detailed studies of their growth, bearing habits, ability to resist blight, curculio and other insects, the size of the nut, the thinness of the shell and the flavor of the kernel.  Several books of all this detail were accumulated in trying to nail down several commercial varieties that would be propagated from this vast amount of material.  Although some bushes produced good nuts at the rate of as much as two tons to the acre, measured on the basis of space that they took up in the test orchard, the most prolific kind seemed to be the ones that had a tendency to revert to the wild hazel type.  The better and thinner-shelled types, more resembling the filberts, seemed to be shy bearers so that there being a host of new plants to catalog (more than 1000) which had not indicated their bearing characteristics, we included these among the possible ideal plants we were seeking.  Although there were several plants that could be considered commercial in the original group of over 650 it has been thought that the waiting of a few more years to ascertain whether there would be something better in the next 1000 plants to bear that would be worthwhile waiting for and no attempt has been made to propagate the earlier tested plants.  Some of these 650 tested hybrids proved to have nuts that were classed as Giants being much larger than the filberts produced by male or pollen parent such as the Barcelona, Duchilly or Daviana, and several times the size of the nuts of the female parent which was the wild hazel.

[Illustration:  Wild Wisconsin Hazel discovered on Hazel Hills Farm near River Falls.  Note size of nuts in husks as compared to woman’s hand.  This plant became the female parent in over 1,000 crosses by pollen furnished from male blooms of Duchilly, Barcelona, Italian Red, White, Red, and Purple Aveline and many other well known filberts.  Photo by C. Weschcke]

Chapter 6

PECANS AND THEIR HYBRIDS

At the same time, October 1924, that I purchased Beaver hickory trees from J. F. Jones, I also procured from him three specimens each of three commercial varieties of pecan trees, the Posey, Indiana and Niblack, as well as some hiccan trees, i.e., hybrids having pecan and hickory parents.  Only one tree survived, a Niblack pecan, which, after sixteen years, was only about eighteen inches in height.  Its annual growth was very slight and it was killed back during the winter almost the full amount of the year’s growth.  In the 17th year this tree was dead.

In September 1925, at a convention of the Northern Nut Growers’ Association in St. Louis, Missouri, I became acquainted with a man whose experience in the nut-growing industry was wide and who knew a great deal about the types of hickory and pecan trees in Iowa.  He was S. W. Snyder of Center Point, Iowa. (He later became president of the Association.) In one of his letters to me the following summer, Mr. Snyder mentioned that there were wild pecan trees growing near Des Moines and Burlington.  I decided I wanted to know more about them and at my request, he collected ten pounds of the nuts for me.  I found they were the long type of pecan, small, but surprisingly thin-shelled and having a kernel of very high quality.