192 FACTS ABOUT CROP TREES
New Brunswick, thence along the higher Appalachians to northern Georgia and Alabama. The kernels of the better specimens come out of the shell more easily than do those of black walnuts. The butternut offers interesting crop possibilities for the northern section of the United States. Some people prefer its nuts to the black walnut. A selected grafted variety, the Deming, is reported by J. F. Jones. Lancaster. Pennsylvania, to bear when it is two feet high.
The Chinese walnut (number five above) was long classified as a separate species, but botanists have now become convinced that it is merely a variety (suggestive fact) of the Persian walnut. Therefore, it has been discussed, either directly or by implication, in Chapter XVI.
The Japanese walnut is a species of exceeding promise. In its native home it grows throughout the climatic range* of Japan, embracing climates as dissimilar as those of Nova Scotia and Georgia and all between, and accentuated by the reeking humidity of the Japanese summer with its strong fungus tendencies.
The tree also thrives in a great range of soil from sand to clay. Apparently it is a veritable goat in its feeding habits. This makes it a very rapid grower, and in rich soils a single leaf is sometimes a yard long. (See Fig. 83.)
It is precocious, some seedlings producing fruits at four or five years of age.
It bears its fruit in long clusters and is very prolific.* to the Georgian Bay and Ottawa River. It has been planted in Manitoba and does fairly well there when protected from cold winds. West of Portage la Prairie the writer observed a grove of seventy-seven trees. Some of these were about thirty-five feet tall with a trunk diameter of ten inches and had borne several crops of good nuts."
3 James Neilson reports (personal conversation) Japanese walnut, heart nuts. Seed planted in the spring of 1924 at Winnipeg. July 20, 1927, tallest tree was twelve feet high, one and one-half inches in diameter. They are also growing nicely at St. Anne's in Quebec near the mouth of the Ottawa River.
- "In a not especially favorable location in Sharp's backyard at Riverton. New Jersey, is a fifteen-year-old Japanese walnut, which receives no espe-
