I have found that heartnuts are difficult to propagate, the number of successful grafts I have made being far below that of black walnuts on black walnut stocks.  The reason for this is not well understood any more than is the fact, in my experience, that the Stabler walnut will graft readily and the Ten Eyck persistently refuses to.  A good feature that these grafted trees do have, however, is their early productiveness.  I have seen them set nuts the second year after grafting and this has also occurred in trees I have sold to others.

When a nut of J. sieboldiana cordiformis is planted, it does not reliably reproduce itself in true type, sometimes reverting to that of the ordinary Japanese walnut, which looks more like a butternut and has a rather rough shell as distinguished from the smooth shell of the heartnut.  In hulling my heartnut crop for 1940, I noticed many deformed nuts.

The season had been a prolific one for nut production of all kinds, and I knew there had been a mixture of pollen in the air at the time these nutlets were receptive (a mixture made up largely of pollen from black walnuts, butternuts, with some English walnuts).  Since irregularities in size and shape indicate hybridity frequently and since heartnuts are easily hybridized I have assumed that these were pollinized by the mixture.  I have planted these odd-shaped nuts and I expect them to result in many new crosses of J. sieboldiana cordiformis, some five to eight years from now.

[Illustration:  Beautiful tropical looking Japanese Walnut (Juglans sieboldiana cordiformis).  Variety Gellatly, from Westbank, B. C., Canada.  Photo by C. Weschcke.]

To show how nature reacts to much interference I will follow through on these nearly 100 small trees that resulted from this pollination.  They were transplanted into an orchard on a side hill and well taken care of for several years, but during that time one after another was killed, apparently by winter conditions or perhaps the site was too exposed or the soil may have been uncongenial.  Today there remains but three trees, none of which have borne but all indicate that they are true heartnuts from the shape of the leaves and color of the bark and general formation.  In order to hasten their bearing, scions have been taken from these small trees and will be grafted on large black walnut stocks to bring them into fruitfulness much earlier than if they were left to their own slow growth.  This system of testing out seedlings long before they have reached a size sufficient to bear on their own roots is applicable to all of the species of nut trees and is one way that the plant breeder can hurry up his testing for varieties after making crosses and obtaining young plants.

[Illustration:  Natural size Heartnut.  Photo 10/26/38 by C. Weschcke.  Gellatly variety.]

Beechnut