We Need Your Help To Find Superior English Walnut Trees

There are numerous established EW growing throughout NYS that are healthy, vigorous and which produce self-husking nuts that crack easily and release large pieces of nutmeats that have an excellent, nutty flavor, but with no bitter aftertaste.  We wish to identify these trees and collect scionwood so we can clone these trees for further testing and evaluation across the various hardiness zones and micro-climates found throughout the Empire state.  We are interested in finding trees that are doing well in all of the hardiness zones in NYS, however, we are especially interested in finding exceptional trees doing well in hardiness zones 4 and 5.  Initially we would wish to visit these trees during September/October to ascertain tree health and collect nuts to evaluate them for ease of cracking and taste.  If we think any given tree is worthy of further testing and evaluation we would then like to visit the tree during the winter to collect scionwood so that we can use either hot pipe callousing or bench grafting to make exact genetic copies for further distribution to our network of volunteers.  You yourself, relatives, friends and acquaintances may know of established trees that are growing well and which produce desirable nuts; this knowledge can be invaluable in helping us find superior EW trees and to obtain permission to visit these trees, collect and evaluate their walnuts, and potentially obtain scionwood to clone (make genetically identical copies) of these trees.  If you know of such a tree please reach out to Carl Albers at cwalbers@yahoo.com.