REPORT FROM G. H. CORSAN
Location—Toronto.
Season—Winter, 1913-1914; Spring, 1914; Summer, 1914.
Type of season—November and December very mild. The ground was not frozen the least on January 1, 1914. January 12 the coldest day Toronto ever experienced 22° F. below zero. On February 12 it was 18° F. below zero. January, February and most of March very steady cold. Very little snow all winter, none on January 12.
Except those that I smothered by too much care the following seedlings lived through the winter and are alive today: Pecans; pinus edulis; pinus Koriensis; chestnuts; filberts; all the juglans including Californica and Canadian seed of regia; pawpaws; persimmons. My "mountain rose" peaches had not a twig winter killed though my Fitzgeralds, a very hardy peach, had some; this peach may not be as hardy as it is blown up to be. The season has been very dry and this summer many of the Paragon chestnuts died that were not watered. My Pomeroy walnuts are having a struggle to keep good form but I think that I will have a few hardy ones selected from them, as these last two winters have been the most trying on young trees we have ever had, of which fact I am glad. Here at Battle Creek are a dozen of Mr. W. C. Reed's grafted pecans; all are alive and growing strong as are mine in Toronto. I wrote you of the horrible abuse that mine had while in transit and they had a right to die but lived. Pecans grow very late into the fall and do not shed their leaves early so that I feel sure that the wood will harden sufficiently to stand the winter. The next question is, will the nut mature where grapes and peaches grow and just escape the October frosts. I saw many splendid pecans at Burlington, Iowa. Native pecans for seed stock can be procured from there in abundance. The nuts there are long and narrow, but not thick-shelled, and sell retail in the stores for not less than twenty cents a pound. The climate at Burlington has been 35° F. below zero some winters.
I am certain from my observations all over northeastern North America that the pecan has far more possibilities than the English walnut or any other nut unless we can develop a blight proof chestnut.
The north Chinese walnut has been doing wonderfully well in Toronto and those two trees fifteen and seventeen feet high have not a twig killed. They do not bear as early as the Japanese. Their leaves are much longer than the English walnut but the nut is fully as good as the best California, Persian walnut that ever reached the market. Many of the nuts are paper shelled, some burst open at the suture. Their appearance is almost the same as the English but the tree is much hardier, growing at the extreme north of China. Then this is the tree that the nurserymen of Ontario have been selling as "English" walnuts and guaranteeing to be hardy. But as soon as we saw the leaf and the trunk we at once knew them for north Chinese walnuts and upon being told that, the men acknowledged that they were. Just today I have been speaking to a missionary from the extreme north of China and he informs me that they have two feet of ice every winter where these trees grow in abundance with the finest nuts he ever saw. This fact and the fact that really good pecans can grow up north are the two facts that I wish this association to work on in order to get results that are certain of success.