixby, who very kindly took up this work when Dr. Deming was called to the colors, has been active and is doing a great work for northern nut culture.
President Reed: We will now have a grafting demonstration by Mr. Jones.
Mr. Jones had brought with him specimens of stock, scions and all the materials and tools needed for the demonstration, and performed the various operations of grafting and budding before the audience.
Mr. Jones: We often use scions half or three-fourths of an inch in diameter, for grafting, but they are rather hard to get. In top working, we generally take limbs two to four inches in diameter, cut them off, and split the bark. The nut grafting must all be done late when the sap is up in the trees. Cut the scions all on one side. Split the bark, slip in the scion, tie up and wax the whole scion over with grafting wax, put it on hot and seal it up tight. Sometimes for winter protection of the English walnut as far north as Michigan your tip might kill back because it grows so very fast and is sappy. I have never
Pecans from Burlington, Ia
had trees kill in that way, but I do have many people write me that they have trees killed in that way. In nursery grafting, we usually use just the cleft method. You should cut the cleft on one side and don't split it, but keep it smooth all the way through.
President Reed: You get better results, Mr. Jones, from waxing the entire scion?
Mr. Jones: Yes, we get better results that way. In the South we have no success at all that way; we have to cover them with sacks.
Voice: About what degree of heat is best for the wax?
Mr. Jones: Don't have it too hot and it can't burn. You can tell that by the wax smoking.
President Reed: As long as the wax does not smoke, it is pretty safe.
Mr. Jones: This illustrates what we call a side graft. Put the scion in the side and leave the top on. You can also do it in bark grafting. Cut your bark, split it, and stick your scion straight down as it is here.
Voice: How do you apply the hot wax?
Mr. Jones: With a swab or brush. We use a carbon heater and that makes it about the right temperature.
Voice: How large black walnut trees could be top worked to English walnuts?
Mr. Jones: You can work almost any sized tree, but it is quite a job in the large tree. Take a tree larger than six inches in diameter, or eight, and it would not be very satisfactory. In cutting the scions be careful to make a straight surface on the cut bevel. To do that the knife should be held at an angle lengthwise to the scion. In our grafting in the South we leave the scion dry and cover it with a bag. That was in Florida.
Dr. Morris: That is a very interesting question about the limits of our using the method of covering the scion and all with the wax. I shall speak of that in my own grafting demonstration which is short. I got the point from Mr. Jones, and Mr. Jones tells me he got it from Mr. Riehl. They use black wax and hard, strong wax.
Mr. Jones: Mr. Riehl uses a liquid wax, resin and beeswax without the coloring matter. We use the coloring matter to toughen the wax.
Dr. Morris: Still, that is amber. Amber will cut out light, and it seems to me that it is a matter of a good deal of consequence, the black or amber wax covering the graft completely, buds and all, wound, scion, stock. It succeeds in the North, succeeds better than any other method in grafting, and yet in the South it does not succeed. It is possible that as you get further south the longer sun, the hotter sun scalds the cambium layer of bark beneath when it would not do so in the North. That is at least worth thinking about. In my own work during the past year I have used transparent paraffin alone, nothing else. I have tried different kinds of paraffin, the Parowax, the common one that the women put up preserves with is the one that will stay on best, will not crack and is perfectly transparent, allowing the light of the sun to act upon the chlorophyl, in the bark and the bud and intensify the activity of that part of the plant that depends upon light transformation by means of chlorophyl. I am very much interested to know if this will not succeed in the South. Paraffin would not attract the heat of the sun, and it is possible that this will allow us to carry the method of Mr. Jones, the best method to date, still farther south.
Mr. Jones: I think, Doctor, it is a matter of heat, because in the shade you can graft them almost any way. Do you cover the scion with paraffin or only the union?
