The Swaim was first propagated about 1914 by W. C. Reed of Vincennes, Ind., who has found it a highly satisfactory variety, with reference to regularity and size of crops and general merit of nuts.
The Swaim is one of three varieties to tie for fourth place in the contest of the Association held in 1919. In a cracking test conducted in Washington with one pound of the 1930 crop, the nuts averaged 84 per pound and yielded 44.73 per cent of quarters, 4.62 per cent small pieces, and 0.44 per cent of bad kernels, thus making a total of 49.78 per cent of kernel. The cracking quality that year was excellent, the kernels large, plump, and bright. The quality was rich and the flavor sweet and pleasing.
As the city of South Bend is but a few miles below the Michigan state line, this variety should be well worth considering for use in test plantings throughout the lower fringe of the northernmost zone.
WESTPHAL--The Westphal is a shagbark hickory from Mr. Otto Westphal, R. F. D. 2, Kendall, Monroe County, Wis. It was awarded fourth place in the 1926 contest of the Philadelphia Society of Agriculture. So far as known, no other examination has been made of the nuts. However, the place they received in this contest, together with its latitude of origin, which is nearly 44 degrees, should commend the Westphal to the consideration of all who are interested in hickories for the northernmost region.
The filbert situation in the north is difficult to characterize. Repeated plantings have been established in this part of the country, probably since colonial days, only to perish in due time. Filbert blight was responsible for much of this loss, but so also were destructively low temperatures. Western New York now seems to be particularly favored, as trees there, notably at Geneva, bear regularly. Mr. Bixby's trees at Baldwin, Long Island, failed significantly during practically the whole of their life. Similarly, a comprehensive collection of varieties in the orchard of Dr. F. L. Baum, Boyertown, Pa., fruits practically not at all. Trees at Arlington, Va., on the government experimental farm, suffer sufficient winter injury each late winter or early spring to be quite regular in non-bearing. The varieties of all these plantings are much the same, and failure is not due to winter killing of the trees, as there is normally very little of this. It appears to be due to destruction of the flowers wrought by low temperatures following weather in January, February or March mild enough to start the flowers into bloom. At the present moment it looks as though European varieties of filbert might do much better where the trees bloom in April, as in western New York, than where flowers come out in February, as at Arlington, or in March, as on Long Island.