feet of growth in the first year. I have even
found several of these same hickory seedlings of two seasons' growth
which, when transplanted last fall, are large enough to graft this
spring. However, experiments have not proceeded far enough to verify the
practical side of this new idea of hickory propagation.

Only one variety of pecan which was among the original seedlings, and
which existed as a lawn tree for more than twenty years in St. Paul, was
compatible with the bitternut hickory root systems; but enough of this
variety of pecan has been grafted on local hickories to demonstrate that
this is perfectly feasible as far as the union is concerned. In fact,
several of these larger grafted trees have been bearing staminate bloom
for two or more years. No nuts have been produced of this Hope variety
as yet, and although it has been distributed on the market, it has
always been classed as an ornamental rather than a fruiting variety. Of
course, the pecan part over-grows the stock. In other words, there is a
larger diameter above the union than in the stock below the union. So
far, this has not interfered with good growth and hardiness, whereas the
black walnut grafted on butternut (which is a similar combination as far
as results go) more than thirty years ago in experimental work,
indicates that this is a wrong procedure. Very few nuts were ever
gathered from grafts of black walnut on butternut, although in most
instances they continue to live and thrive.

The pecan here is subject to much the same insect pests as the black
walnut, but suffers less from hickory borers and types of insects which
seem to be like oak pruners. This might be useful later on in
maintaining healthy pecan trunks with hickory tops. Probably the early
formation of rough bark, for which the pecan is noted, may be
responsible for this. The nuts that have been produced so far have been
extremely small, but here again the writer has observed an increase in
size over the original nuts that were produced. In some seasons, at
least one tree has produced nuts of sufficient size to be good enough
for home purposes. They are nothing, however, to compare with any named
northern pecans, such as the Major and the Indiana varieties.
Practically all of these northern pecans have been tried in our
environment, and some have lived for several years. Most of them have
died because there was no congenial union of the pecan grafted on our
local bitternut stocks.