Dr. Morris: I cover the entire thing with paraffin, scions, buds and all including the wrapping. I don't leave anything exposed to the air. There are several principles involved there. In the first place you have the effect of light upon chlorophyl which is important; in the second place, the melted paraffin fills all interstices in which sap would collect and ferment. If those interstices are filled with melted paraffin, sap will not collect there and ferment. The microbes of bacterial and fungus origin, that prevent union and break down the products of repair that are thrown out for the purpose of repair, can not do it if they can not collect in quantity, and the paraffin fills the space in which they would collect in quantity; so that does away with another one of the dangers. In the third place, you have the same sap tension maintained in the scion as in the stock. The difference between the negative and positive pressures, day and night, is very great in spring time, and as the sap responds between day and night in the stock, it puts a strain upon the scion. The scion can not follow the stock with its sap movement ordinarily. But if scion and stock are covered completely with paraffin, the tension remains the same, so that you do away with the shock of varying negative and positive pressures. That is an important point, it seems to me, in principle in the matter of using the paraffin. Another point is this. You prevent evaporation from scion that goes on ordinarily through the little breathing lenticels, the little apertures between the cells of the bark which allow moisture to escape as well as to enter. One would naturally believe the paraffin would fill these and smother the scion, and I presume it is that fear which has prevented the world from trying this for the past ten thousand years, because they were skilful grafters in Egypt, both in the tree world and the financial world, in the days of Hammurabi there were skilful grafters in both worlds two or three thousand years before Christ. I suppose that fear of closing the breathing apertures in the stock has prevented people from adopting this method; but it is not justified, because those bold, brave nurserymen who are not afraid to smother a scion find that all the scions live. It is a venture into the unknown, that dramatic book, in the way of dramatically constructive progress. Another point: When you protect your graft in the ordinary way with ordinary wrapping, ordinary wax, the scion becomes timid, the stock becomes timid. It is not quite sure of itself in many cases, and when it is not sure of itself, when it has a fear, what does it do? It resorts to the protection method. What is the first? Suberization, cork layer formation. So the frightened stock throws cork cells over its cut surface between that and the graft, and the suberization goes on as a result of fear on the part of the timid stock. When you have taken away the fear by covering the whole area with melted paraffin and it feels safe, then suberization does not go on in this way, your stock is not frightened, you have not a scared tree at all, and it will go on kindly and gently as a Jersey heifer to do its work.
President Reed: I would like to ask Dr. Morris about that myself. I am very much interested in the line of grafting, as we graft 50,000 to 100,000 every spring, using this same method. I feel as Mr. Jones does, that the losses from grafting are largely due to heat and the fermentation of sap. We find perhaps, that the first week of grafting in cherry, we can almost invariably secure a fairly good stand. Following that it tapers as the warmth and air increase, although the scions are kept in cold storage, perfectly dormant, the sap is coming up, and the increased rays of the sun—we get a very small percentage, and it seems to become less every day, and we have always used the dark wax. While I have been using paraffin wax a good deal of the time, I put lampblack in it for coloring.
Dr. Morris: I have until this year. In order to get Mr. Jones' points, I tried to work out the philosophy of the subject and see what values there are, what meanings in the methods which led to his success. Then following that line of investigation, I stopped into another line of observation, and arrived at the transparent paraffin method, so that this is the first year in which I have tried it, but the results are perfectly remarkable. I have only done it for a year, but you will see 100% of catches on almost everything, hickories, walnuts, hazels. I must tell you of one very remarkable incident. Mrs. Morris had some dwarf trees set out on the slope of the lawn, dwarf pear trees. One of my men cut one of them off with a lawn mower the latter part of August. The top kicked around under foot for three or four days, wilted in the sun. We were walking past it along in August. I think Mr. Bixby said, "Why don't you try grafting on that kind of material?" I said, "I will, blessed if I don't." So I cut three pear scions from this wilted top that had been cut by the lawnmower in August, and I put them on a scrub pear tree under the fence near the house. And I tried this paraffin method, and in about six days one of them started out a shoot, and I said to one of my men, "We will transplant this. This is no place for it." I meant in the spring, or in a year or so. He transplanted it the next day. And it grew I think about half an inch after that, made good wood to last through the winter. So I don't know what the limitations of this paraffin method are. But that is a thing I would hardly dare tell about unless there were men here in this room who had seen it. That little pear top, cut off by mistake, kicked about under foot a few days in August, no sort of scion that any one would ever think of using as a graft, put it in as a joke, and with the further abuse of being transplanted; but it started growth, and now it is going to be a good pear tree.
Mr. Jones: The kicking around only made it good for grafting.
President Reed: Perhaps it ripened up to a certain extent by that drying out, like it would in the fall.
Dr. Morris: Maybe, but I have never heard of horticulturists propagating trees in that way and transplanting them in the same year, and having the new wood from the graft harden for the winter.
Mr. Jones: Mr. Reed spoke of grafting a cherry. You cut the top off didn't you?
President Reed: Yes.
Mr. Jones: We graft filberts by leaving the top on and cut the graft in on the side and wax it over. We leave it there two weeks, maybe, and cut it off, and we get perfect stands that way, and you would on the cherry.
President Reed: We use the side grafting, but we cut the top off.
Mr. Vollertsen: I would like to ask Dr. Morris with regard to the stock. Don't you think the fact that that tree was moved at the time it was, so soon after grafting, had something to do with the retarding of the sap and causing the tree to mature the wood it did in place of making more growth?
Dr. Morris: That might be. All of the expert horticultural opinions brought to bear on this are valuable. Every suggestion that has been made has had a meaning. It requires explanation.
President Reed: If there is nothing further along that line, we have with us Mr. Conrad Vollertsen, of Rochester, who has been asked to prepare a paper; and we would like to hear from him. He is an expert in the filbert, and I believe can give us some valuable information. (Applause).