AFTERNOON EXCURSION OF THE NORTHERN NUT GROWERS' ASSOCIATION
October 7, 1920, 12:45
The members of the Northern Nut Growers' Association, in convention at Washington, D. C., October 7, 1920, made an excursion which included visits to the thirty-acre bearing northern pecan plantation of T. P. Littlepage; Dr. Walter Van Fleet's Government Station for the production of blight-resisting chestnuts and chickapins and other new hybrids, at Bell Experiment Plot, Glendale, Maryland; and the old Jefferson pecan trees at Marietta. The following notes were taken at points along the route:
Dr. Van Fleet: These are hybrids between the chinkapin and the Japan chestnut showing the blight even after thirteen years immunity. We do not do anything to check the disease at all.
There is a Japan variety said not to take it but you see how it affects it. It girdles it and the new wood builds it up. The tree is doomed. It is gone now but it has made a tremendous attempt to recovery. You see the new growth that has tried to come out there trying to bridge it and make it up. Of course even that is hopeful. In view of that we feel justified in breeding. The Chinese resist it much better. They take it more readily but they resist it far better. The efforts at self-bridging are quite successful.
This is one of the hybrids we have at Arlington. The parent tree got along for thirteen years without a sign of blight. By artificial inoculation we have given it the disease but it does not get it in the trunk. This is a Chinese chestnut seven years old and has had three crops. We took the most virulent virus and made a few inoculations and with absolutely no care the wound is closing up. The tree is apparently quite healthy. This is the Chinese Molissima, not of real good quality. These are only seven years old and have already borne three very good crops. The nuts are somewhat larger than the wild native and ripen about six weeks earlier.
There are 1,100 trees here and I think about a hundred have been killed outright and probably 75 per cent of them show infections but there are a few individuals that do not seem to get it. It seems almost impossible to inoculate them. We are letting the disease run its way purely through elimination. It is only those that can stand it through a series of years that are supposed to be worth anything at all.
Probably no species is immune from it; I do not think we can use the word "immunity" in connection with it.
The party then visited the old Jefferson place at Marietta, and viewed the immense pecan trees which were given to Judge Duval by Thomas Jefferson. Thence to Mr Littlepage's plantation.
Mr. Littlepage: These trees are set 100 by 120. The Butterick is a good grower. There is a great difference in the growth of the cultivated and the uncultivated ones. I would quit working about the first of August. The first of August here they are growing actively.