Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting | Page 6

Juglans regia nut a name that had been applied to an entirely different nut, not knowing that this name had been previously applied. So there is a Juglans mandshurica and a Juglans regia sinensis, respectively.
Mr. Littlepage: Is the walnut, Juglans mandshurica, which you have been discussing, similar to the ordinary butternut of the Middle West, the Indiana white walnut?
President Morris: You can find nuts much alike on first inspection, but the mandshurica nut has six ridges in addition to the suture ridges. The leaf of Juglans mandshurica is sometimes a yard in length, with twenty-seven to thirty-one leaflets, sometimes--an enormous tropical leaf. The nut is usually too small to be valuable.
Mr. Littlepage: I have seen the butternut of the Middle West nearly similar, but it grows on the ordinary tree with white bark, and has small leaves.
President Morris: The general outline of the nut is about the same in both, but the air chambers are very much larger in the mandshurica than they are in the butternut and there is a marked difference in the flavor. You can distinguish them readily enough.
Mr. Littlepage: The butternut grows wild throughout the Middle West, usually along small water courses and alluvial lands. There are perhaps one hundred and fifty on a creek corner on one of my farms.
President Morris: They are very plenty here at Ithaca. In fact, you will find them in Maine and Nova Scotia.
Mr. Littlepage: I saw them in Michigan.
President Morris: I will state, that from two until four the members will view the collections, and make the tour of the Campus buildings. During that time the report on competition, or at least examination of specimens in competition, should be made, and I would like to appoint Professor Reed and Mr. Littlepage on that committee, and I will serve as ex-officio member of the committee. The other committees I can make up a little later. The next order of business will be the President's address. Mr. Littlepage, will you take the chair?

THE HICKORIES.
ROBERT T. MORRIS, M. D.
So far as we know, the hickories, belonging to the Juglandaceae, are indigenous to the North American continent only. Representatives of the group occur naturally from southern Canada to the central latitude of Mexico, in a curved band upon the map, which would be bounded upon the east by the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, and on the west roughly by the Missouri River, until that river bends east from the eastern boundary of Kansas. From the angle of that bend the hickory runs approximately southwest into Mexico.
The exact number of species has not been determined as yet, because of the open question of specific or varietal differences in some members of the family. Sargent's classification at present includes eleven species: Hicoria pecan, H. Texana, H. minima, H. myristicaeformis, H. aquatica, H. ovata, H. Carolinae-septentrionalis, H. laciniosa, H. alba. H. glabra, and H. villosa. To this list may be added H. Mexicana (Palmer), which so far seems to have been found only in the high mountains of Alvarez, near San Louis Potosi in Mexico; and H. Buckleyi from Texas, which was described once by Durand, and since that time overlooked by writers, excepting by Mrs. M. J. Young in 1873, who included the species in her "Lessons in Botany." Professor Sargent tells me that the Buckley hickory will be included in the next edition of Sargent's "Manual of the Trees of North America." This brings the number of species up to thirteen. In addition we have well marked varieties: H. glabra odorata, H. glabra pallida, and H. glabra microcarpa, making sixteen well defined hickories that have been described.
Nuts of all of these hickories are in the collection of "Edible Nuts of the World" at Cornell University, with the exception of nuts of the varieties H. glabra odorata and H. glabra pallida.
In addition to the sixteen described varieties and species of hickories in America, we have an endless variety of hybrid forms, because cross-pollenization seems to take place readily between hickories of synchronous flowering time.
Five of the hickories: H. pecan, H. Texana, H. minima, H. myristicaeformis, and H. aquatica belong to the open-bud group, while the rest belong to the scale-bud group. The winter buds of the open-bud group resemble the winter buds of the walnuts in a general way, and in artificial hybridization experiments I seem to note a close relationship between the open-bud hickories and the walnuts.
There is no more promising work for the horticulturist than crossing hickories with walnuts, and crossing hickories with each other. Five hundred years from now we shall probably find extensive orchards of such hybrids occupying thousands of acres of land which is now practically worthless. The hickories are to furnish a substantial part of the food supply of the world in the years to come.