Last summer my attention was called to a tree about 30 miles from my home, which bore a very large crop of heartnuts. The man that owned the tree called them filberts. The tree is about 40 feet tall with a spread of 40 or 50 feet and is 18 inches in diameter. It is perhaps 20 to 25 years old and bears from three to four bushels a year, I am told. I have heard that the tree grew from a seed brought over from Germany. I have named the tree Goettler, in honor of the man bringing it to my attention. The nut seems to resemble the Wright and is one of the best cracking nuts I have found. I received permission to get scion wood from the tree and have a few grafts growing well.
Hickories are, of course, a native of this section as is pecan, which grows wild on the Mississippi River bottoms about as far north as the mouth of the Maquoketa River. The pecan grafts take off nicely on hickory stocks but the graft seems to outgrow the stock. I have found, however, that hican, being half hickory and half pecan, works much better on a hickory stock. My pecan grafts which seem the most promising are Major, Indiana and Greenriver, and of the hican grafts the Burlington and Wapello.
Chestnuts seem to do very well here, as well as filberts and native hazels. Of the chestnut varieties I have growing I prefer the Nanking, Kuling and Meiling. Most of my Persian walnut plantings I have interplanted with dwarf fruit trees and have clover and alfalfa growing between the rows. This is cut twice a year and used for mulch. The following spring it is spaded in and a small amount of high test nitrogen applied at the same time and the trees all seem to respond to this treatment very well.
DR. ROHRBACHER: Any questions or remarks?
MEMBER: Mr. Kyhl mentioned the Schafer. That is the one for the boys and girls in a hurry to get nuts. In three years you get nuts. I have experimented with it and that is the only tree that will do it.
MR. CORSAN: I would like to ask the convention if they have had the experience with the black walnut and the Persian. Down the valley would come a good strong wind and break off the tops. I had one that grew 20 feet from a little graft. When I put this on, it had three buds. One bud threw six feet and 20 feet of wood from that one seeding. I barricaded it so the ice wouldn't break it. The ice broke through my barricade and I have one that is growing as high as I can reach. Black walnut broke off with the wind. Sometime, the whole tree broke down. Not a twig was broken off the English walnut. The black walnuts worry me to pieces.
MR. DAVIDSON: In connection with this rapid growth, is there any difference in the quality of the wood? We have some that grow so much more rapidly. When the wood matures, will it have the same value for furniture and so on as the slower growing ones? Would they be more like the softwood?
MR. CRANE: Our highest grade native woods are those which grow more slowly. We haven't made any studies on the wood in black walnut, in relation to the growth rate.
DR. MacDANIELS: The strength and value of the wood depends on the proportion of large and small cells. In a very slow-growing tree you have a large proportion of the big cells. In rapid-growing wood you also have an undesirable result. It is between the very slow and very rapid that you get the best. If you get a rapid growth the cells are thin, even though they may be small. It is the in-between condition that makes for good timber. That is based on actual strength tests and evaluation.
MEMBER: Mr. Corsan wrote me about the wind damage. I never had that experience. I saw the cyclone in southeastern Iowa. Elms were up-rooted and torn to pieces and I didn't see any black walnut damage. Even the hickories were damaged and some snapped off. I have never seen any walnut give away.