AFTERNOON EXCURSION OF THE NORTHERN NUT GROWERS' ASSOCIATION

October 7, 1920, 12:45

The members of the Northern Nut Growers' Association, in convention at Washington, D. C., October 7, 1920, made an excursion which included visits to the thirty-acre bearing northern pecan plantation of T. P. Littlepage; Dr. Walter Van Fleet's Government Station for the production of blight-resisting chestnuts and chickapins and other new hybrids, at Bell Experiment Plot, Glendale, Maryland; and the old Jefferson pecan trees at Marietta. The following notes were taken at points along the route:

Dr. Van Fleet: These are hybrids between the chinkapin and the Japan chestnut showing the blight even after thirteen years immunity. We do not do anything to check the disease at all.

There is a Japan variety said not to take it but you see how it affects it. It girdles it and the new wood builds it up. The tree is doomed. It is gone now but it has made a tremendous attempt to recovery. You see the new growth that has tried to come out there trying to bridge it and make it up. Of course even that is hopeful. In view of that we feel justified in breeding. The Chinese resist it much better. They take it more readily but they resist it far better. The efforts at self-bridging are quite successful.

This is one of the hybrids we have at Arlington. The parent tree got along for thirteen years without a sign of blight. By artificial inoculation we have given it the disease but it does not get it in the trunk. This is a Chinese chestnut seven years old and has had three crops. We took the most virulent virus and made a few inoculations and with absolutely no care the wound is closing up. The tree is apparently quite healthy. This is the Chinese Molissima, not of real good quality. These are only seven years old and have already borne three very good crops. The nuts are somewhat larger than the wild native and ripen about six weeks earlier.

There are 1,100 trees here and I think about a hundred have been killed outright and probably 75 per cent of them show infections but there are a few individuals that do not seem to get it. It seems almost impossible to inoculate them. We are letting the disease run its way purely through elimination. It is only those that can stand it through a series of years that are supposed to be worth anything at all.

Probably no species is immune from it; I do not think we can use the word "immunity" in connection with it.

The party then visited the old Jefferson place at Marietta, and viewed the immense pecan trees which were given to Judge Duval by Thomas Jefferson. Thence to Mr Littlepage's plantation.

Mr. Littlepage: These trees are set 100 by 120. The Butterick is a good grower. There is a great difference in the growth of the cultivated and the uncultivated ones. I would quit working about the first of August. The first of August here they are growing actively.

Question: Is that the habit of the pecan to set a crop and then drop off?

Mr. Littlepage: Yes, young trees will do that. This is a typical Busseron. They were all sprinkled with nuts; this tree had fifty nuts on this spring. There are some caterpillars on the Stuart. This is the work of the caterpillars on the Stuart. It set a number of nuts. This Greenriver is a little larger than the Major. It is one of the prettiest nuts, one of our medium sized northern pecans. The Greenriver grows in a forest in the Green River district in Kentucky. This is the first transplanted pecan tree this far north that has grown nuts.

Dr. Morris: In two or three years you will have a crop on them.

Mr. Littlepage: That is a Major, they grow like the Cedars of Lebanon. You don't see a winter-killed twig on a tree. They were full of nuts this spring.

Mr. Morris: That is so thrifty and so hardy that it might have some species of hickory in it.

Mr. Littlepage: The Stabler black walnut is much better than the Thomas. All black walnuts are reasonably easy to propagate. I have them all around over the farm; I stick pecans around the fences, or wherever I have a space. This chestnut is a European variety. It bears a big striped nut. It tastes a little better than the sweet potato.

Dr. Morris: It is good for cooking. It is the same as the Marron.

Mr. Littlepage: They are the Indiana hazels, and this is an European filbert.

EVENING SESSION

Thursday October 7 1920 8 P. M.

The convention was called to order by the President, Mr. Linton, at 8 o'clock.

The President: The presentation of the next speaker will be made by Mr. Littlepage.

Mr. Littlepage: I want to take just one or two minutes in introducing Mr. Reed, the next speaker on the program. The Department of Agriculture, as we all know, is an aggregation of many of the very brightest men in this country. Those of us who are here in Washington know that at times it is sadly in need of organization. It is perfectly apparent to anybody who has judgment enough to make observations that there is a great deal of very valuable material down there going to waste for the lack of organization. Perhaps it will always be so. I do not know. Institutions are not perfect because the individuals constituting these institutions are not perfect. The Department of Agriculture is, taken as a whole, a most wonderful institution. I do wish, however, that the Department officials would not always wait until they think they know exactly all the facts about a thing before they publish it. I sometimes wish they had enough nerve to say: "Now, this is what we found out today. We may change our minds tomorrow and if we do we will tell you so," the same as any other honest citizen. Why in the world they collect all the data they do, file it away day after day, month after month and year after year, and publish it after it is of no use to anyone on this earth, I never could figure out! I know it is a difficult problem because if the Department of Agriculture should say today that Winesap apples grow beautifully on Maryland hills some fellow would promptly capitalize that and go to selling the Maryland hills, the water underneath, the air above them and everything around them for the modest sum of ten times what it was worth. So that is the other side of it. It makes it necessary for the Department of Agriculture, of course, to be cautious. I know, however, that you all think as I do because you have said so to me but you do not all have the nerve to get up here and say as I do that the Department of Agriculture ought to give us more of these data; that they ought to give it to us for what it is worth today and in this lifetime, leaving it to us to have a little common sense to know that what they say must be taken as they say it. However, I did not get up here to say all of those things. My purpose is to introduce the speaker.

Now, I happen to know a great deal about Mr. Reed's work. I know that he is one of the most active men in the Department and one of the men who has, as much as anybody in the Department of Agriculture, the confidence of those of us who know about the project that he is working on. Mr. Reed has more work in the Department of Agriculture than he can do and I have been trying to lay out some additional work for him. For example, we have found in Southwestern Illinois a larger pecan than any propagated in the North. I saw it in a bunch of Schleys which is the premier pecan of the South. It was larger than many of the Schleys. We don't know anything more about the pecan but I would like to know about this and several others. That is one little job that comes under Mr. Reed's supervision and he ought to have more time and more help. As a matter of fact everybody in the Department thinks he should have more money for his particular project. Those of us who are interested in nut work think the nut people should have more money. The Department was very fortunate in receiving Mr. Reed who came from Michigan. I have talked to him many times and I have never found him yet to make a statement about anything in the nut world that he could not back up. In an illustrated lecture of this kind you have the good fortune to get a great many data that you cannot get in any other way. I wish the whole country that has an interest in these matters could hear it. If I could think of anything else good to say about Mr. Reed I would say it. He is entitled to it. (Applause.)