Prof. MacDaniels may have told you of a number of promising varieties which he personally has been responsible for bringing to light during the last year. If he didn't I hope that he will tell as a matter of record how he came to get them and just what they are.
Prof. MacDaniels:
Prof. O. F. Curtis of Cornell University and I made a pilgrimage of about a thousand miles back to the stamping ground of our youth with the avowed purpose of hunting down some of the best black walnuts of the region. The trip, though a hurried one, was packed with interest. In all, four walnuts were located which seemed well worth testing. Probably the best of these is the Albert Todd. The nut is thin hulled, a little smaller than the Thomas but with a thicker kernel. The tree was about dead when found but scions were procured and are now growing at Ithaca and Geneva. Another variety is the Emerson, located at Madison, Ohio. This is a large round nut with a rather tough shell and high proportion of kernel. Mr. Emerson has a good stand of native walnut growing on bottom land. A few years ago he sold 25 trees to a furniture company for $1000.
The third nut Dr. Curtis found on a previous journey to Ohio. It is a large nut of rather unusual shape being higher than it is long. It has good cracking quality and deserves further testing. The fourth walnut, the Chase, is growing in a dooryard at Oberlin, Ohio. It is larger than any of the others, with good shell conformation. It has the reputation of not always filling out the kernels, a condition which may be seasonal or possibly an inherent defect. Grafts of all four of these walnuts are growing at Ithaca and at Geneva and will be available after a year or two.
We had one disappointment in that a tree that we particularly wanted was found to have died only two years before. It was the old story of being too late. Certainly such experiences ought to spur this association to new efforts in trying to locate the best nut trees before they are destroyed.
Some Random Notes on Nut Culture
By D. C. Snyder, Iowa
Any notes concerning the behavior of nut trees in Iowa this year necessarily recall the trying weather conditions and these must be referred to again and again. Although winter temperatures were quite mild, catkins on the filberts and hazels were so badly injured that none bloomed on the filberts and very few on the Jones hybrids which had previously been hardy. The native hazels bloomed but set very few nuts, apparently because of their repeatedly freezing during the blooming period. The Winkler hazel seems to be a phenomenal individual and a poor parent, not reproducing anywhere nearly true. Thus far all its seedlings have produced nuts inferior to the parent variety even when they were from seed which was cross-pollinated by other choice hazels or filberts. They do, however, show much variation in foliage, bushes and fruit and what the second generation may bring forth is yet to be determined. Established hazel plants endured the extreme heat and drought splendidly, but newly planted bushes did not. Well-rooted layers and divisions planted out early made a splendid start, then backed up and were a total failure before the July rains came.
That you may know how dry it was in Iowa the first six months of 1934, let me tell you that only about two-thirds of the oats sown in April in well prepared soil got moisture enough to germinate then, and about the same part of the corn planted in May germinated. Well, along in June a shower furnished enough moisture to germinate the remaining part, so we had corn 2 to 3 feet high and in adjacent hills only 2 or 3 inches high, and oats which were headed out mixed with others of the same sowing which were just up.