ated their ability to ripen
their nuts in a short season.

Some of our Persian walnut trees are growing in the partial shade of
larger black walnut trees. We prefer to keep these larger trees as they
may be valuable stocks to be grafted to the superior varieties that one
is always hoping will appear later on. This condition gives a good
opportunity to observe the effect of shade. There seems to be no doubt
that even light shade is detrimental in our latitude to the Persian
walnut and results not only in more spindling and unsymmetrical growth
but also interferes with proper ripening of the wood making it more
subject to winter injury.

One difficulty with the Persian walnuts in the East is premature falling
of the nuts. The female flowers on the young Persian trees that we have
seen are usually more numerous than with black walnuts of the same size
and age, but even hand pollinating often fails to give a good set of
nuts. Last spring we took pollen from eight of our Persian trees to the
pomology department of our State College of Agriculture for germinating.
The best sample showed 45% viable pollen; the next best 15% and the rest
from O to 5%. This had been collected and stored for several weeks
according to the methods given by Dr. Cox in the annual report for 1943,
page 58. It is possible that this lack of viability may be due to some
soil deficiency such as insufficient lime or boron. Prof. Schuster of
the Oregon station writes that they find that Persian walnuts readily
accept good Persian pollen but not black walnut or butternut pollen. If
the viability of the pollen falls below 50% they consider it
unsatisfactory. On some of the Oregon soils an application of boron in
the form of ordinary borax under the trees in the spring has greatly
helped in getting a crop of nuts. This should be well worth trying in
the eastern states.

The filbert crop this year is better than usual. Out of over a thousand
crosses between Rush and Winkler with European and Pacific Coast
varieties, in our estimation, only one has proven worthy of propagation
considering size, flavor, abundance of bearing and resistance to filbert
blight. Some growers think lightly of blight but our experience in
fighting it through the years in cutting out cankered wood has convinced
us of the futility of this means of control in infested areas. Control
measures may apparently succeed for a time but when conditions of
moisture, heat and air movement are ju