hundred years ago. They are
thoroughly acclimated. We have also some of the very largest--and I am
going to catch it here because I have never used a tape line--we have
some of the very largest and oldest of the Persian walnuts in the United
States, which produce annually a big crop of the so-called "English"
walnuts. The trees produce the largest walnut I have ever seen, with the
thinnest shell. They have been there about one hundred and fifty, two
hundred and fifty or three hundred years. They are very large, larger
than the black walnuts. Whether they were planted or not I don't know.
Their history is probably this: Long Island was a sea-faring community a
few hundred years ago. These sailors who went out from the island, some
of them, loved nuts and they would bring back from other countries nuts
or other plants, and now we have a most remarkable mess of trees. We
have planted the Japanese walnut, I don't pretend to know which variety,
and it began yielding the third year and has yielded every year since,
bearing nuts in bunches like grapes.
THE CHAIRMAN: Is it a heart-shaped nut?
MR. FULLERTON: Yes. We have some pecans and some almonds. Against the
advice of everybody we planted some almond trees; they started to bear
in their third year. The trees are one solid mass of glorious big red
blossoms every spring. They bear very heavily and have for three
distinct seasons. Hard winter or easy winter, nothing has affected their
bloom and they have never had a particle of San Jose scale until this
year. The almond grows all over the island. Also the pecan. I planted
five varieties of pecans and they are still living and growing very
slowly. They have been moved three or four times. Last year we planted
seven varieties including the Van Deman and the Stuart and one Indiana
variety. One of these trees died and the others were killed back, but
they have sent up big shoots.
Two years ago an old fellow came up from the middle of the island to see
if our pecan trees were the same kind as his. His story was very
remarkable. He didn't know anything about trees. He went into town one
day and got interested in pecans and bought all the different kinds he
could find, all the different shapes. He didn't care what they
were--didn't care whether they came from Canada or Mexico--he was the
kind of a man who would plant bananas,--and he planted all those pecans
and he told me that every one of them grew. He said they all produced
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