DR. MCKAY: Yes, we find in those seedlings in some cases the tendency to vegetate very early and others very late. The most striking case that I know is an F-1 hybrid which is a very, very late starter in the spring. It is perfectly dormant when the other young walnuts are in practically full leaf. We do not have any offspring from that particular one yet, but it gives us some hope that from this hybrid we may get something later.
MR. BECKER: With us I don't think this early vegetation means anything. We are in Michigan. Dark, cold weather continues until about the middle of May, when frost ends, and then all of a sudden spring breaks loose, everything comes out, and we don't have any setback, as a rule, from then on. So early vegetation matters little, means nothing, the way I feel about it.
DR. CRANE: Mr. Moderator, you ought to point out that most of the United States isn't Michigan. If we had climatic conditions that Michigan has, we wouldn't have that problem, but this problem becomes much more acute, for example, as you go south.
The north knows nothing about cold injury, absolutely nothing. If you want to see cold injury, you go south. I told Dr. George Potter that twelve years ago. He was born and raised in Wisconsin and spent 17 years in the mountains of New Hampshire. I told him he never saw any winter injury, and he said, "Why, I never heard such a wild statement in my life." Well, that was because of the fact he had never seen it. He has been in the South now for 12 years, and he says, "You made a very truthful statement." He has seen the injury.
In Oregon in 1950 or '51 we had a fall freeze. The temperature was measured by the Experiment Station in Eastern Oregon, where they are trying to grow some fruit and nut trees so they will have something else to eat besides sage brush. They had extensive plantings of walnuts, Mayette, Franquette and all of those hardy varieties, and along with them they had some Carpathians. The temperature there in the fall dropped to 36 degrees below zero, and all of their walnuts of these other strains were killed to the ground, but the Carpathian came through uninjured. In the spring of the year however it warmed up, the Carpathians leafed out and were about ready to bloom when there was a sharp freeze, and the Carpathians sure got it in the neck. So what difference does it make whether you lose the trees in the winter or you lose them in the spring? You have lost them just the same. I think we ought to hear Spencer Chase cite the history of their big collection of Carpathians in Tennessee Valley Authority. I understand from him that they have never fruited any Carpathians down there at all. It's not winter hardiness, it's this early foliation. So we have got a lot of areas that are vastly different from that peninsula in Michigan which the Good Lord designed to make a favored country in a lot of respects.
DR. MCKAY: I recognize Mr. Devitt, who is here from Canada and is well qualified to discuss Reverend Crath's work there.
MR. DEVITT: It is interesting to me to hear of this early budding and late fruiting. Along the north shore of Lake Ontario and down through the Niagara Peninsula our climate is quite consistent. There was only one year when we had a late frost—it was on May 19th. That was in the year 1936. Every other year since they have bloomed every year.
MR. STOKE: I'd like to speak of a tree Mr. Crath sent me. The tree was bearing in Toronto 20 years ago. With me it winter kills sometime in the winter each year, I don't know when. In some years it has been killed back to 5-year-old wood, and this spring I found it was all dead. This tree comes out of dormancy as soon as the sun gets warm. It's hardy in Toronto but not hardy in Virginia.
DR. MCKAY: I think you can all see why this problem is one of the most acute ones we have to deal with today. This variation over the country in the behavior of this so-called hardy strain of walnut is of great interest now to people everywhere. People are believing that it can be grown, and there are still problems we have not solved. I would like to have just a brief statement from Spencer Chase on the performance of Carpathian varieties at Norris, Tennessee.
MR. CHASE: We reported this, I think, at our Beltsville meeting several years ago. Trees we had at Norris are Carpathian types secured from the Wisconsin Horticultural Society about 1940. After two years in the nursery they were planted, and last year, 1952, was the first year that they bore any nuts. But that was simply because we did not have a late frost last year. This year, they were all frosted again. So we have, in the South, from Virginia and Tennessee to a little farther southward, a problem of early vegetation of English walnuts. We should encourage everyone to watch for any late vegetating kinds for trial in the South.