n variety brought in by
old Dr. Fuller who spent some time as a missionary in Asia Minor and
became convinced of the importance of the pistache industry, and has
been one of the pioneers in these small beginnings. This is a six years
old tree. This is 15 years old a seedling tree near Fresno. It has borne
a good many crops of fair sized pistache nuts as large as the
Trabonella, the Sfax, the Tunis and the Alleppo and those forms which
are going to be the real pistaches of the future in this country. The
pistache in fruit is a most interesting sight. The nuts are pinkish.
They have the pinkness of the peach, almost, without the fuz and they
are covered with a thin skin which is taken off usually with the
fingers. The nut inside has a texture that makes it very attractive.
When they are first gathered it is very difficult to crack them with the
fingers but if they are put in the oven and roasted they open up and
leave a little suture into which you put your thumb nails and pry the
ends open.

This picture gives you some idea of the yield of the pistache. It is a
fair yielder, as much as fifty pounds of nuts having been borne by eight
or nine year old trees. Ours have not done as well as that. The price of
course ranges like the price of all other nuts. They sold last year for
75 cents a pound here in Washington. The kernels sell for $1.50.

This gives you a good idea of the pistache fruit with its outer shell,
the nut and the green interior. If any of you are going to California
and do not like the idea of taking up hazel nuts, walnuts and pecans, if
you will take up this industry we will help you all we can. It will grow
in Arizona, New Mexico, and we have records of them growing in Arkansas.
They will stand a temperature below zero. Trees have been known to live
through several winters even in Southern Kansas.

In all these investigations we have found the stock problem is very
important. Here we have the _Pistachia atlantica_ which has much smaller
seeds. It is this that we are using most commonly as a stock for the
pistaches that are being grown in California. Frank N. Meyer brought
back from China the seeds of the Chinese pistache, the hardiest of all
pistaches, a tree which has been almost hardy even as far north as
Washington and central Kansas. It is not only a nut tree but a
magnificent ornamental tree and grows to a very large size. We have used
it as an avenue tree leading to our plant introduction gardens in