walnut trees, when young,
will bear pistillate blossoms for several years before they bear
staminate blossoms (catkins). This fact has delayed us in securing nuts
from these seedling varieties and has compelled us to resort to hand
pollination. However, they are now beginning to produce both kinds of
blossoms.

The first one to bear was in 1944, when one tree bore twelve nuts which
had resulted from hand pollination with pollen sent us by Mr. Reed. This
variety appears to be the most promising one that has borne so far. We
have named it Littlepage and have had a booklet printed which describes
it fully. We will be glad to mail a copy to anyone who wishes. We have
now found a good pollinizer for Littlepage, our No. S22 seedling. This
variety produces pollen at just the right time, some of which I used
this spring to hand pollenize the Littlepage tree. A fine crop of nuts
is now on this tree as the result of this pollination.

Last year (1946) we had a few nuts from each of five other seedling
varieties. While we did not consider any of them equal to Littlepage,
they were all worth growing and compare quite favorably with English
walnuts as found in our markets. This year we have nuts on each of
eleven varieties, five of them and the same ones that bore last year and
six new ones. Now that these seedlings are beginning to bear we are able
to cull out any that prove to be very inferior. As our facilities are
far too limited to thoroughly test the promising varieties, we have
started to propagate them and offer them in many parts of the country
and subject them to many different conditions. Thus it should be only a
matter of time until the truly worthy varieties will prove themselves.
If we were wealthy we could propagate them and distribute them free of
charge but I doubt if it would prove as satisfactory as it is to charge
for them, as it seems to be a trait of human nature to take better care
of that which costs us something. We will not name these new varieties
at present but will put them out under their test numbers. Later the
ones that prove best can be named.

To facilitate the distribution of these new varieties we are getting out
a folder showing natural size pictures of the nuts of the six varieties
which were produced last year, with a brief description of each. I am
very sorry that I was unable to get these folders from the printer
before coming to this convention. However we will have them very soon
and wil