Persian Walnuts
In the spring of 1938 I planted a number of Crath Persian walnut seedlings. Out of possibly eight or ten, only two survive. (I gave each one about three years, and if it showed serious winter injury, I pulled it up.) I was pleasantly surprised the other day to discover that one of them has borne a single nut this year. This particular tree is at least 300' from any other Persian walnut, so it looks as if it were self-fertile. It now remains to be seen whether or not the nut will ripen.
In the spring of 1940, I planted a Broadview Persian walnut graft on black walnut stock, and this tree is bearing for the first time with eighteen nuts showing. Three or four years ago this Broadview suffered some winter damage by a split trunk and split lower branch. I painted over the cracks with gasket cement, and they are now healed. The Broadview has also shown some winter-kill of terminal twigs, but not enough to affect its bearing this year. There has been no splitting of the trunks or branches of the two surviving Crath Persian walnut trees and no winter injury to terminal twigs. The Crath walnut trees are now 18" in circumference a foot from the ground and about 12 to 15' tall. The Broadview on the black walnut stock has a circumference of 16" above the graft and 15¼" below the graft, tending to show that the Broadview grows faster than the black walnut.
It is interesting to note that the Broadview blooms a week or ten days later than the Crath Persian walnut, and at the same time as the native butternut.
Black Walnuts
I have planted a few Thomas black walnut seedlings, two grafts, and a Tasterite black walnut graft. A Thomas black walnut graft has borne nuts in three different years, including this year. The graft was sent out in the spring of 1939, and the seedlings were set out in the spring of 1940. The seedlings have not yet borne. The Thomas black walnut graft last bore three years ago, when the nuts on the whole ripened and were well filled. We had a very cold spring in 1945, so much so that apples were almost a total failure.
I also planted a Tasterite black walnut in the spring of 1939, and this is the first year that it has borne any nuts. It remains to be seen whether they will be filled out or not. There is, however, an important difference between the Thomas and the Tasterite, which are growing only 50' apart, namely that the Thomas suffers from winter injury to the terminal twigs each year, whereas there has not been any sign of such injury to the Tasterite.
Hickories
I have planted possibly two dozen of a number of varieties of hickories, of which only nine survive to date, the cause being not winter injury but what appears to me to have been improper circulation through the graft union. They would struggle along for three or four years (producing suckers from the root stock which I broke off), and then die. None of these has borne any nuts yet except the Weschcke, which was planted in the fall of 1941, and which is now bearing one nut. This nut is a mystery to me because the tree bore no catkins. There are no hickory trees within thirty miles of the vicinity to my knowledge, and the nearest pignut tree is perhaps three-quarters of a mile distant, in a direction against the prevailing winds, the intervening space being forest. Could it be possible that the Weschcke hickory was pollinated by a butternut or the Broadview Persian walnut? A big butternut tree stands within 60' and the Broadview is situated about 150' distant.