QUESTION: Is there any difficulty in harvesting the crops, do the cones shed?
ANSWER: With some species the cones are shed before they are fully opened. They are collected and stored until the nuts can be beaten out. Other species retain the cones until the nuts have been shed. The branches are shaken and the nuts collected from tree to tree by the beaters and spread out upon the ground.
Sometimes coarse sheeting or matting is carried from tree to tree by the beaters and spread out upon the ground.
ANSWER: Pines bear rather late as a rule. I doubt if very many of them will bear in less than 10 years from seed.
QUESTION: Would it be possible to produce grafted trees?
ANSWER: Yes, without much difficulty. Undoubtedly you could get bearing wood from old trees and graft on young trees, or graft on other species. They may be grafted back and forth like the ornamental firs and spruces of the nurserymen.
QUESTION: They don't compass, do they. If you cut them off, do shoots come out of the stumps?
ANSWER: Not as a rule. Adventitious buds belong to few pine trees. They graft conifers when the stocks are young.
QUESTION: Of those that you suggest, what would be the best here?
ANSWER: The Korean, the Bungeana or lace-bark, the Swiss stone pine, and the Armandi. These can be counted on to bear in the vicinity of New York. Several other species not yet tried out may bear well here, but I have not gone over the trees on estates very extensively as yet with that question in mind.
QUESTION: Are any of these specially good for the South?
ANSWER: Yes, most of the pine nuts that I have shown here will grow south of Maryland and seven of the best pine nuts in the world belong to our Southwest.
QUESTION: Is there any more trouble with the cows and squirrels over nut pines than there is with ordinary pine trees?
ANSWER: No, excepting that you don't miss the ordinary kinds so much. It is largely a matter of comparative interest.
NOTES TAKEN ON AN EXCURSION TO MERRIBROOKE, THE COUNTRY PLACE OF DR. ROBERT T. MORRIS, AT STAMFORD, CONN., SEPTEMBER 5, 1917.
(1) Taylor shagbark hickory tree, overhanging the entrance-gate. A tree remarkable for annual bearing and for nuts of high quality, thin shell, large size, and excellent cleavage. Among hundreds of hickories examined, many of them in response to prize offers, this tree at the entrance furnishes one of the very best nuts of the lot.