Mr. Endicott was interested, not only in the commercial side of horticulture but was a pioneer in scientific work. He originated the Endicott plum and other valuable fruits and, since he was interested in plant improvement, naturally turned to hybridization of the chestnut, a tree which grows readily in southern Illinois. In 1899 he crossed the Japanese chestnut (Castanea japonica) with pollen from the American Sweet (C. americana). He must have had some difficulty in crossing the species because they did not bloom at exactly the same time. He was, however, successful in securing five hybrid seeds, raising three trees from them, naming them the Blair, the Boone and the Riehl. Naturally there were differences in the characteristics of these trees though they were all vigorous and produced nuts of commercial value. The Blair and Riehl began to bear at four and five years respectively, while the Boone bore its first crop at seventeen months of age. The Boone is the most valuable since it matures fruit of good quality about two days earlier than the Blair and two weeks before the Riehl. It also retains the burr and drops the nuts free at the beginning of the season so that about half the nuts can be picked up before the burrs fall.
Mr. Endicott was so pleased with the results of the cross that he raised over 175 seedlings from the Boone tree. From these second generation hybrids he secured trees very uneven in growth and size with a great range in time of coming into bearing. The nuts differed widely in size, quality, and season of ripening. The character of the burr showed all gradations between the extremes of thickness, length, rigidity of spines, etc. These striking variations in the second generation trees show that many hereditary factors had been segregated and recombined and offer a most interesting opportunity for scientific study. I have visited the orchard several times.
Mr. Endicott died in 1914 but his son Robert has since cared for the trees which have brought him considerable revenue. He tells me that he secures about 160 pounds of nuts per year from each of the three original trees. At an average price of thirty-five cents a pound wholesale the crop from each tree is worth $56.05 per year. Since the chestnut blooms late it is pretty certain to escape spring frosts. The Blair, for example, has had a crop failure once only since beginning to bear.
(Displays photographs of the Japanese and American chestnuts and the
Boone tree).
Mr. Endicott is top working some of the worthless second generation trees with wood from the Boone tree.
(Displays photographs showing method of grafting).
I have had the good fortune to visit Mr. Riehl several times and have secured many representative nuts from his collection. While he has grown a large number of nut species and varieties he believes that the chestnut pays the best in southern Illinois. He plants them on rough and hilly land, difficult to cultivate, pasturing with sheep, and has had very good success. He does not worry about the chestnut blight, since the chestnut is not native here and there is such a great distance between the blight ridden East and Illinois.
Mr. Buckman was an amateur horticulturist, in the work for the love of it. On his land he had nearly two thousand varieties of apples and hundreds of varieties of peaches, plums, pears, cherries, grapes, small fruits, and nuts collected from all over the world. I was much interested to study the fine pecan and chestnut trees growing and producing good crops as well as the persimmon and papaw trees, of which he had a number of rare varieties. I was able last spring to secure cuttings of a number of rather rare papaw varieties which I sent to Doctor Zimmerman for propagation at the request of Doctor Fairchild.
Mr. Buckman recently died and there is now a movement on foot to secure, either through the University or the Horticultural Society, as far as possible, all the valuable data which he had been collecting for years.
There are several other men interested in nuts as a commercial proposition in Illinois, such as O. H. Casper of Anna and Judge W. O. Potter of Marion. I recently visited these orchards. Mr. Casper has mostly pecans and walnuts growing in sod. They are from six to eight years old and would have borne this season if weather conditions had been favorable.