THE PRESIDENT: That is, the pecan top killed the native right in its own habitat.
DR. STABLER: How about the acidity of the soil on that higher land? Was that tested?
MR. C. A. REED: Well, there would be so very little difference in the level of the soil that I imagine the acidity would be about the same. When I said "high land" I meant land that wasn't over-flowed.
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Reed, you made the qualified statement awhile ago that where a man had a choice between hickory and pecan stock for top-working, he should take the pecan. Now, in the North there are magnificent stands of native hickory--the Appalachians are full of it from end to end. Would you advise him not to bother with that?
MR. C. A. REED: There is another question that enters there. I don't believe that you can grow good pecans on hickory stocks on uplands where there is not moisture enough in the soil to grow good pecans on pecan stocks. It takes moisture to make pecans, and if there isn't enough in the upland soil to grow pecan trees on pecan roots I don't believe there is any evidence to indicate that you can get them on hickory roots.
MR. LITTLEPAGE: Mr. President, the hickory only grows about six or eight weeks every summer, and the pecan grows all summer. I think that answers the question.
PROF. HUTT: A case came up last year in the National Nut Growers' Association that was quite interesting. Mr. Smithwick, of Americus, Georgia, brought to the meeting and exhibited a number of varieties of pecan grown on hickory--fourteen varieties, standard varieties, grafted on a hickory tree, and they were remarkable for their small size. They were remarkably small--smaller than ordinary, woods-grown seedling pecans. There were Schleys and Delmas, and various other varieties that you could recognize by the form of the nuts, but exceedingly small. I believe Mr. Reed's point is the crux of the whole situation, that if you have a good supply of moisture they will make nuts of a pretty fair size, but unless the moisture supply is very large you get diminutive nuts. These were matured in the South. The hickory is such a slow grower in comparison with the pecan--that is, the common varieties--that it can't keep up with the pecan top.