EXPERIMENTS AND OBSERVATIONS IN SEARCHING FOR BEST SEEDLING NUT TREES J. F. Wilkinson, Indiana

Searching for the best seedling began long before the coming of the white man to America, by Indians and animals and the birds which store nuts for their winter food. This search has always been continued through the nut growing territory by the crows, squirrels and other birds and animals.

Go to a pecan grove early in the fall when pecans are ripening and there is no better evidence that a tree is an early ripener and produces a thin shelled nut than to see a bunch of crows feeding from it.

The children living near a pecan grove in early fall will go where crows and birds are feeding to gather nuts that are dropped by them, and later, when all trees have ripened their nuts, these children have their favorite trees to gather from. I have seen the little ones around Enterprise, of before school age, that would have a preference and could select from a basket of pecans the ones from their favorite tree. It is surprising how good their judgment is.

The hunter also watches this in the early hunting season, going to the earlier ripening hickory and walnut trees, for it is there he will find the squirrels feeding.

My own experience in gathering pecans dates back to my first school days, for there were scores of pecans trees near the school building, and as soon as I was large enough to climb a tree I spent many days each fall gathering nuts and soon had a fair knowledge of all trees for a radius of several miles around.

The first trees of the now named varieties, the Indiana and Busseron, were located and brought to notice by the late Mason J. Niblack.

In the summer of 1910 my life-long friend, Mr. T. P. Littlepage, while on a vacation, was camping on the Ohio river near my home and was then very much interested in superior seedling nut trees. It was at that time, in a talk with him, that I became interested in the propagation of nut trees.

At this time he took me with him to locate the "Warrick" tree which stands on Pigeon Creek in Warrick County, Indiana. The next day he, R. L. McCoy and myself went to the Greenriver grove where the Major and Greenriver trees were located. These are now being propagated and are considered outstanding varieties. Also a trip was made to Posey County, Indiana, where the Hoosier tree was located. This variety was soon dropped.

From that time on R. L. McCoy and myself kept up a constant search until he left Indiana in 1918. Since then I have done a lot of work along this line myself.

This work is carried on by arranging with nut buyers and gatherers in the nut growing localities to be on the watch for any unusually good nut and to send in a sample, with the name of the owner of the tree, or the party gathering the nuts, so the tree may be located later. Hundreds of samples have been received, the most of which were eliminated on examination of the nut itself. In the case of any that seem promising a trip is made to the tree for further information. Each fall I receive word of trees producing a superior quality nut and in most cases from the description given, whether it be by letter or a personal talk with the informer, one would believe that a really worthy tree had been found. But generally on investigation it proves to be only just above a good average tree.

A variety to be worthy of propagation must pass a rigid test. First, the nut must be of desirable size, thin shell, plump kernel, good flavor and good cracking quality, and last but not least the tree must be a good and regular bearer.

Accurate records on the bearing of these trees are very hard to obtain as they often grow in isolated places and their product is known to all in that neighborhood, and at least a part of the crop is often taken by some one who makes no report on the amount, so the best information to be had on this is often incorrect. When a promising tree is located the surest way is to visit it each fall for several years just before gathering time and see the crop on the tree.

In almost every instance the size of a nut is exaggerated by the owner or informer unintentionally. They are honest but their imagination gets the better of their judgment. Then their knowledge is often limited to their own trees and those of their neighbors, and the nut they prize may be the best they know of, but when compared with nuts from a greater territory is found to be of only fair size.

The usual way one will describe the size of a pecan is to say it is as large as his thumb and about two thirds the length of his forefinger, and so thin shelled that two of them can easily be cracked in the hand with only a light pressure.

I usually carry some sample nuts of the named varieties on these trips for comparison and it is seldom that the owner or informer of a tree believes any of these to be larger than those produced by his favorite tree until a comparison is made, and then he will often declare they are not as large this season as usual.

