DAVIS, shagbark—First prize winner in the New York and New England Contest of 1934. Incidentally, a sample of Fox nuts was awarded tenth place in this same contest. You will note that this was the same year in which Fox won first place in the N.N.G.A.
Davis has pretty well lived up to expectations. Grafts of this variety are rapid growers. It is the only variety we have ever succeeded in making live on pignut stocks. While the grafts are slower growing on pignut stocks, they have lived for several years and have borne nuts. But as the squirrels have stolen all of the nuts, we do not know how they compare with the nuts grown on other stocks.
Our grafts of Davis have borne well, the nuts are of good size and crack well, although not as well as those of Wilcox. It is also of very good quality. We consider it to be a top rate nut.
PECK HYBRID, shagbark x bitternut—The nuts of this variety are large, thin shelled, crack well and are of good quality. It also bears well. The drawback is that only about one third to one half of the nuts are well filled. I can take freshly shucked nuts of this variety and by placing them in water can pick out a sample of nuts that are just about as good hickory nuts as you can find anywhere, but these will be only about one third of the nuts involved. For this reason we have never propagated it for sale.
In tenth place we have three varieties; Berger, Strever, and Triplett.
BERGER, shellbark—While this variety is quite small for a shellbark, it is quite large when compared with the shagbarks. Our graft of the Berger has borne fairly well, cracks well and is of very good quality. Incidentally our graft is the true Berger. There was some mix-up with the Berger wood, and some who thought they had Berger found that they had something else when their trees started to bear.
STREVER, shagbark—The original tree of this variety is growing near Pine Plains here in Dutchess County, on the Old Strever Homestead. This property was later sold to people named Owre, who tried to have the variety named after them. I believe that Strever is the more proper name.
While this variety is of good size and quality, it has not cracked quite well enough to rate it as a top flight hickory.
TRIPLETT, shagbark—This is a large shagbark which cracks well and is of good quality. Our graft bears well. I believe that it was discovered by Dr. Deming and the late Mr. Beeman. This is a variety which can well bear considerable attention in the future. We are propagating some of the trees for sale.
In eleventh place we have nine varieties, namely: Bridgewater, Griffin,
Hagen, Harman, Kirtland, Lingenfelter, Manahan, Oliver, and Wampler.