Part 16 (1/2)

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.