42 31 40

West Tennessee Variety, Breeding and Propagation Tests, 1947

AUBREY RICHARDS, M.D., Whiteville, Tennessee

I surely wish I could have made the trip to the Northern Nut Growers
Association meeting, but I simply had "too many hens setting" at that
time. I've been waiting for you [the Secretary] to show up down here for
the big news--at least it is to me--if it holds up. If you have ever
tried to propagate heartnuts on Japanese walnut you know what it means.

Here it is: Rhodes, Wright and Fodermaier heartnuts patch-budded on 10
Japanese understocks (all I had) took 100%. The same 3 varieties as a
control on black walnut gave a take of only 80%.

These trees give me a chance to check on the performance of black versus
Japanese stocks for these varieties. From last year's propagation,
Rhodes on black is beating Rhodes on Japanese and Bates (which was not
used this year) seems fully as good on black walnut stocks.

An isolated tree of Bates did not set a nut. Its pollen all shed before
the pistils were receptive. An isolated tree of Rhodes bore a full crop.

Incidentally, a weak chlorine bleach (Clorox) after these heartnuts are
hulled does for them what peroxide does for the ladies and makes them
look very inviting.

Stambaugh again led in topworked black walnuts, bearing its second
consecutive full crop on a 3-year graft. It seems to be immune to
whatever it is that causes the other nuts to turn black, shrivel and
drop off from the time they set until near maturity. Thomas was second.
Snyder, Sparrow and Myers had no crop. I budded 25 more trees of
Stambaugh this year.

The Carpathian Persian walnut that we pollinated this spring with Wright
heartnuts [no other walnuts were shedding at the time] matured a nice,
large, rather pointed, heavy nut. It also matured another nut higher on
the tree than we could reach with the catkins, but I'm sure it's a
blank. It is still more pointed than the well-filled nut. The good nut
is stored for planting.

Rush hazel that set fruit last year with the help of a bouquet of native
[West Tennessee] catkins set only 5 nuts this year "on its own." These I
have also stored to plant.

I didn't have enough stocks to utilize all the pollen-sterile Japanese
chestnut buds you sent me [in early September]. I put in most of them,
even in some cases several to the stock to see what percentage of takes
we would get with the twin T. [See 1946 Report of