THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Bartlett, have you any remarks on the subject?
MR. BARTLETT: My experience has been very similar to that of Doctor Morris. I have visited possibly a hundred places and have seen hazels growing, some of which have probably been there seventy-five years. In talking with the people connected with the place I have often heard said, "Why, years ago we used to have hazels, a great many hazels here, picked maybe a bushel at a time, but the best varieties have died, and what we have left are worthless." Or perhaps, "There is only one bush left and we don't get any hazels now." Apparently the purple hazel is freer from blight than most of the other imported varieties. I have seen the blight in these places. I have seen branches from three to four inches in diameter that were attacked with blight and were still growing but were not fruiting very much. I know a very few places where hazels are grown within fifty miles of New York, and I know of some places where they are getting some nuts. But the general impression is that the European varieties will be attacked with blight and killed.
I have seen bushes that have been attacked by blight where the roots are alive but sending up very weak shoots. That is probably through neglect of stocks. Certain of those that I have raised, five or six years old, are absolutely free from blight. Most of the older trees that I have seen around have blight in some form or other.
MR. BIXBY: Doctor Morris' remark as to what Mr. Hicks says of giving up attempting to grow hazels because the blight would take them, seemed to me very appropriate in view of an observation I made on Mr. Hicks' place last fall. I found there a large hazel which was probably twenty-five feet high and bearing a fair crop of nuts. Mr. Hicks told me that he had brought that tree from Germany many years ago—I think it was over twenty years ago—and that that was the only one left out of a lot. Now if other European hazels had been killed there with the blight and this one was left there was apparently a blight-proof hazel in that lot.
I have seen a good many hazel bushes affected with blight, but I have not seen any since I went with Doctor Deming up to Bethel. I have seen no blight since then though I have looked for it whenever I have been where there were European hazels. I examined that tree in Mr. Hicks' nursery very carefully and found there was no evidence of blight. I feel as the other speakers do who have expressed themselves, that we have little to fear from the hazel blight; that if it does appear in the nurseries we can control it by cutting out the blighted portions.
MR. PIERCE: In northern Utah I have a number of bushes of the foreign and the American hazel and they are ten years old. So far I have not seen any evidence of blight.
I would like to ask a question. What form does this blight take, and is it deadly? In other words, will it kill the bush? Is it good to cut out the affected parts?
DOCTOR MORRIS: You find a depression of the bark over a small area, gradually increasing, and around the part that is depressed you will find a little swelling of the healthy part that is trying to grow over the blight area. This also contains the roots, if you can call them that, of the blight. You can recognize it everywhere on the hazel by the distinctly depressed area of bark, which should be cut out before it gets to be the size of a quarter.
In other cases the blight will encircle a small branch and cause a swelling instead of depression that looks very much like the swollen area around the depressed bark. There may be depression in the branch parts but the swelling blocks that so you can see only the swelling. These branches may be very easily removed, with as much ease as a boy would steal the nuts, so there is nothing to be feared on that score. If the blight is left uncared for it will kill some of the plants and it will not kill others. It will injure some also without killing them, so that we have to consider the question of what we call relative immunity. In the case quoted by Mr. Bixby we have a case of relative immunity of a hazel which has grown to be twenty-five feet high and bearing crops in the midst of the blight area on Long Island, while others have disappeared from the vicinity.
MR. BIXBY: I would say in connection with that hazel that Dr. Deming and I visited in Bethel that I took a blighted branch away with me and it was such an excellent example of a blighted area that I had a photograph made and it was printed in the Nut Journal.