Willard G. Bixby, Baldwin, N. Y.
For several years the association has been advocating the planting of experimental nut orchards, and ever since I heard of this suggestion I have been desirous of having one and being able to contribute information to our knowledge of nut growing. Therefore since 1917 I have been assembling at Baldwin material which I hoped would aid in this. At the Rochester meeting some of the results were noted, and this year, I trust, something presented will prove of interest.
CHESTNUTS—Last year I expressed the belief that by carefully watching chestnut trees and cutting out the blight as soon as it appeared it should be possible to grow and fruit almost any variety in the blight area. This I have done with every variety that I have, but that is about all, apparently, that it is possible to do, for nearly all of my trees have been badly attacked by the blight at the crown; that is at the junction of the root and trunk, and to cut out the blight means to cut down the tree. The most resistant variety noticed so far is the Boone, which has some Japanese chestnut parentage, but probably the Boone trees will not last over a year longer.
Apparently it is going to be necessary to get some resistant stock and do the grafting high enough to prevent fatal attack of the blight at the crown. Mr. P. W. Wang sent some Chinese chestnuts in the fall of 1921, and I have now several hundred seedlings of what I suppose are Castanea mollissima, of which I plan to grow a number to rather large size, set them out where the next planting of chestnut trees is to stand, and graft the branches to fine varieties. It will take at least two or three years, however, before this can be done.
HAZELS—For some four years I have been assembling, for hybridizing purposes, selected American hazels from various sections of the United States as well as the various European cultivated varieties that gave promise of being hardy. This year both blossomed rather freely, but the only variety of which I had enough pollen to work with was the Italian Red. The staminate flowers were picked from some six or eight American hazels which were blooming well and the pistillate flowers were pollinated with Italian Red pollen, in the hope that some hybrid nuts would result. Although the pollination was repeated twice I was much disappointed to find only an occasional nut as a result.
It is to be said in this connection, however, that there were practically no nuts on these American hazels which had not been pollinated with strange pollen; so the lack of nuts could not be laid to the artificial treatment given the flowers of those plants where it had been planned to make hybrids. Apparently it was due to climatic conditions that nuts were almost lacking on all hazels here this year; but I do not recall any severe cold spells when the hazels were in flower. Still, on one or two branches which I had tagged, as being particularly full of pistillate flowers, there were noticed an almost equal number of dead pistillate flowers a little later. It is seemingly going to be well to carefully study the development of the hazel flowers into nuts. They grow differently from the walnuts and the hickories. The hazel flowers apparently, after being fertilized, develop into stems on which the existence of nuts escapes the attention, at least of the casual observer, until about August, while the nuts on the walnuts and the hickories even though small at first, are plainly visible from the time they are formed by fertilized flowers until they are matured.
HICKORIES—The bearing age of the transplanted hickory so far has been almost an unknown quantity, and what we did know has been such that the association has hesitated to say much about planting hickories, its recommendations on the hickory being confined to that of topworking existing hickories. These are known to begin bearing soon after topworking, records of bearing in two or three years not being unusual.
On transplanted hickories, however, about all the information of which I know is as follows: The late Mr. J. W. Kerr, of Denton, Md., many years ago bought a number of shagbark hickories from a nursery, set them out and noted that the time that elapsed before they bore was about 25 years. Mr. Rush's Weiker tree, which bore in 11 years after being set out, cut down this time materially.
A Kentucky hickory on my place set out in the fall of 1917, flowered this year, but I had no pollen with which to fertilize the blossoms, and the nutlets dropped off. A young shagbark seedling set in its present location in the fall of 1919 and grafted to Barnes this spring, also set a nut, but this dropped off like those on the Kentucky and apparently for the same reason. It would certainly seem as if under favorable conditions, the transplanted hickory is not going to be anywhere near as slow as feared in coming into bearing.
WALNUTS—A Royal and a Paradox walnut each supposed to be grafted trees with scions from Burbank's original trees, bloomed this year, and the Royal has a number of nuts on it. The Paradox has been here a very much shorter time, not over two or three years; so perhaps it is too soon to be expecting nuts. The Paradox is said to be a very shy bearer, setting nuts only occasionally, and then but few; still, one of my Paradox trees which is not over three feet high, blossomed full. It would seem as if it might pay to study this tree and see if the sterility or fancied sterility of this tree could not be overcome by seeing that proper pollen is at hand at the right time. A Cording walnut, a hybrid between the English walnut and the Japan walnut not quite 3 feet high, is bearing a nut this year.