Since it requires about ten years here for a native bitternut to acquire the proper size of one-half inch to three-quarter inch diameter, which is about the size necessary for grafting, you have some idea of how slowly this native species grows. The forest trees, of which there seem to be thousands on my property, very seldom exceed a diameter of six inches, yet they appear to be very old trees. Occasionally we find one that reaches the diameter of a foot or more, and generally it is one that is located where it has plenty of space to grow, as in open pasture. The tree is rather easy to graft to many varieties of hickories. No doubt if it were grown in large numbers, in the proper soil, the time for producing seedling stock ready for nursery propagation could be cut down. But it appears more likely that some northern pecan seed can be found which will produce a hardy understock to furnish a seedling of sufficient vigor and size for propagating purposes in five years or less. +Records of Bearing+ Our first successful grafting of Weschcke hickory on bitternut hickory (_Carya cordiformis_) was in 1927, but these grafts did not bear for about ten years. We know now that this was because there was a lack of pollen of the shagbark species to pollinate its blossoms. Now these trees are bearing profusely. The second batch of grafts from the original Weschcke hickory, which grew near Fayette, Iowa, was made in 1934. One mature nut from grafts made that spring was gathered from the ground in the same year, about October 1, 1934, but it had been partly consumed by a squirrel. From that year to the present, these grafted trees produced each year and never failed to mature some edible nuts up to and including this year, when there is a very large crop (6-1/2 bushels). This, then, is the 15th consecutive crop of nuts of which I have a record. During two years we had such early fall frosts that the nuts were a little shriveled and not fully mature, but still edible. In other years there were some light crops, but there never has been a crop failure in all this time. The variation in bearing is also due in part to several late frosts which in the spring in some years killed back all the foliage and newly expanding buds. Yet new dormant buds opened, some of which had flowers, and so carried on the unbroken bearing record.