By A. B. Anthony
Sterling, Illinois
I am satisfied only when I am trying for the best, and the best to me in nuts is the hickory. For the past nine years in the nut season, and sometimes out of it, for nut shucks tell their story, I have been combing my own territory with hopes of finding some hickories more worth while. About twenty miles westward from my home brings one to the Mississippi River. One hundred years ago most of this twenty mile land tract was covered with timber, more or less interspersed with hickories, most of which have been cut down. Along the Mississippi there were then shellbarks and shagbarks, together with pecans, the latter of which I understand are all gone now. My own location was originally prairie land out of which one could not go in any direction without passing through a woodland tract. These nearer woods held in nut trees more shagbarks than of any other nut variety, with the bitter hickory nut coming in second place. As I thought about it, given a good enough tree, it seemed to me the hickory was the greatest one we could grow. Grandfather had let pass his opportunity to save any choice ones. So had my father. And if the neighborhood zest was overfreighted with purpose to find such trees I had not found it out. It looked to me like a worthwhile endeavor not to let this neglect go further, even though chance finds were much lessened from what they probably once were.
Having three or four kinds of hickories is no doubt a fine thing for us. Nature cannot manage nearly so well with them as can man, but she makes something of a hit once in a while. More than we think for, perhaps, in the hickories we are using to graft from, there is quite likely, in the sizeable shagbarks, something besides shagbark. Their distinctiveness, for which we selected them, is due to a fortunate, unlike cross bringing out their exceptional characteristics. What most hinders progress is quite conceivably a sort of swamped unchangeableness. That is very possibly the likely ailment we've got in our hazelnuts. There were no three or four kinds of them scattered more or less everywhere about the country with which nature could make chance crosses as with hickories. Seemingly my locality ought to yield as many, perhaps more, exceptional hickory specimens than many could. Here, or near here, the pecan of the south had reached its northernmost trek. Here also was the shagbark, shellbark, bitternut. And uniformity here should have more chance of a knockout. A riddance of sameness. Hazelnuts conceded no such diversity to help nature make freaks. In the hickory field was alteration, hope, and chance.
In the assemblage of varieties there is given opportunity for crosses that nature occasionally delves into, and in the additional eccentric types getting mixed, tending to offer in rare instances special merit. We have then through mixture, not that fixedness that usually stands in the way, but a getting away from set types where once in thousands of offerings a more useful specimen is made, one nature herself cannot handle to our advantage, but for which we should have our eyes open, and make use of when chance comes our way.
Just two years ago tomorrow I came upon what to me was an eye feast. A half grown hickory tree whose top-most limbs bent as in rare instances do limbs when heavily laden with sleet. And the nuts were of good size for shagbarks. With the shucks off there were forty-two pounds of them. They proved to be quite good crackers. I sent a sample to Dr. Deming and he very considerately gave them the name Anthony. From the shape of the nut, I believe it has a trace of the bitternut hickory in its make-up. Mr. Reed has likewise expressed such an opinion in writing me regarding it. This foreign blood tinge gives it, I believe, its jump in size and its rather attractive form, also I think, a bit lessening in quality. While we would like the very highest quality in our nuts, it is conceivable that it may be advisable to do with them as is done with peaches. Take the Elberta, with its many good traits, even though it does fail somewhat in quality.
Having found this nut tree just two years ago hardly gives time enough for adequate judgement of its merits. With something like three-fourths of an inch of rain this year, from sometime in March to the seventeenth of June, none of our crops can be judged by their performance. Skipping last year, except for a very few nuts, this hickory came out this season heavy with bloom. I was watching it at blooming time. On May 23 I brought home from it a bit of bloom, laid it on a paper and the next morning it had shed its pollen. The next morning after that we had a frost on low ground. This tree is near such ground. With frost, and two dry seasons, this year's crop has amounted to but one and one-half quarts. Most hickories have done little since 1932.
Another hickory tree found last year that I call No. 2 did have four and one-half pounds on it last season. It is hardly half grown, is a shagbark, my best find toward cracking out in halves, and the earliest in maturing nuts of any hickory I have found. It has no crop this year but is worth keeping an eye on the coming seasons.
No. 3 is my best find in quality, quite good of cracking, good in size for a shagbark and has possibly a trace of shellbark in its make-up. While bearing light crops, it has been very consistent in doing so every year for at least three years. It is an old tree, medium early in maturing its nuts and doubtless could do better if freed from the under and surrounding smaller trees. Its crop, shucks on this year, is sixty-five pounds, or above eighteen pounds shucks off but not dried.
To the best of my present knowledge, and with such conveniences as I had, and to aid in grafting, I should have been told to make a long narrow box, put a wire screen bottom on it, make a cover for it, fasten a wire at each end, put my scion wood in and let it down deep in a cistern, and let it hang two or three inches over the water for scion keeping. When grafting I should have been told to carry my Merribrooke melter around in an empty pail to keep the wind from blowing it out and to be able to better hold the blaze down and keep the wax at the right temperature. And when and if the blaze does go out, do not try taking the thing apart for relighting. Instead, split a small stick, put a match in the split, take out the wax cup, strike the match and reach down from the top for relighting.