Professor Lake: I was led to think that all that was necessary to do was to plant the walnuts, because most of our authorities of twenty years ago said the walnut would come true to seed. I think out of several hundred trees planted throughout the state, and many we planted ourselves, not a seedling came true. I should think, normally, we should be very much dissatisfied in ten years from planting seedlings. As soon as anyone buds these with Franquette, Parisienne, Concord, Rush, Pomeroy, and others, I am satisfied he will not want to chance it with seedlings.
Mr. Littlepage: This dissatisfaction that may result from setting seedling walnuts, such as Rush, Nebo, Pomeroy, and others, would be just as great, perhaps, as the dissatisfaction resulting in the West, would it not?
Professor Lake: I can't see any reason, but that if there are present any of the native trees, they are bound to cross-fertilize. In California we have the Royal hybrid produced at over a mile and a half distance from any known American blacks. The Royal is a cross between the American black and the California black.
Mr. Littlepage: I don't suppose it would be reasonable to expect that there is a Persian walnut in the northern or eastern United States far enough from some native black to render it safe.
Professor Lake: I should hardly think so. Even if it is, I question whether a nut of real merit will come true to seed.
President Morris: Is it true that even from single type orchards the nuts, while coming fairly true to seed, would give trees widely different in bearing propensities?
Professor Lake: That is very true in this Vrooman orchard that has been developed to the very best possible advantage. There are trees that haven't borne a nut to make them worth while, others have been remarkably vigorous. From these, a few people, knowing of their real merits, are propagating select strains for their own use. They have fifteen or sixteen years' record. I question, if you take a hundred Franquettes from the Vrooman orchard miscellaneously, whether you would get more than ten per cent that would be really as good as the Vrooman.
President Morris: In California I went along the coast this summer from Los Angeles to Oregon and Washington, and looked over orchards. I find that in the West, as in the East, the tendency is for the Persian walnut to store up an undue amount of starch in the kernel. It is apt also to store up an undue proportion of tannin, and to be insipid. That means that in this country we must develop our own type of walnut, and it is quite the exception to find among any Persian walnuts growing on the Atlantic Coast or the Pacific Coast or in the middle of the country walnuts that are free from this tendency to astringency, to insipidity, and to toughness.
When I was on the Pacific Coast looking over specimens in one agricultural collection, a young woman who was showing the collection said, "And here is a lot of Franquettes, and Chabertes, and Mayettes, and Parisiennes that we imported; and do you know, we found our walnuts very much better than those?" I said to her, "Don't deceive yourself in this matter. This self-deception is a mistake. The thing to do is not to make that kind of a decision, but really to develop in our own country walnuts just as good as those, but not like them."
This was exemplified in a group of walnut raisers. One would say, "Here is a fine walnut that I raised." The other would say, "Yes, that looks pretty good, but you have got to hire a good talker to sell it." Another would say, "Isn't this a fine thin shelled nut?" And the same thing would be said. Now, the whole conversation of that meeting was to the effect that "you have got to have a good talker to sell it." Those people send their good talkers all over the country, and they do sell the walnuts; and it is going to kill the walnut market, unless this is stopped. Those points are ones upon which I would like to have an expression of opinion from Mr. Lake.