fact.

Butternut trees are good feeders. They respond well to cultivation and
lend themselves to being grafted upon, although, from my own experience,
I question their usefulness as a root stock. I have found that when I
grafted black walnuts, English walnuts or heartnuts on butternut stock,
the top or grafted part of the tree became barren except for an
occasional handful of nuts, even on very large trees. Since this has
occurred throughout the many years of my nut culture work, I think it
should be given serious consideration before butternut is used as a root
stock for other species of nut trees.

[Illustration: _Weschcke Butternut. Smooth shallow convolutions of shell
allow kernels to drop out freely. Drawing by Wm. Kuehn._]

I had the good luck to discover an easy-cracking variety of butternut in
River Falls, Wisconsin, in 1934, which I have propagated commercially
and which carries my name. A medium-sized nut, it has the requisite
properties for giving it a varietal name, for it cracks mostly along the
sutural lines and its internal structure is so shallow that the kernel
will fall out if a half-shell is turned upside down. I received one of
those surprises which sometimes occur when a tree is asexually
propagated when I grafted scions from this butternut on black walnut
stock. The resulting nuts were larger than those on the parent tree and
their hulls peeled off with almost no effort. Whether these features
continue after the trees become older is something I shall observe with
interest.

[Illustration: _Self hulling Butternut. Weschcke variety. Drawing by Wm.
Kuehn._]