Nut Tree Propagation As a Hobby for a Chemist
By Dr. E. M. Shelton, Cleveland, Ohio
Not so long ago we saw a movie by the title of "Cluny Brown." The heroine was possessed with a passion for repairing plumbing, but was continually inhibited by well-meaning relatives who told her that she "didn't know her place." A scene early in the story shows Cluny on the floor under a stopped-up kitchen sink explaining her problem to a sympathetic professor who states a philosophy something like this. "To be happy, one should not have to be bound by what is appropriate. If it is customary to throw nuts to the squirrels and you prefer to throw squirrels to the nuts, it should be all right to throw squirrels to the nuts."
It is obviously not always advisable to be so unconventional, but it seems to me that in matters pertaining to one's hobby it should be permissable to throw "squirrels to the nuts."
A hobby, like a shadow, is necessarily a very personal thing. Without the person with which it is associated it could not exist. Therefore, I feel that it is appropriate to present throughout this paper a liberal use of the pronoun in the first person.
Years ago, as a boy on an Ohio farm, I tried repeatedly, without success, to graft on small hickory trees along the river bank scions from one especially good tree that stood out in a cultivated field. Time that followed was too crowded for further attempts at nut tree propagation until about fifteen years ago, when, living in Connecticut, I bought a grafted walnut, a Thomas, and set out to produce more like it. Before we left Connecticut, I had been able to present grafted walnut trees to many of my neighbors who had persisted, hitherto, in calling hickory-nuts "walnuts." They would listen with some show of interest while I expounded on my enthusiasm for black walnuts, but sooner or later would inevitably ask, "Do you mean the shagbark kind?"
Last summer we drove back to Connecticut for a brief visit, and, on calling at the home of one of these friends, we found that the first nut borne on their Thomas tree had been carefully saved. Forthwith there was a solemn nut-cracking ceremony, and all present tasted the meat and pronounced it good. We hope that that tree and many others will thrive for years to come to add to the bonds of friendship with these neighbors we have known.
Lately I have arranged my work so that we may once again live in Ohio not too far from my boyhood home. Last year I tried once again to graft along the hillside scions from that prized hickory, and this time six out of seven grafts have grown.
My field of work has been that of a chemist, engaged in industrial problems related to animal and plant products. Hence, my hobby and my day's work are productive of mutually helpful ideas. The literature which I review frequently contains suggestions applicable to the various phases of tree propagation. Though a few references are quoted in the bibliography at the end of this paper, these are for illustration only and comprise a very small number of those which have appeared.
My experiments in nut tree propagation have been reported from time to time in the yearbooks of the N.N.G.A. and I intend in the remainder of this paper only to outline problems under a number of general headings in which I am particularly interested, and give some indication of procedures which seem worth while investigating.