444 a:n^nual repoet Smithsonian institution, loil. 



the leaf from plants of two years' growth, I should specify it as the Jnglans 

 alJya, foliolis lanceolatis, acuminatis, serratis, tomentosis, fructu luinore, 

 ovato, compresso, vix insculpto, dulci, putamine tenerrimo. It grows on the 

 Illinois, Wabash, Ohio and Mis-sissippi. It is spoken of by Don UUoa under 

 the name of pacanos, in his Noticias Americanas, Entrat. 6. 



Not long after Jefferson's description had appeared, Dr. Humphry 

 Marshall, of Philadelphia, brought out his little book entitled Arbus- 

 trum Americaniim/ in which he refers verj^ vaguely and inaccurately 

 to the pecan under the binomial Juglans 'pecan^ " the Pecan, or 

 Illinois Hickery." The range noted is limited to the Illinois countrj'', 

 probably indicating that he drew his information from travelers 

 wdio knew of the tree in its northern range only. The description does 

 not suffice to clothe the name proposed by him, and, in mj?- judg- 

 ment, the earlier and more accurate Latin diagnosis of Jefferson 

 should occupy the first place in the nomenclatorial history of this 

 plant. 



THE NAME PECAN. 



It may perhaps not be out of place to refer briefly to the variety 

 of common names by which this nut has been known. It seems 

 to have been referred to by earl}^ Spanish explorers in Texas under 

 the general term neuces^ meaning nuts^ or by the more specific term 

 nogcdes^ meaning walnuts. There seems to bo no evidence that the 

 Indians in that part of the country designated these nuts by any 

 characteristic term, nothing to suggest the word pecan or any of its 

 modifications. The French explorers. Father Marest (1712), at the 

 northern edge of the pecan range, and Penicaut (1701), at Natchez, 

 independently fell to using the term pacane^ the native name found 

 in use by both of them. Later French writers, in describing the 

 Mississippi Valley or its tributaries, mention the pecane. Ulloa, 

 publishing his explorations in the Mississippi Valley in 1772, inilike 

 his earlier compatriots, mentions this same name under the Spanish 

 guise pacanos. This evidence seems to indicate that the term pecane 

 or some modification of it was the name used probably from time 

 immemorial by the Indian tribes along the Mississippi and its 

 tributaries. This term was probably not used by the tribes living 

 to the westward in the country drained by the rivers which directly 

 flow into the Gulf. 



The terms " Illinois nut " or " Illinois hickory " were probably 

 given by the colonists of the East, in ignorance of the Indian name 

 that had found acceptance and use in the Mississippi Valley by 

 French and Spanish from Kaskaskia to the Gulf. Probably the term 

 " Mississippi Nut," by which George "Washington designated it in an 



^ Marshall, Humphry, Arbustrum Americanum ; The American Grove or an alphabet- 

 ical catalogue of the forest trees and shrubs, native in the American United States, ar- 

 ranged according to the Linnaean system, etc. Philadelphia. 1785 : C9. • 



