THE WALNUT IN OREGON 



By H. M. Williamson, Secretary of the Oregon State Board of Horticulture. 



The planting of walnut trees was commenced in a small way in Oregon 

 many years ago. Evidence of this wag found at the apple and walnut 

 show held at McMinnville in 1907, at which walnuts were exhibited which 

 came from^ trees of the fourth generation grown from seed in this State. 

 Many of the earlier plantings were of nuts bought at grocery stores. A 

 few immigrants from Germany sent to the Fatherland for walnuts for 

 planting. In those cases in which the nuts planted were grown in Germany 

 or France the trees have usually proved fruitful; when the nuts came from 

 Chile, or were grown in California from trees of what are commonly known 

 as the Santa Barbara type, the trees have borne only in rare instances. As 

 the greater part of the earlier plantings were of the Chilean and Santa 

 Barbara nuts, the belief long ago l:ecame prevalent in Oregon that the 

 walnut would not bear enough nuts in this State to make its culture here 

 profitable. Some twenty-five or thirty years ago the late Mr. Felix Gillet 

 of Nevada City, California, called attention to the fact that the varieties 

 of walnuts raised in France start into growth very much later in the 

 spring than the Chilean varieties, and thus escape the frosts which make 

 the Chilean varieties unfruitful in Northern California and Oregon. Colonel 

 Henry E. Dosch of this State became interested and was soon convinced 

 that the French varieties of walnuts would find most congenial conditions 

 in Oregon. By addresses at horticultural meetings and articles written for 

 the press he awakened interest here. About 1888 the planting of Fran- 

 quette, Mayette and other varieties of French walnuts was commenced in 

 an experimental way in Oregon. It is true that a few trees of the Proepar- 

 turiens and other French varieties had been planted jirior to that time, but 

 it was not until the Mayette and Franquette trees planted near Portland 

 in Oregon and Washington began to bear that much interest was shown. 

 The very satisfactory results obtained from young bearing trees in the 

 vicinity of Vancouver, Washington, prompted the planting of the first 

 large grove in Oregon, that of Thomas Prince at Dundee. Of one hundred 

 acres now in walnuts on the farm of Mr. Prince, fifty acres were planted 

 from ten to twelve years ago, or from 1896 to 1898. The walnuts grown 

 by Mr. Prince and others in Oregon have awakened great interest in walnut 

 culture in this State, and the danger of ove.r-produetion has been sug- 

 gested. Existing conditions, however, show little reason for this fear. 

 More than ten years ago it was predicted that within ten years California 

 would be producing more walnuts than would be consumed in the United 

 States. This prediction has not been verified. The walnut crop of Cali- 

 fornia for 1907 was but about twenty per cent larger than that of 1896, 

 and the industry does not appear to be growing perceptibly in that state 

 at the present time if we may .judge from the annual estimates of the 

 quantity of walnuts grown there. In that portion of the state in which 

 the greater portion of the walnut cron is produced the price of land is from 

 three to five times as much as land adapted to walnut curture can be bought 

 for in Oregon. This high price of land has naturally checked the planting 

 of new groves in that portion of the state. While there has been but 

 slight increase in the production of walnuts in California in the past six 

 or eight years the demand for walnuts in the Il^nited States has grown at 

 an unprecedented rate. Of the whole weight of walnuts imported for use 



