planting, I saved the tops and grafted them to the young trees with
a fair degree of success. In a few years, I was using my own trees to
fill up spaces left vacant by the mortality of the Pennsylvania-grown
trees. I did not neglect seeding to provide stocks of the Eastern black
walnut also, which is almost a different species from the local black
walnut, but these seedling trees proved to be tender toward our winters
and only a few survived. After they had grown into large trees, these
few were grafted to English walnuts. The difference between the Eastern
black walnut and the local native black walnut is quite apparent when
the two trees are examined side by side. Even the type of fruit is
different, although I do not know of any botanical authority who will
confirm my theory that they are different species. They are probably to
be considered as geographically distinct rather than as botanically
different species.

For several years I continued to graft black walnuts on butternut trees
with the intention of converting hundreds, perhaps thousands, of these
wild trees over to prolific, cultured black walnuts. I did not realize
my mistake in doing this until ten years had elapsed. I believed that
since the tops were growing, the trees would shortly produce nuts. Today
they are still growing, bigger and better, yet most of these grafted
trees bear no nuts, having only a crop of leaves. A few nuts result from
these grafts, however, and some of the trees bear a handful of nuts from
tops of such size that one would expect the crops to be measured in
bushels. The kind which bore the best was the Ohio variety. In another
chapter, I shall relate parallel experience in hickory grafting which I
carried on simultaneously with grafting of black walnut on butternut.

My first big disappointment in my black walnut orchard was when, in
about 1930, having a fairly good crop of nuts, I unsuccessfully
attempted to sell them to local stores. They were not interested in
anything except walnut kernels and to them, a wild walnut kernel was the
same as a cultivated one as long as it was highly-flavored. This so
cooled my enthusiasm and hopes for a black walnut orchard that I ceased
experimenting with them except to try out new varieties being discovered
through nut contests carried on by the Northern Nut Growers'
Association. The 1926 contest produced a number of black walnut
possibilities, among them being such named varieties as the Rohwer,