GROW PECAN TREES IN THE NORTH
Rare stands of old pecan trees are found growing as far north as southern Wisconsin. An effort to save this strain is underway.
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PHOTO SUPPLIED BY THE AUTHOR
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Pecan trees in Canada? A far-north, native species
makes it possible!
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by
R. DOUGLAS CAMPBELL AND JOHN H. GORDON, JR.
Northerners can go "nuts" over pecans, too!
Does the thought of roasted pecans and pecan pies make your
mouth water? Well, here's some good news for residents of
the northern United States and southern Canada: You may
soon be able to grow these valuable nuts right in your own
back yard!
Although the pecan is usually thought of as a resident of
the Deep South, a few native stands of these noteworthy nut
producers are known to exist along the Missouri River in
north central Missouri and the Mississippi River near
Dubuque, Iowa. Early settlers even reported finding pecans
on the Ohio River as far north as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
But, unfortunately, most of these northern strains have
long since fallen to "civilization". You can imagine the
excitement, then, when naturalists discovered a few
scattered native trees as tar north as southern Wisconsin!
INDIAN ORCHARDS
Pecan trees (which can live for 500 years) originated in
northern Texas and southern Oklahoma, and were spread along
the canoe-trails of the American Indians. (The word "pecan"
comes from the Indian word paccan : "food which
has to be cracked out of a hard shell".) These
nuts—once a staple of the Indian diet-were easy to
collect and highly nutritious, stored well, and were good
for barter.
It's believed that the native Americans planted pecans in
the vicinity of regularly used campsites to provide
"grubstakes" for their descendants. And—since the
Indians preferred to plant the biggest and thinnest-shelled
species—this "cultivation" not only increased the
growing range of the beautiful shade tree but greatly
improved the quality of its nuts as well!
But no one realized just how widely the tree had
actually been spread until recently, when some fine
examples of the "northern" pecan were found hidden away in
the rugged forests of southern Wisconsin and in the
northernmost regions of Iowa and Illinois. These old trees,
which grow as far as 300 miles north of the currently
available northern pecans, make it feasible to adapt the
nut tree to much colder climates than modem growers had
previously thought possible!
A RARE SEED OFFER
