Persian Walnuts
In the spring of 1938 I planted a number of Crath Persian walnut seedlings. Out of possibly eight or ten, only two survive. (I gave each one about three years, and if it showed serious winter injury, I pulled it up.) I was pleasantly surprised the other day to discover that one of them has borne a single nut this year. This particular tree is at least 300' from any other Persian walnut, so it looks as if it were self-fertile. It now remains to be seen whether or not the nut will ripen.
In the spring of 1940, I planted a Broadview Persian walnut graft on black walnut stock, and this tree is bearing for the first time with eighteen nuts showing. Three or four years ago this Broadview suffered some winter damage by a split trunk and split lower branch. I painted over the cracks with gasket cement, and they are now healed. The Broadview has also shown some winter-kill of terminal twigs, but not enough to affect its bearing this year. There has been no splitting of the trunks or branches of the two surviving Crath Persian walnut trees and no winter injury to terminal twigs. The Crath walnut trees are now 18" in circumference a foot from the ground and about 12 to 15' tall. The Broadview on the black walnut stock has a circumference of 16" above the graft and 15ΒΌ" below the graft, tending to show that the Broadview grows faster than the black walnut.
It is interesting to note that the Broadview blooms a week or ten days later than the Crath Persian walnut, and at the same time as the native butternut.