Smith: The Persian Walnut 57 
it was reported, even I believe by the 
United States Government, and believed 
everywhere, that they could not be 
erafted or budded. 
This benighted condition of a possible 
industry is hard to believe when we stop 
to think of the fact that the grafting 
and budding of these trees has been 
going steadily on in the vicinity of 
Grenoble, France, for generations. There 
lived that pioneer nut  culturist, 
Mayette, who propagated the variety 
that bears his name. In this district 
top worked trees have been for sale 
almost any year since before steamships 
started across the Atlantic. And yet 
so far as I know this might just as well 
have been in the moon for all the good 
it did us until California started the 
walnut industry. The grafted Mayettes 
of the stock of Grenoble are now proving 
hardy in Pennsylvania and Connecticut 
and if the kind used in the Grenoble 
district (Persian on Persian) had proved 
unsatisfactory there apparently would 
have been little difficulty in getting 
Grenoble nurserymen to raise American 
black for us and to graft it to anything we 
favored. Fortunately, however, we do 
not have to go into any such heroics now 
to get the trees. 
GRAFTING THE TREES 
We now know how to graft and bud 
this tree right here in the eastern 
United States and put it upon the more 
vigorous roots of the native black 
walnut. As to the technique of this 
newly-won process, there are four points 
for the ordinary apple or pear grafter to 
keep in mind, and the same also apply 
to the grafting of the hickory genus 
which offers, in almost every respect, 
problems like those of the walnut 
genus. These four points are: (1) Keep 
the cions from drying out by waxing 
entirely or by binding a paper bag over 
the stock and cion; (2) Do not split the 
pithy cions, avoid this by trimming 
wedge grafts so that one of the cuts goes 
clear across the pith; or use the slip bark 
method which has all the cut on one 
side; (3) Graft or bud when the tree is 
in rapid growth; (4) Use well ripened, 
well developed wood cut early in the 
winter. Two-year-old wood seems to 
be better than one-year-old wood and 
California grown wood has shown itself 
superior to eastern grown wood. It is 
quite possible that we will shortly begin 
to send cions of desirable eastern trees to 
California to have budding and grafting 
wood grown for eastern use. 
In budding, the patch bud and wing 
bud methods are the only ones that 
have shown themselves worth while. 
The experience of the years 1914-1915 
seems to indicate that this budding may 
be done early in the spring with wood 
from cold storage and forced into 
immediate growth by cutting off other 
growth. For photographs and details 
important to the experimenter sce 
bulletin on the walnut by United States 
Department of Agriculture and the 
reports of the Northern Nut Growers 
Association, W. C. Deming, Secretary 
Georgetown, Connecticut. lam having 
lots of fun from the two dozen nut trees 
I have grafted and budded. 
SELECTION OF PARENTS 
The discovery of these new arts of 
propagation serves instantly and acutely 
to emphasize the question, What parent 
trees shall be used in propagation? Only 
a fraction of the eastern trees have been 
examined carefully, and it is perhaps true 
that none has yet been found in the 
Eastern United States with fruit of the 
high quality of the best European varie- 
ties. In addition to the great variation 
in the quality of nuts, there is great var- 
iation in the adjustment of the trees to 
the climate. This makes a careful sur- 
vey of the existing and widely scattered 
thousands of Persian walnut trees in the 
United States a very promising prospect. 
Here is also a problem in tree breeding, 
rich with possibilities. The great vari- 
ation within the species and the easy and 
wide range of its hybridization with 
other species would indicate that it has 
great possibilities in the hands of the 
plant breeder. 
An interesting example of the ease of 
its hybridization is furnished by a New 
Jersey farmer near Camden. He has 
three or four fine and very productive 
Persian walnut trees. He wasso pleased 
