Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting Part 16

Now, I would like to comment on the remark of our forester friend here, and I think he won't take offense at what I am going to say. It seems to me that the foresters are not in a good position to criticize the horticulturists. The forester's knowledge of variety improvement for a long, long time has been based upon the problem of lots of seed from certain geographical areas, and I feel sure that foresters as a cla.s.s have only very, very recently become aware of the importance of the clone as we use it in horticulture.

Now, horticulturists, that is, pomologists, nut culturists, people who deal with ornamentals, have been keenly aware of the horticultural clone for a long, long time. There have been brought improvements into our cultivated plants through the hybridization of clones that all of the horticulturists are familiar with. The blueberry work done by the Department of Agriculture is probably the most striking example of this work, because it was all carried out during the lifetime of one man.

I feel that we will not get much further in searching for wild nuts. We have had contests for hickories and black walnuts, and I doubt whether we have made any very substantial increases. I feel certain, and I know there are a number here who will back me up, that future improvements, if they are to be really substantial--that is, if they are to be substantial advances over what we already have--such improvements will have to come through breeding work.

DR. McKAY: Mr. Chairman, I have been listening to these remarks, and I have been trying to think of some comment that could be made in connection with some practical suggestions that we could arrive at tonight, a starting point, perhaps, in connection with the chairman's remarks about doing something tonight at this meeting. I'd like to say that it seems to me that the thing we could probably do right now to start things off would be to have this regional committee or this group that represents a wide area, decide on, say, five varieties based on all the evidence that can be obtained as to which five would be most likely to succeed over a wide area.

Now, the chairman has commented at length on our lack of unanimity when it comes to varieties. I think most of that problem has come out of the fact that our information is all based on little, piecemeal bits of work done here and there, and it does not refer to variety testing over a wide area. Now with all due respect to Dr. Anthony's remarks about varieties being a local situation, we still have, as mentioned by the chairman, the apple situation. The varieties in the final a.n.a.lysis are going to be adopted over a wide area, and if our nurserymen and all our growers could know or understand that these five varieties have been selected by opinion of people that ought to know that those five varieties stand the best chance to succeed over a wide area, then we would have something definite to tie to.

The way it is now, we in our office feel that Thomas is probably the most widely adapted variety of black walnut we have, and probably the best performing variety. We are not sure, but that's our opinion. I might mention another variety, the Stabler. I think most people would agree that that is a variety that used to be thought well of, yet is no more, and so it is out of the picture. Those two varieties we have information about, based on a wide area of territory.

Now, it seems to me, coming down to something specific, what we could do here, or as soon as we can get to it, would be to have a large committee, a committee representing opinion over a wide area, come to some conclusion about the five varieties that will be the ones to test and to grow over a wide area and give our nurserymen or our growers something to tie to in the matter of selecting varieties to grow.

DR. CRANE: Thank you, Dr. McKay. There is one other comment that I want to make. I think that if we were to take a vote tonight in here, get an expression on the variety Stabler, we'd say, "Yes, it's a curious nut, it's a curiosity. Some trees sometimes bear single-lobe nuts in varying proportions. It is a fine nut when you get it, but they don't bear enough and they don't bear regularly enough. That is the criticism of the Stabler."

Yet we have nurserymen, lots of them, that are propagating Stabler and still selling them to people.

MR. McDANIEL: I know one nursery which has recently discontinued it.

That's Armstrong, way out in California.

MR. CALDWELL: Why doesn't it produce a good nut? Can you answer that question?

DR. CRANE: It does produce a good nut ~when~ it produces.

MR. CALDWELL: If it doesn't produce all the while, why doesn't it? If you can solve that--

DR. CRANE: Why didn't you grow up to a six-foot-six guy weighing 250 pounds?

MR. CALDWELL: It would be physically impossible for me to do so with my const.i.tution, which is what I am trying to apply to the nut trees.

MR. WILKINSON: Don't condemn it over all territories[6]. At my place, the Stabler produces nuts as regular as the Thomas, and in the nursery it outsells the Thomas two to one, if not more. I have handled nut sales for Mr. Weber's orchard, one of the largest black walnut orchards in the United States. When the people come there we will crack a Stabler walnut to make a customer out of them, and we have to get on to something else to keep them from buying all the Stablers first. And if I were planting a hundred walnut trees today, the majority of them would be Stabler. They have been bearing since 1918 when I started producing Stabler walnuts.

[6] The territory giving best reports on Stabler lies along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers from about Cincinnati to no farther south than Memphis.--J.C.McD.

DR. CRANE: That's what we are talking about tonight.

MR. CALDWELL: Yet your committee throws the thing out.

MR. CHASE: I'd like to say a few words. First off, I am in agreement with the idea of some sort of a regional testing set-up.

Now here we are getting into discussion about individual varieties, and that is not the purpose of this, as I understand, but all of you gentlemen have been propagating the various varieties simply because one has become available to you at a certain time, and you have grafted it.

Our committee on varieties, of which I am a member, probably should be criticized, because we have not gathered that information from the folks who have grafted trees, and they are scattered over the region. We don't need the regional set-up, it's already set up. In other words, if we have varieties to be tested, we could have selected members in our group to graft it, if they do not already have it grafted. In a few years we can get some pretty definite information on a few varieties.

