The people who knew Carpathian English walnut trees in Galicia agree that in Ontario the Carpathians grow more slowly than they do in their native land.
It is not in Ontario, but on the University Farm at Madison, Wisconsin, one of our Carpathian trees is nearly 40 feet tall and bearing. In Galicia I had seen many a Carpathian walnut tree as high as 60 feet.
Polish Government Interested in My Activity
During the time of my activities, in the town of Kessiv, there used to live a famous physician, Dr. Tarnawski. Outside of his clinics he was much interested in the welfare of the country. My activities could not be hidden from his sight. "What does that "American" see in our nuts? Are there in America no nuts?" he asked. Soon I was introduced to him. It was in the fall of 1934. He was not well and in bed at that time. He liked to talk with me about the walnut culture and wished to know why I was collecting the nuts, scions and seedlings for Canada. And then it seemed to him impossible that there in Ontario and the northeastern states English walnuts were not yet cultivated. Then I turned his attention to the fact that in Poland they know little about their own trees. My challenge awoke him to activity, and through his intervention Starosta, the county governor, planted the first twenty-five acres with walnut seedlings along the south side of the highway leading from Kessiv to the town of Kooty.
Dr. Tarnawski wrote also an article to a horticultural magazine on
English walnuts on what he learned from me.
When in the fall of 1936 I was going back to my home in Toronto, Dr. Tarnawski wrote about me to the Department of Agriculture in Warsaw introducing me to the minister. I had an opportunity to give a talk on the Carpathian English walnuts in the presence of many horticulturists in the Government Experimental Farm at Skieerniewice near Warsaw.
Late in 1936 I came back to Canada and till the Second World War continued to cultivate the Carpathian walnuts and other horticultural material brought by me from Western Ukraine.
The Second War cut me off from my field in Europe.
A decade and a half has passed. The Carpathians have been acclimatized, have grown, and have been bearing nuts in Ontario. When such success has been achieved, it seems that there in Canada all the enterprise is forgotten. Of course, the Carpathian walnuts could not advertise themselves—they are "dumb critters."
In the States the situation with the Carpathians is entirely different.
Interest in them is growing steadily, and as I said previously the
American nurseries have already put the Carpathians on the broad market.