Foreign Walnuts and their Culture. 
BY FELIX GILLET. 
I 
[Essay read before the Fruit Growers' Convention at Los Angeles, Cal., 1890.] 
Of all branches of horticulture so far ex- 
perimented upon in California, I do not 
think there is one so little understood and 
so much under a cloud as walnut culture is . 
This is due to several causes; chief among 
them has been the indiscriminate propa- 
gation all over the Pacific Coast for forty 
years, of one of the most delicate varieties 
of the English Walnut, to be found any- 
where, and known here under the name of 
the " Los Angeles " walnut, first started 
in the old mission of that name. Another 
cause that has had the effect of retarding 
the progress and spreading of walnut cul- 
ture throughout the State, has been the 
stand taken by eminent walnut growers of 
Southern California, and their erroneous 
statements in papers read before horticul- 
tural societies and conventions, and the 
false impression made by them on the 
public mind, that walnut culture could 
not successfully be carried on but in a 
very small section of the State, bordering 
the sea in the counties of Los Angeles, 
Ventura and Santa Barbara, and where to 
this day the most of the walnnt crop is 
grown. Now, there is as much truth in 
that as there is in the idea entertained by 
people in Southern California, that no 
oranges can be grown profitably for mar- 
ket north of San Bernardino county, 
Iudefed, some of the best oranges I ever 
ate came from Smartsville in the foothills 
of Yuba county, a few miles from Marys- 
ville and right in the heart of Northern 
California. 
In discussing the adaptability of our 
State to the successful growing of this 
or that class of fruit or nuts', we should 
always bear in mind the great diversity of 
soil and climate to be found in a State 
like California, extending as it does from 
the burning deserts of Arizona to the 
snowy peaks of Siskiyou, and that in 
nine-tenths of this vast extent of country 
the walnut is liable to be injured by late 
frosts in the spring; hence the advisa- 
bility of planting none but hardy kinds. 
The idea that walnut culture in Califor- 
nia is possible only in those little valleys 
bordering the sea in Southern California, 
is, I must say, a preposterous and erro- 
neous one. "The area of land suitable 
for successful walnut growing is very lim- 
ited," said a well-known nut-grower in an 
essay on English walnuts, before a former 
Fruit-Growers' Convention. "It requires 
well drained, deep, sandy, bottom land, 
well protected, and where no ' live oak ' 
trees have grown within the last century." 
Now, I do strongly object in the presence 
of facts to the contrary, to the above ban- 
ishing of walnut culture from 9-10ths of 
the area of the State of Calfornia, and I 
do not care, either-, what Pliny said 2,000 
years ago, on that subject, but will cite an 
instance in the course of this essay that 
will set at naught the theory that walnuts 
will not do well "where an oak forest has 
recently existed." That walnuts will grow 
more luxuriantly and bear larger crops at 
comparatively earlier age, in deep and 
rich bottom land, well drained, well pro- 
tected and with plenty of moisture, is an 
obvious fact; though there arises another 
question, whether it is advisable to plant 
walnuts, a class of trees requiring so much 
space and so little dependent on the na- 
ture of the soil, in our richest land, so 
well adapted to the growing of other valu- 
able crops that have absolutely to be 
raised in rich land. My experience in 
walnut culture, and for twenty years I 
have imported, propagated and fruited all 
the leading varieties of Europe, besides 
having collected a large amount of data on 
that subject from nut-growing countries, 
warrants me to say that walnut culture 
can be successfully carried on on the 
whole Pacific Coast, provided we plant 
none but hardy kinds; in fact, the success 
of walnut-culture in California lies exclu- 
sirely in the hardiness of the kind to be 
planted. 
The Los Angeles walnut, which, by the 
way, has been constantly propagated from 
the seed for the last forty years, without 
any regard to the degenerating of the spe- 
