Member: "With English walnut is more than one tree necessary for pollination? The male blossom appears a week or 10 days before the female."
Crane: "Persian walnuts should be used to pollinate Persian walnuts--do not depend on black walnuts. In growing Persian walnuts it is best to have trees of two or more varieties in a planting so as to provide cross pollination."
Stoke: "Persian walnuts may not pollinate black walnut, but black walnut has pollinated the Persian walnut in known instances."
MacDaniels: "Control or uncontrol of pollination is very complex."
Crane: "We find that we can not readily produce Persian x Eastern black hybrids under conditions of controlled pollination. We have found a number of natural hybrid trees but they bear very few nuts."
R. E. HODGSON, Superintendent, Southeast Experiment Station, University of Minnesota.
When hiking with a Boy Scout troop, they often asked me, "What tree is that?" In summer I could usually tell an oak from a box elder but had never had much reason to go further into the subject until the boys exposed my ignorance. In self defense I began to hunt up the names and found it a most interesting hobby.
The University of Minnesota has a branch experiment station some 80 miles south of the Twin Cities and it is here that a few acres have been roped off as a testing site for whatever trees of interest we can persuade to grow. My job is with field crops and livestock but my golf, fishing, hunting and bridge are mostly played with a spade and pruning shears or wandering around in the brush somewhere looking for something new. Our soil is a heavy clay loam of Clarion type containing plenty of lime but often poorly drained. It is very rich and productive being at one time part of Minnesota's big woods. Native trees are basswood, oak, elm, ash, walnut and their associates.
My ignorance concerning trees is still profound and becomes more apparent as acquaintance matures, but it has been a lot of fun to start about 130 varieties of trees and shrubs and watch their development. The Latin names are mostly a mystery to me, but their habits, methods and rate of growth along with soil preferences and winter survival have furnished more entertainment for me than picking shot out of a dead bird or furrowing the turf on a putting green. It has been a real thrill to see cypress, sycamore and even a few yellow poplars, survive our rugged winters.