Notes on Persian Walnuts in England
SARGENT WELLMAN, Topsfield, Massachusetts
MR. WELLMAN: Members of the Association: I was fortunate enough to be in England last summer, and I agreed that I would say a few words about nut growing there. What I am really going to do is largely to read you a few things from some articles that I found there.
I was very much impressed with the little interest that there is in nut growing in England, and I was very much surprised at it. Of course, you all know that the walnut grows there. The chestnut grows there. There are some fine, marvelous trees in Kew Gardens, of course, that I saw, and if you read the English poets, you will remember how they talk about chestnut blossoms on chestnut trees, but curiously enough, there is now very little interest.
MR. McDANIEL. When they speak of the blossom, they speak of the horsechestnut, do they not?
MR. WELLMAN: Not always, but there are pink flowered horsechestnuts in France, particularly, whole avenues of pink ones. The cob nut, as they call the filbert, is very common there, grown in hedges. One year when I was in England previously I brought home a few in my pocket, and I have a seedling which grew from one of those, which is comparable to the filberts I have, but apparently there is no interest in that, so far as I can see—I mean, any investigation and any experimentation and encouragement of its planting. But there is about the walnut. That's the one nut tree in which they are interested.
I picked up two reports, both of them made by Elizabeth M. Glenn, who is the woman connected with the East Malling Station down in Kent and is the one person who is doing more with walnut work than anybody else, as far as I could find out. Unfortunately, the day I was there she was on vacation, so I couldn't see her, but they were very kind to me and took me around and showed me everything.
As you know, the East Malling Station is the place where they have done all that work with apple root stocks. This one is a reprint from the annual report for the East Malling Station for 1946. And then "The Men of the Trees," which is a forestry society there which some of you may have heard of, have reprinted in the Autumn, 1949, number another article by Elizabeth Glenn on "The Selection and Propagation of Walnuts." And I think if I make a few comments and read a few things from these, you will be interested.
She says, "The earliest record of a walnut tree in England is 1562, but remains of walnut shells have been found in Roman villas, and it is probable that the Romans planted some nuts and raised trees in this country."
She says, "There is a large tree of it"—black walnut—"at Kew, near the entrance to the Rock Garden." Of course there are some rootstocks, and they are all specimen trees, but they are not used for nuts. She says somewhere here, "In this country the nuts are of little value, although in America they are used for confectionery purposes."