Dr. J. H. Kellogg: Ladies and Gentlemen: Battle Creek has the honor today and tomorrow to entertain the Northern Nut Growers' Association. This association with other associations having similar purposes, is undertaking to do, it seems to me, one of the most important things that can be done for the American people—to show us how we can get our nitrogen, our protein, and our fats without the livestock industry which is wasting at least nine-tenths of the grain, or in fact at least nineteen-twentieths of all our foodstuffs. The great cause of the high cost of living at the present time is that the pigs and the cattle are eating up our corn and other good things that we ought to eat ourselves. If we had a sufficient area of land, perhaps even the sides of our roadways and railways planted out to black walnuts and other good nut trees, we would have all the protein and fat we needed, perhaps as much as we are getting now, and more, and the cattle industry might be entirely dismissed from consideration, and a great deal of labor would be saved. I am sure that there is no place in the whole United States where this Association could have a heartier welcome than here in Battle Creek, or where people could be found who would appreciate its labors any more. You are going to have a very interesting program tonight. We are favored with visits from very distinguished gentlemen from all over the United States, among others Dr. Robert T. Morris, the nestor of American surgeons has come all the way from New York to tell us about some wonderful discoveries he has made, and a fatherless walnut tree he is cultivating, and other things that will be of great interest to us all I am sure. I take pleasure in introducing to you the president of this Association, Mr. W. C. Reed, of Vincennes, Indiana. Mr. Reed.
President Reed: We are simply continuing our program. This afternoon we were in session at the Annex and moved over here this evening so as to be able to present what we have here so we could entertain more of you than we could over there to advantage. You know that most all men have a hobby along some line or other, and those who constitute our leaders, whom we have to look to, and along the line of nut trees of different species and so on, we have learned to look to Dr. Morris as one of the leaders. I have great pleasure in introducing to you Dr. Robert T. Morris, of New York, who will address you on the hickory.
NOTES ON THE HICKORIES
Robert T. Morris, M. D., New York City, N. Y.
When people speak of the "hickory" without qualification, they are apt to have in mind some one kind of hickory which belonged to their boyhood environment. All other kinds which they happened to know, were qualified in some way, very much as the word "fish" in Boston stands for the codfish only, other kinds of fish in the world being described by qualifying names. In the northeast the hickory means the shagbark. In Missouri it means the shellbark. Elsewhere the pignut and the mockernut are called "hickory." Interest in the subject has increased so rapidly of late years that we must all of us be more particular in our descriptions and add qualifying names, speaking always of the shagbark hickory, pecan hickory, or bitternut hickory as the case may be. Sargent describes fifteen species of hickory and in addition a large number of varieties by environment and by hybridization. There is a Mexican hickory, making sixteen species for the North American continent, and the late Mr. F. N. Meyer, Agricultural Explorer from Washington, has found a hickory in China. Previous to this discovery, it was believed that the hickories belonged to the North American continent only.
Botanists divide the hickories into two groups, Apocarya and Eucarya. For convenience in every day conversation, it might be well for us to speak of the "open-bud" group and the "closed bud" group. Apocarya or the "open bud" group, includes the pecan hickory, Carya pecan, the bitternut hickory, Carya cordiformis, the bitter pecan, Carya texana, the water hickory, Carya aquatica, the nutmeg hickory, Carya myristicaeformis, and the Chinese hickory, Carya cathayensis. The winter buds of this group will be seen on examination to show the minute, snugly curled-up leaves which are ready to burst forth when the springtime sun opens the fronds of the ferns which have forced their way through the hard ground with clenched fists. The scale buds in the open-bud group do not cover the tiny leaf forms completely.
In Eucarya, or the "closed-bud" group, stout scales close the bud completely against the snow and ice of wintry days, so that we see scales only when looking at the bud. The closed-bud hickories include the shagbark, Carya ovata, the Carolina hickory, Carya Carolinae-septentrionalis, the shellbark, Carya laciniosa, the mockernut, Carya alba, the smooth-bark hickory, Carya leiodermis, the pallid hickory, Carya pallida, the close-bark pignut, Carya glabra, the loose-bark pignut, Carya ovalis, the Florida hickory, Carya Floridana, the Buckley hickory, Carya Buckleyi, and the Mexican hickory, Carya Mexicana.
Hickories which have nuts with a bitter pellicle, all belong to the open-bud group. These are the bitternut, Texas hickory, and water hickory. Hickories with scaly bark are found in both groups. In the open-bud group, the trunk of the water hickory carries long loose bark strips attached by one end, and in the closed-bud group, we find this characteristic belonging to the shagbark, shellbark, Carolina hickory, and to one of the pignuts, Carya ovalis. That takes us to another occasion for a note. What do we mean by "pignut?" In the North, this term is applied to Carya glabra and Carya ovalis. In the South, it is applied to Carya cordiformis. A name so well established, will have to be retained, but in our Association it will perhaps be best to have an understanding about which one of the hickories the common name pignut should belong. So long as it already covers two species in the North as opposed to one in the South, there are already two votes to one in favor of retaining the name pignut for Carya glabra and Carya ovalis. We may describe these in plain language as the smooth-bark pignut and the loose-bark pignut. The reason for choosing the name "loose" instead of "scaly" is because we are pretty well agreed upon applying the name "scalybark" to the Carolina hickory, the name "shagbark" to Carya ovata, and the name shellbark to Carya laciniosa. The name bitternut may safely be allowed to remain with Carya cordiformis because the other two nuts with bitter pellicle already have distinctive names, Carya aquatica being called water hickory and Carya texana being called bitter pecan. By making fixed points in nomenclature in this way we may head off the confusion which will become worse confounded as the interest in hickories becomes rapidly enlarged, if our committee on nomenclature does not take some decisive step.
Concerning Latin nomenclature, we have further troubles for settlement. Hicoria is the oldest generic name and naturally should have priority but the Vienna Congress of Botanists adopted Carya. So far so good (or bad). Now comes our trouble in giving specific and varietal names. The binomial is clearly applicable enough for species, Carya pecan, for example, but when we come to varieties of the pecan there are two kinds of varieties to be considered, those by environment and those by hybridization. In cases of natural variation we are still within accepted resources in nomenclature by saying for example, Carya pecan, var, Stuartii. When naming hybrid varieties, however, I would suggest that in advance of the abbreviation "var", we place the abbreviation "hyb." thus reading for Brown's pecan, "Carya pecan, hyb. var. Brownii," instead of "Carya Brownii," which latter binomial would throw it among the species. In view of the fact that we are to have in the future hundreds of named hybrids, it seems to me that we must adopt some such definite method for convenience promptly. This method of naming, relates to convenience and is applied to the most evident parent. As a matter of fact, in horticultural circles we are doing precisely that sort of thing, speaking, for example, of "Brown's pecan" meaning a nut which we recognize as being a hybrid, brought to attention by Brown but with the pecan as parent most strongly in evidence.