254 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA EXPERIMENT STATION. 



VARIETIES OF THE ENGLISH WALNUT. 



The fact has been frequently alluded to in this bulletin that great 

 variation exists in various individual seedling trees of the English 

 walnut, and that as a result of such variation a fairly large number of 

 distinct varieties has been established, each of these having originated 

 from a particular tree which was selected by some one as being particu- 

 larly desirable on account of certain qualities. Some of these varieties, 

 notably certain French varieties close to two hundred years old, have 

 been kept pure since the original tree was first selected, by budding or 

 grafting. Others, especially the majority of the varieties now most com- 

 mon in California, are of comparatively recent origin and represent the 

 grafted or budded offspring of certain seedling trees in the State which 

 have seemed especially desirable and have therefore been propagated 

 from and in some cases widely advertised and sold on quite an extensive 

 scale. The variations which occur in seedling walnuts consist in a 

 marked difference in the vigor and size of the tree, its rapidity of 

 growth, its general form or aspect, and that of its foliage, the color and 

 texture of the bark, the time of budding out in the spring, the amount of 

 catkins and pollen produced, its productiveness, season of maturity of 

 the crop, and the size, form, color, flavor, and other characteristics of the 

 nut. Also the susceptibility of the tree to various diseases and inju- 

 rious influences. Seedling walnuts vary very greatly in these respects, 

 although certain general types of a certain degree of similarity among 

 themselves may be recognized. Thus, in California, almost all the 

 so-called Santa Barbara seedlings come out comparatively early in the 

 spring, they are usually thrifty, large trees under favorable conditions, 

 and the nuts are mostly of the soft-shell type as regards cracking qual- 

 ity. The old fashioned hard shells represent another fairly uniform 

 type, even when grown from seed, having rather small, round, very 

 hard-shelled nuts borne upon trees with a certain similarity to one 

 another. The same, is true of the so-called paper shells. Trees of all 

 these types bear nuts of about the same color, a dull, neutral or greyish 

 brown. Taking the French varieties we find among most of them the 

 habit of coming out extremely late in the spring, so that a Franquette, 

 Mayette, or Parisienne, and almost all the seedlings derived from nuts 

 of these varieties, leaf out several months later than Chase, Placentia 

 Perfection, or most of the Santa Barbara Soft Shell seedlings, even 

 though planted in the same locality. They also bear nuts almost always 

 of a brighter, more yellowish color than do the California varieties. The 

 meat of the nut is also usually lighter colored. 



In other words, we find in walnuts certain types differing very 

 widely in various respects from one another, while among the seedlings 

 from one of these types there is a considerable variation, but not so great 



