In multiplying trees under artificial conditions, we remove the taproots, not only for convenience in transplanting, but also to hasten and increase the production of surface lateral roots, and more than this, we lessen the years of luxuriant sterility, securing earlier fruiting by such operations as root pruning and frequent transplanting.
Budding and Grafting.—I have never known of an instance of successful budding of the hickory, at least in the ordinary way during the summer months. What is called "annular budding" in early spring with buds of the previous season, is said to have been successfully practiced with the pecan at the South, but this mode of propagation is more of the nature of grafting than of what is usually understood as budding. But I have been unable to obtain any statistics in regard to the proportion of buds that any propagator or experimenter has made live by this or other modes of propagation. Col. Stuart says, in "The Pecan," p. 45, "There is a method known as 'annular budding,' which proves quite successful." He then proceeds to describe the operation, as given in all works on the propagation of trees and plants during the past hundred years or more, but not a word to indicate what he considers a "success,"—whether it be once or fifty times in a hundred, or if he ever succeeded in making an annular bud unite to the stock; I am more inclined to think that he never did, than otherwise.
In Bulletin No. 105, "Nut Culture for North Carolina," issued from the N. C. State Experiment Station, 1894, Mr. W. A. Taylor, Assistant Pomologist U. S. Department of Agriculture, in referring to budding and grafting of these trees, says: "These latter operations are less successful with the pecan than most fruit trees, though they are by no means impossible to accomplish. On seedlings one or two years old annular budding in early summer succeeds best." But here again we are left in doubt in regard to what the writer considers "a success." Then, again, the line between the "possible" and "impossible," in horticultural matters, is a rather difficult one to determine, and Mr. Taylor fails to cite a single instance in which either annular or any other form of either budding or grafting had been successfully practiced. The Bulletins issued from the Division of Pomology of the Department of Agriculture, give us no information whatever on this subject of propagation of the hickories, further than to repeat the old formulas of annular, splice and cleft grafting; but as to results they have always been provokingly silent.
Having been repeatedly assured, by men who presumed to know, that the pecan tree was successfully propagated in the South by grafting, and many thousands annually raised in this way, it seems strange that such plants are so rarely offered by nurserymen. Seedlings of choice varieties are, of course, abundant enough, but a man might, with as much propriety, offer seedling Bartlett pears or Baldwin apples, as pecan trees, expecting to perpetuate varieties. In corresponding with Mr. P. J. Berckmans, of the Fruitland Nurseries of Augusta, Ga., whose experience and acquaintance with the fruits of the South are, without doubt, in advance of any other horticulturist of the past or even the present generation, in reply to my request for information on grafting pecans, he writes: "For the past five or six years we have grafted various varieties of the pecan nuts. I do not know of any other nurseryman South who offers grafted trees. I presume the reason of this is, the great difficulty in having the grafts take, as we seldom have more than fifteen to twenty-five per cent. grow. We usually crown graft in February, using one-year-old seedlings grown in nursery rows. Owing to the small percentage of grafts which grow, grafted trees must, necessarily, be quite expensive, and for this reason there are so few attempts made in this method of propagation."
Mr. Berckmans makes no reference to annular budding of the pecan, so strongly and frequently recommended by the several writers already quoted, although I am certain that he is as familiar with this mode of propagation as any one else, and would have practiced it had he found it in any way superior to crown grafting. From all that I have been able to learn through a rather extended correspondence, in regard to the propagation of the pecan nut tree in the South, I conclude that they are occasionally and sparingly grafted, but with such indifferent results that they are not at all numerous in either orchards or nurseries.
From certain remarks of Col. Stuart, in his essay on "Pecan Culture," I infer that he has sold grafted trees, for he says:
"It costs no more to care for the grove of choice trees than of poor ones; then, again, the grafted or budded ones come into profitable bearing three years earlier than seedlings. Here is a case in point: Last November (1892) we paid, in cash, two hundred and forty-eight dollars for the nuts which grew upon one tree, the crop of one year. The tree is twenty inches through at its base, and forty-five feet high; such a size tree would grow in twenty or twenty-five years. Now small nuts from the same size tree will sell for not more than fifteen to twenty dollars. Another tree only ten years old bore thirteen and a half dollars worth. These choice nuts are such as we grow seedlings from; we sell a great many more seedlings than we do grafted or budded trees, simply because they are so much cheaper, and people in general do not realize that such a vast difference exists between the profits of seedling and grafted or budded trees; but such is the case, and such it will always remain for aught we can see."
Soon after I published the description of the Hales' Paper-shell hickory in 1870, requests for cions were received from nurserymen and many amateur horticulturists, who were anxious to try their skill in grafting this excellent variety. Mr. Hales generously responded, and sent cions to a large number of correspondents in various parts of the country, because he was desirous of having the variety preserved and propagated. During the following ten years the old original tree was kept pretty well pruned, in filling orders for cions; those sent to nurserymen were to be raised on shares, one-half of all the successfully grafted trees to be returned to Mr. Hales. Being a near neighbor, my opportunities for keeping informed as to the result of this arrangement was all that I could desire. To one nursery firm in central New York Mr. Hales sent about one thousand cions per annum for four successive years, and in return received just four feeble grafted plants as his share of the total product of the four thousand cions. But as the four plants received soon died, he closed that account as one of total loss. Previously, however, he had sent a quantity of cions to Mr. J. R. Trumpy, of the Kissena Nurseries, Flushing, N. Y., whose skill as a propagator of ligneous plants is probably second to that of no man in this country; the result proved that our faith in the man was not misplaced, for Mr. Hales received for his share of the experiment something over two dozen grafted trees, and most of these are now handsome specimens ten to twenty feet high. Just what percentage of the cions set were made to unite and grow I have not been informed, but the experiment was, doubtless, rather unsatisfactory as a commercial transaction.
In addition to the plants sent to Mr. Hales, there have been quite a number distributed among the customers of the nurseries named; consequently, we are pretty well assured of the perpetuation of this remarkably fine variety, even when the original tree succumbs to old age, or should it be accidentally destroyed. I am inclined to give Mr. Trumpy credit for being the first man to graft the shellbark hickory in this or any other country, and make the cions unite and grow, for I have failed to find any instance of success in this mode of propagating these trees, prior to his with the Hales' Paper-shell.
In reply to a note sent him a few months since, asking: "How did or do you graft the hickories?" he replied as follows: