(9) A group of common papaws (Asimina triloba), two of them grafted. The Journal of Heredity offered a prize of fifty dollars for the best American papaw, and the prize was awarded to the Ketter variety, the fruits of which weigh about one pound each. Seven little trees of this species were secured and two larger papaw trees grafted from cuttings when the seven were set out. Papaws grow well in this part of Connecticut, and because of the high quality of the fruit should be more largely planted.
(10) Mills persimmon. One of a group of several varieties that are being cultivated in this country. Hardy and thrifty in Connecticut.
(11) A group of Jeffrey bull pines (Pinus Jeffreyi) from Colorado. One of the nut pines. Supposed to do its best in the arid mountains of the West. Perfectly hardy and thrifty with beautiful bluish-green foliage in Connecticut.
(12) Himalayan white pine (Pinus excelsa). One of the nut pines and with remarkably handsome foliage.
(13) A group of Chinese pistache nut trees (Pistacia sinensis). At Merribrooke it has the habit of frequently growing twice in one year and sometimes three times in one year. The shoots will grow a foot or more and then make resting buts early in July. After about ten days of resting the buds burst, new shoots grow again and rest for the second time in the early part of September. If we have a warm moist fall the buds burst for the third time and make a third growth. This third growth winter-kills without injury to the tree, however. The significance of the growth presumably relates to the tree being an inhabitant of an arid country, where it has adapted itself to the rainfall of that country. I do not know if the trunk adds a new ring of wood after each resting period, but it likely enough does so.
(14) Moneymaker pecan. Perfectly hardy and thrifty. It has not borne as yet and there may be a question of the season being long enough for ripening the nut. At the left a Stuart pecan, that comes from the very borders of the Gulf of Mexico. Sometimes the smaller branches winter-kill badly and at other times they do not. It is remarkable that a tree from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico should live here at all in the winter.
(15) A field of six-year-old trees. Most of them the result of placing bitternut hickory pollen on staminate butternut flowers. The trees have not borne as yet and we can not tell if they are true hybrids or parthenogens. Parthenogenesis occurs readily with many nut trees. Pollen of an allied species which does not fuse with the female cell to make a gamete may, nevertheless, excite a female cell into division and the development of a tree. Such a tree would be expected to show intensified characteristics belonging to the parent. This lot of trees notable for the fact that some are very small for their age and some very large.
(16) A group of Japanese chestnuts. They blight and die and blight and live and are not given much attention as they are of little value anyway. The chestnut blight (Endothia parasitica) attacks the Japanese chestnut about as freely as it does the American chestnut. The trees do not die from it quite so quickly and may bear for some years before dying.
(17) A group of Japanese persimmons in a protected corner of a west-facing side hill. Most of the Japanese persimmons are not hardy in Connecticut, but an occasional variety given a moderate degree of protection will manage to live pretty well. They are uncertain trees, however, as two of the trees grafted to Bennett Japaneses persimmons from Newark, N. J., had two-year-old shoots winter-killed this year. These were on low ground. I shall put my other Bennetts on hill sides.
(18) American sweet chestnut grafted upon Japanese stock. Ordinarily Asiatic and American chestnuts do not make very satisfactory exchange stocks. In this case the American chestnut happens to be doing very well. The variety is known as the Merribrooke. Among the many thousands of chestnut trees here when I bought the place this one bore the best nut of all, very large and of high quality, and beautifully striped with alternate longitudinal stripes of dark and light chestnut color. The parent tree was one of the very first to go down with the blight ten years ago, and the standing dead trunk was removed at the time when I cut out five thousand dead or dying chestnut trees. Stump sprouts of the Merribrooke variety survived for grafting purposes, and I have now kept the variety going by patient grafting ever since, on new stocks, hoping to carry the variety along until this epidemic of blight runs out of its protoplasmic energy.