THE PECAN 



{Hicoria pecan, "Briiton; Carya olroaeformis, Nuttall.) 



"The younger people making holiday 

 With bag and sack and basket, great and small, 

 IVent nutting." — Tennyson's Enoch Arden. 



When followers of Bienville, in 1740, explored the lower valley 

 of the Father of Waters, they found the Natchez Indians using a 

 meal which their squaws prepared by grinding the dried meats of 

 a nut This was "the pecan," which, according to Bancroft, "with 

 the mulberry and two kinds of wild plums, furnished the natives 

 with articles of food." From the hickory-nut, close kin to the 

 pecan, the Virginia Indians, by pounding the kernels, obtained an 

 oily liquor which they called "powcohicora," whence came the gen- 

 eric name, Hicoria, including eight or ten species, among them the 

 pecan. Hickory-nuts, and all nuts having hard shells requiring a 

 stone or hamm r to crack them, were called "paean" by the Indians ; 

 and the French settlers of the Mississippi Basin appropriated this 

 word for the name of one species, the pacane, or in English, pecan, 

 which they found growing wild in abundance throughout Louisiana. 



Hicoria pecan is a native of the United States and thrives best 

 in the rich, deep, alluvial lands bordering rivers and creeks of the 

 lower Mississippi Valley. A line drawn from Rock Island, Illinois, 

 to the Tennessee River, near Chattanooga, marks, approximately, 

 the northeastern boundary of the area in which it is found growing 

 wild. Throughout the region southwest of this line in Iowa, Illinois, 

 Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Indian Terri- 

 tory, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas, it is generally distributed, find- 

 ing there the most favorable conditions for perfect development in 

 fertile river bottoms, and, in the last two States, exceeding all other 

 trees in size and value. 



Sargent's "Silva of North America" describes the pecan as "a 

 tree 100 to 170 feet in height with a tall, massive trunk occasionally 

 six feet in diameter above its enlarged, buttressed base, and stout, 

 stately, spreading branches which form in the forest a narrow, sym- 

 metrical and inversely pyramidal, or, when they find room to spread, 

 a broad, round-topped head. The bark of the trunk is an inch to 

 an inch and a half in thickness, light-brown tinged with red and 

 deeply and irregularly divided into narrow, forked ridges, broken 

 on the surface into thick, appressed scales. * * * The leaves 

 are from 12 to 20 inches in length and are composed of from 9 to 

 17 leaflets." 



As a shade tree the pecan has strong claims. With its tall, 

 shapely trunk, and well-balanced, ample head, and bold, handsome, 

 pinnated foliage, it has all the qualities necessary for a fine, graceful 

 park tree, and by right deserves a place in every considerable plan- 

 tation. 



