Nut Grove Home
Recent activities
Click on images
for larger view.
Dr. Mac with grafting
knife in hand.
Terracing of the site
circa 1923.
Early plantings at
the nut grove.
6 trees still retain their original labels.
Grafted trees in the '30s.
Grafts still visible today.
'Woodlot' on early map shows grove location.
Early handout lists cultivars.
Nearly 20 years after retiring, MacDaniels
wrote the Extension classic, 'Nut Growing
in the Northeast.'
(5.5 MB .pdf file).
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The now-mature trees at the MacDaniels Nut Grove were planted about 70 years ago by Cornell professor, Laurence H. MacDaniels (1888-1986). Dr. Mac, as he was known, was a pioneering tree-crops researcher. He served on the faculty of Cornell's Department of Pomology from 1919 to 1956, but remained professionally active until his death 30 years later.
MacDaniels planted literally hundreds of nut trees in the Ithaca area, including walnuts, hickories, filberts, chestnuts, and pecans. The Plantations' Class of '01 Nut Tree Collection is probably the best-known planting. But the most numerous and greatest concentration of nut trees (more than 100) is on the 5-acre site along Cascadilla Creek then known simply as "the woodlot." The site was cleared and terraced in 1923. MacDaniels planted nut tree seedlings and grafted promising varieties onto the rootstock in the '20s and '30s. The site was largely abandoned several decades ago and gradually reverted to unmanaged secondary forest, choked with a dense undergrowth of honeysuckle.
Dr. Mac left more than 39 cubic feet of paper in the Kroch Library archives, but surprisingly little sheds any light on the history of the MacDaniels Nut Grove. So far, we have not found any plot plan or map associating individual nut trees on the site with specific variety names. But it is clear that most of the hickories and walnuts were deliberately planted because of their obvious graft unions and the orderly rows of trees on parts of the site.
The identity of six individual trees is not in question. Remarkably, Dr. Mac's original metal identification tags, bearing the name and accession number of the cultivar, are still attached. It's likely that all of the original nut trees were similarly labeled, but the labels were engulfed by bark as the trees grew.
The species MacDaniels planted include:
- Shagbark hickory (Carya ovata)
- Shellbark hickory (Carya laciniosa)
- Mockernut hickory (Carya tomentosa)
- Pignut hickory (Carya glabra)
- Pecan (Carya illionensis)
- Black walnut (Juglans nigra)
- Japanese walnut (Juglans ailantifolia)
- Filbert (Corylus sp.)
- Chinese chestnut (Castanea molissima)
Scores of hickories and walnuts remain on the site, but there is only one filbert and only three or four struggling chestnuts. (Most perished in the deep freeze of 1933-1934 when temperatures dropped to -35F.) In addition to the nut tree overstory, Dr. Mac planted edible mid-story fruit trees including pawpaw (Asiminia triloba) and persimmon (Diospyros sp.), which still survive on the site. An old notebook suggests that he planted blueberries as well, but none remain.
Although agroforestry did not exist as a recognized discipline during Dr. Mac's lifetime, his experiences with nut and other trees culminated in his advocacy of a very similar concept called "tree crops agriculture." In 1979 he and professor Art Lieberman published a paper in BioScience, "Tree Crops: A neglected source of food and forage for marginal land," in which they described tree crops agriculture as:
...the growing of perennial crops in such a way that the soils are at virtually no time exposed to erosive forces, as contrasted with mechanized orchard culture. In its broadest sense, although primarily trees are concerned, the concept includes shrubs and perennial herbaceous plants ... .
He expressed his philosophy well in a 1977 extension bulletin, Nut Culture in North America:
"Planting nut trees is particularly appropriate because of the loss in recent years of the American elm to the Dutch elm disease and the decline of the white ash and hard maple in some areas. Fence rows and other areas now growing up to weeds and brush if planted to appropriate nut trees would contribute substantially to future food supply, erosion control, wildlife refuges, and in the case of black walnut, to a valuable timber resource…planting of nut trees for noncommercial purposes should be encouraged . . . . Whenever a shade tree is planted it might as well be a nut tree of one of the better varieties."
For an update on what's been happening in the nut grove since its 'rediscovery' in 2002, see Recent activities.
© Copyright, Department of Horticulture, Cornell University.
Project coordinator: Ken Mudge, kwm2@cornell.edu
Website design: Craig Cramer cdc25@cornell.edu
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