32 The Bulletin. 



plants are characteristically slow to bear, and yield only very meagre 

 crops. The reminiscences of our boyhood rambles at nutting time 

 will tell us that the forest was not the place where we gathered our 

 nuts, but in the glades and open meadows, where the trees had no 

 struggle for light and food against encroaching vegetation. Those 

 that gave us the large crops of fine nuts were in the rich soils along 

 the streams and in the open meadows, where life was easier. It is 

 from domesticated plants, farthest removed from the wild, that the 

 earliest crops and largest production is obtained. The pecan tree can 

 scarcely be said yet to be domesticated, but has for centuries been a 

 forest tree. During these ages in the wild it has normally acquired a 

 habit for late and shy bearing, which is inherent in every seedling- 

 tree. Why, then, should we be so unreasonable as to expect in a 

 seedling pecan the prodigality of early and heavy bearing, when 

 nature has for centuries trained it to the most persistent and rigid 

 economy ? From their inbred nature and long habit, pecan seedlings 

 are normally slow of bearing and meagre in cropping. This ex- 

 plains the numerous complaints that come in from all parts of the 

 country regarding the late and shy bearing of seedling pecan trees. 

 While the normal tendency of seedling pecan trees, as has been 

 said before, is to late and shy bearing, there are, as with other 

 plants, some very exceptional and precocious individuals. These are 

 doubtless the product of some former favorable environment, prob- 

 ably of an accidental nature, with the parent tree. It is on these 

 very few precocious individual trees that the future success of pecan 

 growing depends. These trees are to become the parents of the ideal 

 pecan of the future, just as the famous sire, Hambletonian, stands 

 in the history of the thoroughbred horse of to-day. It is an advantage 

 rather than a loss to us that the pecan will not "come true," for this 

 tends to eliminate the seedling or "pewee' pecan, and leaves us the 

 uniform product resulting from trees budded and grafted with fine, 

 high-class precocious varieties. The first milestone in pecan culture 

 was the finding of the first high-class seedling which became worthy 

 of naming and propagating. Many such milestones have now been 

 passed, and we have to-day many high-class named varieties of pecan 

 trees that are beginning to bear early and fire producing heavy crops 

 of large, meaty nuts. The history of one or two of our standard 

 named varieties of pecans will illustrate this point. 



EARLY HEAVY BEARING VARIETIES. 



Georgia Giant* — The original Georgia Giant was one of something 

 over 1,000 seedling trees set out in 1886 at DeWitt, Georgia, by Mr. 

 G. M. Bacon. The trees were set on about thirty acres of hard red- 

 clay land, from which the top soil had been washed and was there- 



"Herbert C. White in The Nut Grower. 



