PECAN 



(Hicoria Pecan) 



THE name is pecan in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, 

 Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, 

 Iowa, and Kansas ; pecan nut and pecan tree in Louisiana. The name 

 is of Indian origin, and means walnut. The tree's natural range is 

 smaller than the present area in which the tree is found, for it has been 

 extensively planted in recent years. It is found as far north as Iowa, 

 south to Texas, and east to Alabama and Kentucky. The highest 

 development of the wild tree is in the lower Ohio valley. Forest trees 

 were once found there which were said to be six feet in diameter and 170 

 high. Specimens that large would be hard to find now. 



The pecan is a hickory. As to wood, it is the poorest of the hickor- 

 ies, and as to nuts it is the best. Its compound leaves are from twelve 

 to twenty inches long with from nine to seventeen leaflets. The latter 

 are from four to eight inches in length, and from one to three wide. The 

 first pairs on the petiole are smallest. The fruit grows in clusters of 

 from three to eleven, the number exceeding any other hickory. The nuts 

 are four-angled, and long for their width. 



The wood of pecan has disappointed those who have attempted 

 to use it like other hickories It does not differ much from them in 

 appearance, but it falls low in mechanical tests. In strength, toughness, 

 and stiffness it is inferior to the poorest of the other hickories. It has 

 less than half the strength and half the stiffness of shagbark hickory. 

 It is a fairly good fuel, but is high in ash. 



The inferior quality of the wood has saved many a pecan tree from 

 the sawmill and the wagon shop. Fine trunks stand near public high- 

 ways, along river banks, and in fields, while all merchantable hickories 

 of other species have been sent to market. The uses of the wood are 

 few. If some of it goes to wagon shops or to factories where agricultural 

 vehicles are made, it is employed for parts which are not required to 

 endure strain or sustain sudden jars. 



Fortunately it is a tree with a value of another kind. It is the 

 most important nut tree of the United States at this time, and it promises 

 to remain so. The forest-grown pecans were an article of food for 

 Indians who once lived in the region, and though white settlers who 

 succeeded the Indians as occupants of the land, depended less upon forest 

 fruits than the red men had done, yet the pecan was often of supreme 

 importance in the early years of settlement. The nuts have constituted 

 an article of commerce ever since the region had markets. 



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