PRESIDENT REED: We are simply continuing our program. This afternoon we were in session at the Annex and moved over here this evening so as to be able to present what we have here so we could entertain more of you than we could over there to advantage. You know that most all men have a hobby along some line or other, and those who constitute our leaders, whom we have to look to, and along the line of nut trees of different species and so on, we have learned to look to Dr. Morris as one of the leaders. I have great pleasure in introducing to you Dr. Robert T. Morris, of New York, who will address you on the hickory.
ROBERT T. MORRIS, M. D., NEW YORK CITY, N. Y.
When people speak of the "hickory" without qualification, they are apt to have in mind some one kind of hickory which belonged to their boyhood environment. All other kinds which they happened to know, were qualified in some way, very much as the word "fish" in Boston stands for the codfish only, other kinds of fish in the world being described by qualifying names. In the northeast the hickory means the shagbark. In Missouri it means the shellbark. Elsewhere the pignut and the mockernut are called "hickory." Interest in the subject has increased so rapidly of late years that we must all of us be more particular in our descriptions and add qualifying names, speaking always of the shagbark hickory, pecan hickory, or bitternut hickory as the case may be. Sargent describes fifteen species of hickory and in addition a large number of varieties by environment and by hybridization. There is a Mexican hickory, making sixteen species for the North American continent, and the late Mr. F. N. Meyer, Agricultural Explorer from Washington, has found a hickory in China. Previous to this discovery, it was believed that the hickories belonged to the North American continent only.
Botanists divide the hickories into two groups, Apocarya and Eucarya. For convenience in every day conversation, it might be well for us to speak of the "open-bud" group and the "closed bud" group. _Apocarya_ or the "open bud" group, includes the pecan hickory, _Carya pecan_, the bitternut hickory, _Carya cordiformis_, the bitter pecan, _Carya texana_, the water hickory, _Carya aquatica_, the nutmeg hickory, _Carya myristicaeformis_, and the Chinese hickory, _Carya cathayensis_. The winter buds of this group will be seen on examination to show the minute, snugly curled-up leaves which are ready to burst forth when the springtime sun opens the fronds of the ferns which have forced their way through the hard ground with clenched fists. The scale buds in the open-bud group do not cover the tiny leaf forms completely.