A nut which probably has received equally as much, if not more, attention at the hands of experimental planters in this part of the country is the chestnut. Just when the introduction of foreign strains began, history seems to have failed to make clear; but according to Powell[2] general dissemination in the Delaware section began with introductions by Eleuthers Irénée du Pont de Nemours, made at about 1803. It is said that some of the original trees planted at that time near the present site of the du Pont Powder mills by Mr. du Pont, still survived when Mr. Powell recorded their history in 1898.
The spread of both European and Japanese chestnuts and their general trial throughout the Eastern States has been narrated at former meetings of this association. The chestnut blight, discovered on Long Island in 1904, after it had apparently gained several years' headway, and which now seems fairly certain to have been introduced from Japan, has so monopolized the attention of orchardists, foresters, landscape gardeners and others interested in the chestnut that for the time being little is being done with it, other than to study and discuss this disease. What the final outcome will be no one can predict, but it is not improbable that our pathologists will discover some practical means of control, or that a natural enemy to the blight will appear. Nor is it unlikely that immune strains of chestnuts, either native or foreign, will replace our present groves and orchards, in case other efforts fail.
Another nut which has received a large degree of attention at the hands of the planters and upon which hopes have been built from time to time is the hazel, or filbert. Here again, history seems to have failed us, for as yet the writer has been able to learn but little regarding the early introductions into this country. In his Nut Culturist, published in 1896, Mr. Fuller (A. S.) reasoned that at that time plants of the European hazels must have been grown in the gardens of this country for at least a hundred years. Writers on pomology make little reference to this nut, but according to Mr. Fuller, nurserymen's catalogs listed hazel varieties all through the early part of the last century. It was believed that the hazel promised much for the gardener and the general planter who wished for early returns. The species seemed capable of readily adapting itself to cultivation, and being a shrub rather than a tree, it required little space. It could be cultivated along with other garden products at little additional expense for labor. Being an early bearer it doubtless appealed strongly to the normal American demand for quick returns.
Nevertheless, this nut met with its mortal foe in the way of a native fungus which in a great many sections has proved entirely too much for the European species. Where once this species was well represented up and down the Atlantic Coast, few of its representatives are now to be found.
Some early attention in these Eastern States has been paid to the almond, another foreign species. It is supposed that this nut is a native of the Mediterranean basin. Just when it was first tried on the Atlantic Coast is not known, but of the nuts thus far mentioned it has proved to be the least promising for the Eastern section. Sometimes said to be "as hardy as the peach," it has been found to be the most exacting in its requirements of soil and climate of any important nut now grown in this country. Except with certain of the hardshell varieties, no almonds are now known to be in any sense successful east of the Rocky Mountains. According to Wickson (E. J.) in his California Fruits, the almond is known to have been introduced into California previous to 1853. At that time efforts to build up an almond industry on the Pacific Coast began to assume a somewhat serious air. After a half century of trials and more or less persistent effort by the California planters the culture of this nut has developed into the third most important nut industry in the United States. As for the time being, the growing of Persian walnuts centered in southern California, so did the growing of almonds in the Sacramento Valley of northern California.
During the whole of this period of early American nut growing history, little attention in any part of the country was paid to the native nuts. However, in the southeastern part of the United States there existed a large portion of the country to which no choice species of nut trees were either indigenous or had been introduced. Necessity, curious interest, and, more probably intelligent purpose, prompted sea captains, plying from West to East Gulf Coast ports, Easterners returning home from visits in the West, Westerners visiting in the East, and no doubt nomadic bands of Indians, to carry pecans from the Mississippi River and beyond, to the coast of Mississippi, to Alabama and the South Atlantic States, where they were planted as seed. For fully a century the species gradually spread over the plains sections of the eastern Gulf and South Atlantic States. In 1846, according to Taylor (William A.) in the Yearbook (Department of Agriculture) of 1904, a Louisiana slave succeeded in grafting a number of pecan trees. So far as can now be learned, really intelligent interest in pecan culture began with that date, although history records no further successful propagation of the species until about 1882 when William Nelson began to propagate this variety in his nursery near New Orleans. Soon afterwards, C. E. Pabst of Ocean Springs, Miss., and E. E. Risien of San Saba, Texas, joined in the pioneer work. The late Col. W. R. Stuart of Ocean Springs soon took part by giving publicity to the early varieties. Gradually, but steadily, choice varieties developed, were propagated and were disseminated. Orchard planting followed, but did not assume great importance until since about 1905. The orchards, therefore, were still too young at the time the last census was taken to have been in bearing to any extent. However, the crop of pecans from the native forests and from single trees left standing in the open space where the forests had been cleared is shown by the census reports to have been the second most valuable of American nut crops in 1909.
In quantity, the production of cultivated pecans is still slight in comparison with that of the wild product or with cultivated walnuts and almonds of the Pacific Coast. Just now, however, a great many of the orchards, planted this century, are beginning to bear and not improbably the production of cultivated pecans will soon eclipse that of the forest product, and before long will overhaul the lead now held by the Persian walnut.
Thus, briefly, has been the separate history of the principal nuts of this country. Collectively, the history of American nut culture has been as follows: Nuts from foreign countries which have been under cultivation for centuries have been more inviting than have the native and undeveloped species, and so have received the major portion of attention in America. Then too, human nature has shown itself in the greater interest taken by nut planters in foreign nuts instead of those near at hand. It is in sections remote from their place of origin that many of the leading nuts have attained their greatest degree of perfection. Thus, the average pecan of the Atlantic Coast is distinctly superior to that of the western Gulf; the Persian walnut scarcely known in Persia is best known in France and in southern California.
Progress has been slow and not concerted. Seedling trees have been planted under the firm conviction that they would come true, or because methods of propagation other than by seedage were not understood.
The Persian walnut orchards of California from which today the bulk of the production is being realized, are of seedling trees. However, the Californians have learned their lesson and today are replacing their orchards with budded stock as rapidly as possible. They have found that while the Persian walnut, which for centuries has been grown from seed, will reproduce itself fairly true to type, it does not repeat true to variety. Every tree, no matter how carefully its parentage may have been guarded, is unlike any other. The seedlings differ in traits of vigor, hardiness, susceptibility to disease, time of beginning to bear, productiveness, and longevity, and the nuts vary in size, form, thickness of shell, ease of cracking, and in kernel characteristics.