Now, in 1938, in our work we recognized the advisability of quickly doing something about the 100-and-some varieties existing in the proceedings, and finally we have culled that down to, I think, 43, which, on the basis of nut characteristics only, are very close together. Now, we started out in 1938 and established four or five test plantings containing the first ten varieties. Ten trees of ten varieties, a hundred trees in the planting. It took quite an area.

Since that time we have set out variety test plantings of 43 varieties scattered over seven states at various geographical locations within the seven states.

MR. KINTZEL: How many trees do you have in a planting now?

MR. CHASE: Twenty-five now. Twenty-five of five varieties. This work is being carried on at the state experiment stations in the Tennessee Valley. In fact, they have become more and more interested in the testing program which we have been trying to get them interested in, and we hope to have some information for our region on some of these varieties, the better varieties as we consider them.

But back to this problem. I think it is very simple to set out. I think the Varieties Committee--I believe Dr. Crane is chairman--

DR. MacDANIELS: You are chairman.

MR. CHASE: No. It has a job on its hands: first to find out what our members have. Certainly they are spread over the region we are interested in, aren't they? Well, it simply becomes a secretary's job to canva.s.s our members.h.i.+p to find out which varieties we have, so that the Varieties Committee can go to work.

Let's be realistic. We are not going to influence all the experiment stations to do this work. It is not going to be practicable for them.

They probably would very much like to do it, but it's not in the picture, as I see it now. Therefore, we are not going to wait, as our forester would have us wait, until we breed one. Let's get these good ones that we have got and cull them out so Dr. Crane can answer a letter without having a guilty conscience.

DR. CRANE: That's right. Folks, I want to make one comment on Mr.

Chase's remarks--also Mr. Slate's remarks, about tying this work up to the experiment stations. There is one thing that, in my experience, we can't place too much dependence on. Of course, in the Department of Agriculture our main interests that we are likely to contend with are our four major nut industries in the country. That is pecans, Persian walnuts, filberts and almonds. In the case of those, we can get very little help from the experiment stations, with the possible exception of California.

MR. CORSAN: There is lots of truth in that.

DR. CRANE: They haven't got the interest in it. They haven't got the money, they haven't got the support. They depend more on the U. S.

Department of Agriculture. Well, the Department of Agriculture can't carry it. Hence, it comes back to growers. The grower organizations, even in the great state of California, with all their great wealth and abundance, go to the California experiment stations more than to any other experiment stations in the United States. But the commercial growers out there have already set up organizations for the testing of these varieties and for trial plantings. You can't come back to the experiment stations and just as has been pointed out, many of the experiment stations have only one or two or, at most, three different kinds of nuts of their own. They have got to go out just the same as we do ~with the growers~; we co-operate with them. And we have already got a lot of these experimental plantings. There is Sterling Smith with--I have forgotten how many he said--60 walnut varieties, and Mr. Shessler with a hundred, there in Ohio.

I'd like to know from Sterling Smith and Mr. Shessler which are the best five walnut varieties.

MR. KINTZEL: In that section?

DR. CRANE: In that section, that's what I want to know.

MR. CORSAN: That's what we are here for tonight. Let us talk it over.

MR. WEBER: Put the question to him, Dr. Crane, and let him tell you what he thinks to be his best five. Put him on the spot right now.

DR. CRANE: That would be just a waste of time, because that would be his opinion. It's just like what Mr. Wilkinson says, that if he were planting a hundred walnut trees they would be Stablers.

MR. WEBER: In his particular locality.

MR. CORSAN: And he may be quite right in that locality. I am not going to dispute it.

DR. CRANE: But we want to know how some other folks agree with him and study this situation over and find out why Stabler was doing its stuff right there.

MR. CALDWELL: That's what I asked you.

DR. CRANE: And how much evidence did he base his conclusion on? That's what we have got to discover.

MR. CORSAN: I base my conclusion on the experiment station that put out the Redhaven peaches. Dr. George Slate here has made a very big point, and it went to pot. Those words there are what we have got to be careful about, that our inst.i.tution doesn't go to pot. I have started affairs that went with a fury, and when I let go of them, they just went to pot.

Take Michigan State College's Bird Sanctuary, the W. K. Kellogg Bird Sanctuary. What is it now? A colorless affair. It's gone to pot, and we want to see that the nut growers don't allow ~their~ inst.i.tutions to go to pot.

DR. CRANE: That's right: You hit the nail on the head, there, but it's up to the nut growers to see that they don't. And how many experiment stations or their actions have been influenced by the Northern Nut Growers a.s.sociation?

MR. CORSAN: I have built upon the experience of J. F. Jones and Neilson and Professor Slate and all of them. Now, here is what I did. I picked out a section of land that floods every spring, about four times the width of this room and has sometimes eight feet of water. Now, n.o.body is going to build houses on that and tear my nut trees down. They are there forever, and it will always be a nut haven, and n.o.body will be able to destroy it. Now I have got to be careful to see that it doesn't go to pot, as Professor Slate said, by selecting some brains to succeed me, to carry on. Is that right, Professor Slate?

PROFESSOR SLATE: (Nods.)