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 188 FACTS ABOUT CROP TREES

the Persian walnut, which must be eaten uncooked and is not the equal of the black walnut for candy, cake, or ice cream. Therefore, the Persian walnut has less potential value than the black walnut in American and European diet.

THE BLACK WALNUT AREA

The territory for the black walnut industry in the United States is wide. In this respect it is almost a rival of corn. This one single species (juglans nigra) thrives in northern New York and southern Georgia, in north central Wisconsin and south central Texas, and from central Massachusetts to western Kansas. Nebraska,'* and Oklahoma, with a substantial slice of South Dakota and Minnesota included in its range. Roughly this walnut belt covers most of the Corn Belt, most of the Cotton Belt, and tens of thousands of square miles of Appalachian and other eastern hill country on which no type of agriculture can survive but grass, trees, or terraces.

BETTER VARIETIES OF BLACK WALNUT

We should never lose sight of the fact that at the present moment the black walnut industry depends on chance wild nuts and that we may find better specimens any day. Certainly we should expect to breed better nuts, much better, perhaps rivaling the Persian walnut in physical form or at least in availability of kernels. This can be brought about by deliberately breeding the best black walnuts we can find and hybridizing them with other species of walnuts.

The American nation should have two or three persons employed on this task of testing out several thousands of these hybridized seedlings of promising ancestry. Much time could be saved by grafting these young seedlings on to mature trees and thus bringing them to fruit sooner than by waiting for them to, grow large enough to produce nuts on their own tops.

12 Prof. G. E. Condra. University of Nebraska, reports that there are at least a few black walnut trees in every county of Nebraska.