Babcock: A New Walnut 



41 





ORIGINAL SPECIMENS OF THE NEW WALNUT 



Two of the original trees of the California mutant walnut which has been named Jiiglans 

 californica var. qiiercina. The left-hand tree bears both staminate and pistillate flowers 

 and produces a crop of nuts each year, which when planted produce trees resembling the 

 parent. The right hand tree has only staminate flowers or, occasionally, abortive pistillate 

 flowers, and hence produces no nuts. (Fig. 16.) 



and therefore make 



Normal School at — 



3^ou this offer. I may place some at 



also. 



Sincerely yours. 



(P. S.) "There is no more beautiful tree for 

 school grounds to be found on earth!" 



I do not assert that this misrepresen- 

 tation is made wilftilly or even con- 

 sciously. The purpose of this article is 

 merely to expose the fallacy and inform 

 those who are interested in this new 

 form regarding its true nature. That it 

 is not a hybrid but rather a mutation is 

 proved by two supplementary lines of 

 evidence, the result of my investiga- 

 tions during the past seven vears. 



In 1908, 1910 and 1911 I made a large 

 nimiber of cross-pollination experiments 

 under bag on native black walnut trees 

 with pollen from the live oak and two 

 other native oaks with the result that 

 from live oak pollinations alone I have 

 70 seedlings, 48 of which are six years 



old and, of these, 30 bore their first 

 crop of nuts in 1913. The reciprocal 

 cross was attempted but no seeds 

 matured. Briefly, but accurately, I can 

 state that no trace of oak nor of quercina 

 characters can be found in any of the 

 first generation seedlings from oak 

 pollinations. Moreover, over 2,000 

 nuts were secured from 30 of the Fi 

 trees in 1913 and the seedlings were 

 raised this year. Again there was abso- 

 lute failure to detect any oak or quercina 

 characters. Both the Fi and Fa seed- 

 lings appear like the California Black 

 Walnut. Although this is negative evi- 

 dence, it indicates strongly that the 

 original quercina trees did not originate 

 through natural hybridization iDctwcen 

 walnut and oak. 



In 1911, through the generous co- 

 operation of William Tyler, of Garden 

 Grove, California, I ascertained that the 

 new form of walnut was produced by at 

 least one individual in a row of 20 or 30 



