But it is surprising how this seedling error sticks. People are going to be buying seedling trees twenty-five years hence and thinking they are getting the best to be had. Here is an article that bears me out. Here is an editor who has published a very glaring thing. This is No. 139, Vol. 113 of a paper devoted primarily to ginseng. This question was asked: "What do you know about the Pomeroy English walnut trees and fruit?" and the editor answers: "The Pomeroy walnut trees are all right and you will find at least nineteen out of twenty hardy. That is what I find here and we often get it down to 20 below zero. The nuts are of good quality. Beware of the Pomeroy trees offered by the Rochester nurserymen. These are grafted trees. Pomeroy raises his trees on their own roots, all of them are true seedlings, and that is why once in a great while one turns out tender."
President of the Northern Nut Growers Association]
MR. DORR: I believe I am as old as you are and have gone the same gait exactly. I lost my job and went to farming. I was once a college professor, too, but there are things I find now I didn't find then. Two nurserymen come to me and sell me two Grimes Golden apples. I plant them side by side and they do not turn out alike. Why not if they are grafted trees? I am not knocking, you misunderstand me, I am a truth seeker.
PROFESSOR SMITH: I believe that. We always find something we didn't buy. My head man says they jump in. I have some very fine specimens that came by accident, and of course we have a certain amount of bud variation. We find variety even by propagation. The trees will vary the same as people will but they will vary a great deal more if we get the seedlings. The successful growth of nuts, as of any other fruit, demands the use of top worked trees from the best known parentage. That is the way we do with apples, peaches, pears, and cherries. Nuts will have to come in the same class from the best known parentage. The big thing today is to find out the best known parentage and then spread knowledge so that no editor will be capable of fooling people as in the article I read a few minutes ago.
That is point number one. My point number two is a different one. It is the question of the names of the varieties of northern nut trees, particularly the names of the pecan trees. Twenty years from now there will be a million people in the North who will gravely tell us the pecan grows down South, not in Indiana, and that you can't grow them up here. I haven't a doubt there will be a million people that will believe that twenty years hence. How can we get that idea out of their heads? I think we have an agency in the mere names of the trees which will cause people to buy more, yes a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand more trees, than they do at the present time. If we pick out one name, Indiana, what does it mean? It will make a man ask questions, and if he has any curiosity at all he will want to know if it grows in Indiana and if it will grow in any state with practically the same latitude as Indiana. But if he hears the name Schley, what does it mean? Nothing, because practically everybody has quit thinking about Admiral Schley. I recall eight varieties of northern pecans three of which have good names and three perfectly worthless ones. Indiana, Kentucky and Green River are the good ones. Green River is the least valuable because it is not well enough known. Indiana and Kentucky are great names because they are the names of great states. Then we have Busseron, Warrick, Posey and Buttrick. The Busseron nut which grows up at Vincennes ought to be renamed Vincennes. There will be thousands more sold in Vincennes when it is known from the name that it did not originate in Pennsylvania but that it is a product of Vincennes. My point is this, it gets a name that shows it to be a northern product. I am not going to fight for that particular name but it is growing at Vincennes and that is a perfectly good reason for it to be named after that well known city. Now we come to the Posey. It grows on the banks of the Wabash and ought to be named the Wabash. Nobody knows anything about Posey County and what the reason is for the name, but the banks of the Wabash where it grows have been made famous in song. We can hook a sign on that pecan that will sell twenty or thirty thousand more Poseys than are sold now. Next we have the Buttrick which is found growing in Illinois. That is the reason why those Buttrick pecans will sell under the name of Illinois. It is named for a man but it doesn't mean anything in the world but women's dress patterns and is not a good name for a pecan.