In the Willamette Valley of Western Oregon, the walnut has received a large amount of attention during recent years; its development there has made rapid strides, and in the better soils, the trees grow rapidly and ordinarily bear very well. The photograph before you was taken in February, 1920, in an orchard near Hillsboro. It was situated on low but rich land and I regret to say that it was practically wiped out of existence by an unusual cold spell occurring from the 12th to the 15th of December in 1919. During that spell, the temperatures went down in some points of the Willamette Valley to 24 degrees below zero. As nearly as could be told at the time the picture was taken the trees were all killed to the snowline which was from a foot and a half to two feet above ground. The owner has since reported that he cut the trees down to that line.
To some extent, the Persian walnut is grown in the eastern part of the United States. It was introduced here long before it was on the Atlantic Coast, but this side of the Rocky Mountains, it has nowhere become of great commercial importance. The photograph before you was taken in 1911. It shows a seedling orchard of twenty-three Persian walnut trees in Bucks County in the northwestern part of Pennsylvania. The orchard then appeared to be in first-class condition with no sign of winter-injury, but so far as we have been able to ascertain, the trees have never borne important crops of nuts.
This tree before us is the parent, or original tree of the Nebo variety from Southern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a variety first propagated by Messrs. Rush and Jones. It is one of the old historical trees of that section, and while the nut it produces is very good in many respects, for various reasons, the variety is no longer being propagated to great extent.
This is the parent Rush tree, another variety now not propagated as much as formerly, but one which, nevertheless, is a good sort and regarded as being well worthy of planting about the home grounds in sections of the eastern part of the country to which the species is adapted.
The Persian walnut is evidently quite at home from the eastern shore of Maryland up through Delaware and New Jersey to Long Island and lower Connecticut. From this strip west inland to well toward York and Harrisburg in Southern Pennsylvania, it is by no means uncommon. To some extent, it is grown in Western New York and close to Lake Erie in Northern Ohio. There are some trees in Eastern Michigan and a very few in what is known as the Niagara Peninsula of Ontario, but with few exceptions, the crops they bear are uncertain.
The tree before us is the parent of the Aurand variety named in honor of Mr. Geo. D. Aurand of Lewistown, Mifflin County, Pennsylvania. The gentleman in the foreground is Mr. Aurand in the act of examining a split in the bark caused by winter-injury. This trouble is fairly prevalent over a great part of the east.
Leaving the walnut industry for the time being, we will take a fleeting glance at the pecan industry. The greater part of our pecan crop comes from wild trees in the Southwest. The view before us is typical of Texas scenes especially in such towns as San Saba, Brownwood and others where nuts are brought from the country in wagon loads much the same as are cereals in the northern states. Pecan orchard development has taken place almost wholly in states east of the limits of the native range. In sections to which the pecan has been indigenous development has been very slow. The greatest and most extensive development of any section happens to be in Southwestern Georgia.
The view before us was taken in an orchard of Frotscher trees in Thomasville some 20 miles north of the Georgia-Florida state line. The trees were planted in 1905, set fifty feet apart, and last spring, because of crowding, the alternate trees were removed. The lower limbs had begun to die and the nuts from the lower branches had, for several years, been inferior in both size and filling quality.
The trees in the orchard before you were three years planted when photographed. This is an orchard in the Albany district of southwestern Georgia. It is in the immediate Albany district that more pecan planting has taken place than in any other one district of the whole South. It is possible to go from Albany in most any direction and to pass through orchards on both sides of the road with rows of pecan trees extending as far as the eye can see in each direction.
There is more or less, of a prevailing idea that the pecan is a California product but it is the exception rather than the rule to find thrifty and productive trees in that state. The tree before you is one which bore enough nuts during a recent year to bring $125 in the market, at 20 cents a pound.