I have included among the specimens here today nuts of the ginkgo because that tree belongs among the conifers in natural order. It is an ancient tree which should not fit into this time and generation, but it has gone on down past the day when it belonged on earth. Its prehistoric enemies have died out, so the ginkgo tree has come rolling along down the centuries without enemies and at the same time with many peculiarities. Comparatively few of the trees are females, but the tree grows heartily in this latitude and one may graft male ginkgos in any quantity from some one female. The nut of this tree is rather too resinous to suit the American palate, but the Chinese and Japanese visitors to the Capitol grounds at Washington greedily collect the nuts from a bearing female tree growing there.
Most of the pine nuts have a resinous flavor, but as a class they are so rich and sweet that this is not disagreeable. The nuts of the single-leaf pine and our common piñon, Pinus edulis, are delicious when eaten out of hand and both of these trees are hardy in this latitude, but they do not grow as rapidly here as they do upon the arid mountains and under the conditions of their native habitat.
In Europe and Asia pine nuts for the market are cracked by machinery or by cheap hand labor, and I presume that we may eventually hull some of the smaller ones as buckwheat is hulled. If the contents of the smaller nuts are extracted by the Indian method of grinding them up with a little water and then subjecting them to pressure, the waste residue will probably be valuable for stock food of the future, very much as we now use oil cake.
When planting nuts of pine trees I would call the attention of horticulturists to one very important point. The nuts must be planted in ground that does not "heave" in the spring time when the frost goes out. Many of the pine nuts send down a rather slender root at first without many side rootlets, and when the frost opens the ground in the spring the young trees are thrown out and lost. Here is another point of practical importance. Do not plant pine seed where stock can get at the young shoots in March. The little gems look so bright and green, so fresh and attractive when the snow goes off that cows and sheep, deer, squirrels and field mice will all try to collect them. Young pines should be grown in half shade during their first two years. They will require weeding and nice attention on the part of a lover who wishes to be polite to them.
Question: Is there any difficulty in harvesting the crops, do the cones shed?
Answer: With some species the cones are shed before they are fully opened. They are collected and stored until the nuts can be beaten out. Other species retain the cones until the nuts have been shed. The branches are shaken and the nuts collected from tree to tree by the beaters and spread out upon the ground.
Sometimes coarse sheeting or matting is carried from tree to tree by the beaters and spread out upon the ground.
Question: At what age will they bear?
Answer: Pines bear rather late as a rule. I doubt if very many of them will bear in less than 10 years from seed.
Question: Would it be possible to produce grafted trees?