This brings to mind many incidents which are very clear in my memory, one especially, when Mr. McCoy and myself had heard of the Kentucky pecan tree which is opposite Grandview, Ind. We went to Grandview to get first hand information on this tree from one who had gathered the nuts from it and while talking to the party he was trying to tell us how large the nut was. I first took a Busseron pecan from my pocket and he said it was much larger than that. I then resorted to some large southern ones none of which he thought were as large as his favorite. At last I produced a McAllister. After some hesitation he admitted it was larger than the Kentucky. At this Mr. McCoy gave a hearty laugh and told him his imagination had the better of his judgment. Almost every one who owns any number of nut trees has one that is better than the rest, and naturally he prizes this one highly and wishes it propagated. I have traveled many hundreds of miles going to trees on reports of others, only to be disappointed. Where the tree is found to be promising and no bearing record is obtainable, then an annual trip for several years is necessary to determine the bearing record. These trips require time, expense and labor for very often a part of the trip has to be made on foot.

Several years ago Claude Luckado, a professional pecan gatherer of Rockport, spent several weeks one fall in a large pecan grove on the Wabash river and brought back several samples of very promising pecans, one especially that I considered very worthy of further consideration. I reported this one to Mr. C. A. Reed, and a year or two later, when on a trip through this section in the fall, he suggested a trip to this tree. I arranged with Mr. Luckado to go with us to show us this tree, which is about seventy miles from Rockport. We left there on the first traction car for Mt. Vernon, Ind. From there we went in a Ford touring car without any top and only one rear fender and drove over nine miles of the worst roads I ever motored over to the Wabash river where we hired a motor driven mussel boat to take us four miles down the river. The remaining three miles we made on foot, reaching this grove about ten a. m., and searched until late in the afternoon without locating the tree. This day and trip I am sure Mr. C. A. Reed well remembers.

Two years later when roads and weather were more favorable, Mr. Luckado and myself left Rockport one morning at four a. m. and drove all the way to the grove, arriving there early in the morning and searching until late in the afternoon and again without results. But when one takes into consideration that this tree is standing somewhere near the center of an unbroken forest of hundreds of acres in which it has been estimated there are near 20,000 bearing-size pecan trees, it is some task to locate a certain tree, though the search for this tree will be made again.

It is very often that two or more trips are necessary to locate a tree and about nine times out of ten when the tree is found it is not considered worthy of propagation. Many amusing incidents and not a few hardships are remembered in these past experiences. During the past three years I have made four trips into southwestern Missouri and southeast Kansas where there are thousands of native pecan trees growing. Some trees in this section have been brought to notice which seem promising. I now have several promising new varieties under test and observation.

The search for new and better varieties must be kept up, for no doubt there are yet unknown as good and possibly better trees than we have yet located.

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Dr. Zimmerman: Have you ever known anything about the Marmaton, owned by J. E. Tipke at Rockwell, Missouri?

Mr. Wilkinson: I have a sample of it.

Dr. Zimmerman: Mr. Tipke sent that to me. He told me it wasn't as good as others but he said it never missed a crop.

The President: For the benefit of those who have not been down to Mr. Wilkinson's I would like to say you will find it very worth while to go there. In 1925 Mr. Wilkinson invited me to go with him through southern Indiana, to see some of the large pecan trees he had there. When I got there I really had to take two looks to see the top of some of those trees. I found one tree that I would have to make three spans, in this manner, to get around. One tree is said to be 125 feet tall and 16-1/2 feet around. After visiting that section and seeing the very many interesting trees I concluded that Mr. Wilkinson really hadn't told all that was to be told. Mr. Wilkinson is a very modest person. When he tells you a certain thing you can make up your mind he is not exaggerating in the least.

Mr. Wilkinson: Many times in determining the crop we have to climb the tree. For instance, the Major is 65 feet to the first limb. It is very often necessary to climb the tree to make an estimate of the crop.

The President: Wasn't there one tree there with a spread of 125 feet?

Mr. Wilkinson: This was in Greenview. That was the largest pecan tree known in Indiana, 70 feet to the first limb, just a straight column. The spread of the top was 140 to 150 feet. The wind blew the tree down.

Mr. Hershey: That tree according to Mr. Wilkinson never missed a crop. While I was there they took me to a tree that had 600 pounds one year. It was on a cheap piece of land that was bought for $425.00. The year we were there it produced 250 pounds, a light crop. Another lady told us of a family that bought a piece of land that had about 50 pecans scattered over it. That kept them in ample supply of money and they didn't have to do much more to make a living.

The President: The next is a report by Dr. J. H. Kellogg. Mr. Kellogg is not able to be with us and Dr. Colby will now read it.

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