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TOPWORKING HICKORY TREES FOR THE BEGINNER 

 By Dr. W . C. Deming, Connecticut 



On almost every farm in the country, where the hickory tree is 

 indigenous, there are many such trees that may be top worked and 

 made to bear choice nuts, instead of the poor ones that most of them 

 naturally produce. Even on small places there are likely to be a few 

 of these trees. The pioneer work of a few enthusiasts, in experi- 

 menting with grafting nut trees, has made this almost as easy as graft- 

 ing apple trees, once the methods are understood. It is the object of 

 this paper to describe one of these methods. Other methods are 

 described, and a fuller discussion given, in a paper published in the 

 fifteenth annual report of this association. 



The idea of trying to perpetuate some fine nut tree, that they 

 have come to know about, has occurred to many persons, and the 

 natural thought was to do so by planting the fine nuts. But this has 

 nearly always resulted in disappointment because the trees growing 

 from this planting have hardly ever borne nuts as good as those from 

 the parent tree. Such trees are also often very long in coming into 

 bearing. I know of three trees, resultin,g from the planting of sev- 

 eral nuts, that did not bear until the 35th j-ear. Often, too, they are 

 very unfruitful after beginning to bear. 



Just as we get our good fruit trees of all kinds by budding or 

 grafting seedling trees with scions from parent trees known to bear 

 fine, or named, varieties of fruit, so must we graft or bud seedling nut 

 trees in order to get fine, or named, varieties of nuts. Then the nuts 

 produced will be like those borne by the parent tree, and the grafted 

 trees will begin to bear as soon as will grafted apple trees, in from 

 three to six years. 



There are several species of hickory native in the North, such as 

 the common shagbark, the western shellbark. the mockernut, the pig- 

 nut, the bitternut and, over a more limited rar^ge, the pecan, or pecan 



