102 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



ENGI^ISH WAI^NUTS AS STREET TREES 



Wliy, asks the author of this article, do people plant poplars, maples, willows 

 tliey could plant pecan, English walnut, hickory, chestnut, or black walnut 

 at the same time get valuable crops from them? 



try, they have passed through, or over, the seedling stage. 

 All the trees they now set are grafted. But in the North 

 some of our nurserymen are still in the seedling stage. 

 Some of them must have cut their eye teeth, however, 

 because they know enough to represent their seedling 

 trees as grafted. But it is only the purchaser that is 

 grafted. There is now no excuse for selling or setting 

 seedling nut trees in the North any more than seedling 

 apples or peaches. 



A very large proportion of our native nut trees bear 

 poor nuts. It is the exceptional tree that bears good 

 crops every year of large nuts of good quality. These 

 good nut trees are being lost from natural causes, or by 

 the axe, everv vear and are not being replaced. Once 

 gone a good tree is lost forever unless grafted on another 

 tree. 



PRODUCTIVE V.\LUE OF NUT TREES 



The productive value of some nut trees is immense. 

 A woman told me in Indiana that she sold $90 worth of 

 pecans at 15 cents a pound from one wild pecan tree. 

 In 1910 Mr. John West of Alonticello, Florida, .sold 900 

 pounds of nuts from one seedling tree at 11 cents a 

 pound and received a check of $99 for them. .Another 

 pecan tree averaged $90 a year for seven years in suc- 

 cession. A tree is Cairo, Ga., gave an annual average for 

 three vears of $100. (Ine such tree on an acre would re- 

 turn more money and more food value than all the wheat 

 that could possibly be grown on it, and with hardly any 

 labor. And the wheat can be grown there, just the same, 

 even with three such trees to the acre. 



Nut growing is destined to be a great industry and to 

 furnish a substantial part of the food supply of the world 

 ill the centuries to come. 



Nut trees give us our best timber. The oak, beech, 



chestnut, hickory, butternut or 

 white walnut, black walnut and 

 Circassian or English walnut 

 are among our most valuable 

 woods. 



Can anyone say why we do 

 not use for shade trees, avenues 

 and roadside planting, the pecan, 

 hickory, black walnut, chestnut 

 and English walnut? Why plant 

 worthless poplars, soft maples, 

 willows, ailanthus and other 

 trees of little or no use except 

 for shade, when we might have 

 equally or more beautiful shade 

 trees, combined with valuable 

 l)roductiveness ? Suppose that 

 our country roads were lined 

 with fruit and nut trees and the 

 products free to all? Would not 

 that help solve the problem of 

 food? A few bushels of nuts 

 from your own dooryard trees, 

 and a knowledge of how to use 

 them in coi:)king, would lighten 



the burden of the bread and meat winner. 



How could a man get more permanent fence posts, 



ne\er needing renewal or painting, and paying him in 



fruit for the privilege of working for him. than with a 



row of nut trees ? 



etc., as shade trees, when 

 for the same purpose, and 



A NEW PECAN, A SEVENYEAR-OED BABY 

 The up-to-date pecan planter now uses only grafted trees, because it 

 is not possible to get satisfactory results in trees grown from seed. 

 There is now no more excuse for setting seedling nut trees than seed- 

 ling apples or peaches. 



