PROMISING NEW FRUITS. 317 



SOVEREIGN PECAN. 

 ( SYNONYM : Texas Prolific. ) 



In 1895, shortly after he had mastered the art of ring-budding the 

 pecan and thus had been enabled to propagate and disseminate the 

 San Saba variety from the original tree of that sort, which stands 

 on his place, Mr. E. E. Risien, of Rescue, Tex., planted San Saba 

 nuts from the original tree for the purpose of growing a considera- 

 ble orchard of seedlings of that variety. He did this in the expecta- 

 tion that a large proportion of the seedlings would come true to the 

 parent, which they failed to do. Certain of the young seedlings 

 early gave evidence of distinctiveness, through their leaf and wood 

 characters, so that as early as 1897 he began top-budding from them 

 on to bearing trees in order to determine as quickly as possible their 

 fruiting quality and other characteristics. A bud from one of these 

 which was thus top-worked in 1897 on an old bearing tree on the 

 San Saba River bottom bore its first nuts in 1898. The precocity 

 thus indicated and the large size, bright color, plump kernel, and 

 fine quality of the new sort caused Mr. Risien to name it " Sover- 

 eign v early in 1899, at the suggestion of Mr. A. A. Wheeler, of San 

 Francisco, to whom some of the first crop of nuts had been sent. The 

 exact location in the orchard of the original seedling tree not having 

 been recorded, Mr. Risien began nursery propagation from the bear- 

 ing top-worked branch and disseminated the variety in the form of 

 1 -year-old ring-budded trees under the name " Sovereign " in 1900. 

 A brief characterization of the variety by the writer, based on speci- 

 mens of the crops of 1899 and 1900, was published under that name 

 in the Cyclopedia of American Horticulture in 1901. 6 Meanwhile 

 Mr. Risien listed the variety as " Texas Prolific " in his price list for 

 1900-1901, which was apparently issued in the fall of 1900. As the 

 latter name consists of more than one word and is otherwise in conflict 

 with the Code of Nomenclature of the American Pomological So- 

 ciety, which has also been adopted by the National Nut Growers' 

 Association, the name " Sovereign " is recognized as having prece- 

 dence and is adopted in this publication. The top-budded branch 

 above referred to continued to thrive and bear good crops until the 

 season of 1903, when a June freshet in the San Saba River flooded 

 the entire bottom well into the tops of the old bearing trees. The 

 force of the flood and the weight of the driftwood that it carried 

 broke the entire budded branch with its load of nuts from the tree. 

 Fortunately the branch was discovered by Mr. Risien after the flood 

 subsided and before the leaves upon it had wilted. He immediately 

 cut all available bud wood from it, with which he budded about 200 



a Yearbook 1904, p. 413. 



6 Cyclopedia of American Horticulture, Vol. Ill, p. 1256, 1901. 



