THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Reed, you made the qualified statement awhile ago that where a man had a choice between hickory and pecan stock for top-working, he should take the pecan. Now, in the North there are magnificent stands of native hickory—the Appalachians are full of it from end to end. Would you advise him not to bother with that?
MR. C. A. REED: There is another question that enters there. I don't believe that you can grow good pecans on hickory stocks on uplands where there is not moisture enough in the soil to grow good pecans on pecan stocks. It takes moisture to make pecans, and if there isn't enough in the upland soil to grow pecan trees on pecan roots I don't believe there is any evidence to indicate that you can get them on hickory roots.
MR. LITTLEPAGE: Mr. President, the hickory only grows about six or eight weeks every summer, and the pecan grows all summer. I think that answers the question.
PROF. HUTT: A case came up last year in the National Nut Growers' Association that was quite interesting. Mr. Smithwick, of Americus, Georgia, brought to the meeting and exhibited a number of varieties of pecan grown on hickory—fourteen varieties, standard varieties, grafted on a hickory tree, and they were remarkable for their small size. They were remarkably small—smaller than ordinary, woods-grown seedling pecans. There were Schleys and Delmas, and various other varieties that you could recognize by the form of the nuts, but exceedingly small. I believe Mr. Reed's point is the crux of the whole situation, that if you have a good supply of moisture they will make nuts of a pretty fair size, but unless the moisture supply is very large you get diminutive nuts. These were matured in the South. The hickory is such a slow grower in comparison with the pecan—that is, the common varieties—that it can't keep up with the pecan top.
MR. C. A. REED: Some of the nuts from that tree were on exhibition where you were this morning.
THE PRESIDENT: Then you have, practically, a dwarfing, with the dwarfing manifesting itself in the fruit rather than in the wood.
MR. C. A. REED: It did in that one instance, but, on the other hand, we have seen pecans grown on top-worked hickories that you could hardly tell from typical specimens of pecans grown on pecan stocks.
THE PRESIDENT: Isn't the bitternut several times as rapid in growth as the shagbark, or some others? That is, probably, one of the best stocks for the hickories if one wishes to experiment.
MR. C. A. REED: AS Colonel Van Duzee said last night, "there are a lot of things we don't know." This is one of them. I might quote a number of men who are right here in this audience to convince you that we don't any of us know much about nut culture today. I will quote Dr. Morris and Mr. Littlepage. We were talking about hickory nut varieties in Dr. Morris' office one night about the first of this year, when Mr. Littlepage made the remark that "the man who didn't change his mind every three years on nut culture didn't keep up with the game," and Dr. Morris replied that he had changed his mind so much in the last five years he had no respect for any man who believed what he said. Now, when you can't believe Dr. Morris, Colonel Van Duzee, or Dr. Smith, what are you going to do with the rest of us?
COL. VAN DUZEE: Mr. Reed, I didn't say what you said I did. I said:
"There are so many things you already know that are not true."
(Laughter.)