I'd like then to follow that up to give you the average yields. Before I give you these average yields I'd also like to bring out this fact about the Calhoun and the Millwood honeylocust. Those trees are very peculiar in their habits of bearing. One year they will bear a heavy crop. The next year they will bear scarcely anything. They are definitely alternate bearing, and I think that alternate bearing has a physiological background behind it. How We can eliminate that physiological reaction is something else. But the years that the trees are heavily loaded with the fruit the amount of carbohydrates that it draws from the tree is so great that the tree doesn't have enough carbohydrates left to produce fruit the next year. I think it is the carbon-nitrogen ratio from the physiological standpoint, and, of course, if that is the case, then there is a possibility that you could eliminate or correct that carbon-nitrogen ratio by thinning during the blooming period. But when you see these results I think that you will agree that honeylocust has a place, even if they do bear only every other year.
In our planting we have some trees that will bear this year. Next year they won't bear, but their sister trees will bear. So we have pods every year from some of the trees. Over a period of five years, during which these trees were planted (the oldest trees that we have in 1938, and in 1942) the average production of the Millwood was 58.3 pounds per tree. In 1943 there were no pods produced on the Millwood variety. We had a cold spell in the spring that completely eradicated all of the fruit in that year. In 1944 the average yield—and that is taking the average yield of 10 trees of the oldest ones that were put in—the average yield was 146 pounds of pods per tree.
Mr. McDaniel: That's for both varieties?
Mr. Moore: That's just for Millwood. I will give you the Calhoun in a minute.
Then in 1945 the average yield was 39.5 pounds per tree. In 1946 we had an average of 180 pounds per tree. In 1947 we had an average of 12 pounds. Now, note the break there in averages from year to year: 58, none, 146, 39, 180, 12. You get from that that we have almost definitely alternate bearing in those trees.
Now, this other thing is interesting. If you take the five-year average from 1942 through 1946 inclusive, and convert that to 35 trees—this is 10 trees—but when you convert that to an average of 35 trees per acre you get the equivalent of 92 bushels of oats per acre. Now, understand, with this yield of pods we were cutting two and a half tons of hay from the Lespedeza sericea each year. So we were getting our hay crop and our grain crop from the same source.
Now, to give you just briefly what the Calhoun variety did during those years, in 1942 the Calhoun trees—the same age planted under the same conditions on the same soil—averaged 26.4 pounds of pods per tree. In 1943 the Calhoun followed closely with the Millwood; on account of a freeze they didn't produce anything. In 1944 they produced 32.4 pounds of pods per tree. In 1945 they produced 63.8 pounds of pods per tree. In 1946 they produced 22 pounds of pods per tree, and in 1947 they produced 46 pounds of pods per tree.
Now, if you will take the average of those, contrast it with the average for the Millwood, you will find that the Millwood tree over a period of five years produced almost three times as many pods as the Calhoun. The Calhoun variety has a little more carbohydrates, and it always averages a little more sugar per pound than the Millwood, but the additional yield of the Millwood variety makes it very worthwhile.
I have done quite a bit of work on the blooming habits or the fruiting habits of the honeylocust over a number of years, and I find that there is quite a variation there in the individual trees. Some trees are typically males. They never bear anything, but they have staminate catkins. Others are typically females, never bearing anything but the pistillate flowers. Then we have an integration there of perfect trees. I know of one tree in Blount County, Alabama that for nine years never missed a crop. It had perfect flowers, or rather, both pistillate and staminate flowers on the same tree. However, the flowers were borne on separate catkins, the pistillate flowers, catkins, coming out on the same node with the male and producing the pod. So you do have a large variation in the fruiting habits, and we have found those variations on Millwood selections and on Calhoun selections, even though they were vegetatively propagated.
The reason why we can take a bud off a female Millwood and put it onto a root stock and get a male tree I can't figure out, but they seem to act that way in that respect. I have had a Millwood tree that never bore anything but male flowers.[18] That is something for someone else to figure out. I can't explain it.