26 



THIRTY-FOURTH FRUIT-GROWERS ' COXVEXTION. 



iWe thousand of the little fellows side by side and you would only have 

 c string one inch long. It is not their great si^e which does the injury 

 at all. but their great number. The loss is primarily due to the 'first 

 infection, which occurs in the spring about this time, or a little earlier, 

 when the small walnuts which are just formed, are from one quarter 

 to one third of an inch in diameter. These little walnuts commence to 

 T3lacken at the end. There, where the moisture is the greatest, where 

 the succulency of the tissue is also the greatest, where it is the tenderest, 

 ^nd where it gives the best foothold for the blight, there at the blossom 

 end you nearly invariably see the blight starting ; and. in most cases 

 these walnuts will fall off before the loss is noticed, and after they have 

 remained on the ground for two or three days, they have dried up. and 

 the orchardist. if he has not observed very closely, will simply say that 

 the walnuts did not set very well. While it is a fact that most of the 

 loss occurs at that time, you can see the ravages of the blight through- 

 out the whole season. When the walnuts become larger, the infection, 

 in addition to taking place at the blossom end. may occur at certain 

 points or most any point on the walnut itself : and if the walnut has not 

 reached sufficient size, in most cases these infections will continue 

 through the hull and into the shell and into the meat of the walnut, and 

 then, of course, that particular walnut is of no more value from a com- 

 mercial standpoint. The ravages of the walnuts are noticed principally 

 at the gathering time in the fall, when there will be all these hulls 

 which will be found to be empty of meat : that is. the blight has eaten 

 out the meat entirely. 



Xow. the blight does infect the young twigs to some extent, and the 

 shoots of the walnuts, the small leaves sometimes an inch long, some- 

 times two or three inches long ; but in very few cases does it kill the twig 

 entirely. The blight is carried over from year to year, principally 

 through these old leaves which occur in these young twigs, and again 

 perhaps in the old decayed and infected walnuts which are found on the 

 ground. There is a saying that there is nothing really so bad but what 

 there is some good in it after all : and while the walnut blight has very 

 materially cut down the production of walnuts in this State, and in the 

 southern part of the State particularly, it has. "I am safe in saying, 

 hastened the time when we are going to have grafted instead of seedling 

 orchards. The industry- itself is in a stage of transition from the 

 unscientific seedling era of the past to the more scientific and stable 

 period of the future, when you are going to have the walnut orchards 

 composed entirely of grafted trees, of varieties which are good pro- 

 <:lucers and more or less resistant to blight. 



This proposition of getting resistant or immune varieties for the 

 control of walnut blight is not simply a dream of the future, but is an 

 ^.ctual reality. We have to-day at least half a dozen varieties, which, 

 if the orchards of Southern California were composed of grafted trees 

 from these varieties, would. I am safe in saying, materially increase the 

 production of the walnuts in Southern California, while also extending 

 its range of culture. We have varieties that, while they are not good 

 producers, produce walnuts of good, desirable shape, walnuts of good 

 size, with white meat and well filled. We have these varieties that are 

 at the same time almost immune to this disease. 



There has been some work done by orchardists in the past to try to 



