The Pecan

by James McWilliams

  By the early 1890s, it was not uncommon for popular agricultural manuals to cautiously tout the virtues of several pecan varieties that were improved. William P. Corsa, author of Nut Culture in the United States, advised, for example, that “trees be always budded or grafted with varieties that are known to bear regular crops of large, well-shaped nuts.”20 Sound as this advice was, though, it has to be placed in context. Specifically, we must be careful not to assume that as a result of Antoine’s graft and the promotional efforts that followed, the pecan industry promptly abandoned passive cultivation, favored this new agricultural technology, and charged into the twentieth century. Turns out nothing of the sort happened. Instead, what did happen—for very good reasons—was about fifty years of resistance, skepticism, and foot-dragging by farmers loyal to the allure and security of tradition, comfortable with the place they had carved out between the wild and the sown, and eager to stay there.

  Despite the innovative and entrepreneurial efforts of men such as Antoine, Bonzano, and Frotscher—not to mention scores of unnamed extension agents, national agricultural publications, and plant breeders—the transition to large, homogeneous, tidily maintained orchards with consistent commercial production value was more evolutionary than revolutionary. This gradual, often fitful, transition is consistent with scientific and technological change in general. Still, it is noteworthy that for a half century after Antoine’s graft, Bonzano’s awards, and Frotscher’s promotion, pecan farmers throughout the South responded to the clarion call for “improvement” with a noble quality not uncommon in the agricultural trenches: doubt. For all the excitement in Philadelphia, reactions in the fields were characterized by a suspicion of outside “expertise,” an adherence to tradition, a preference for piecemeal change, an appreciation of the low costs of passive cultivation, and, most importantly, a desire to manage agricultural change on the local level. Future pecan orchardists would graft when they were ready to graft. No sooner, no later.

  While it is fair to say that the Centennial ultimately changed the way pecans were grown, and it’s equally fair to say that all pecan improvement owes its existence to the horticultural talents of a slave gardener, it is just as important to note that this change was slow to take off, no matter what the experts were advising, and that pecan growers had excellent reasons for not grafting.21 A 1912 USDA publication succinctly captured the prevailing climate of suspicion among everyday pecan growers. “The pecan,” it declared, “must be done by asexual methods of propagation, i.e., by grafting or budding.” So the word was out, but few were listening. The report continued, “In contradiction to this [advice], certain tree dealers have recently advanced the claim that grafted and budded trees are proving unsatisfactory, asserting that they are shorter lived and more subject to disease than seedlings; that they are otherwise objectionable and are being discarded.”22 The claim that seedlings were more resistant to disease was likely correct, as the genetic diversity of seedlings would have offered the trees more protection than trees asexually propagated. Nonetheless, the report bristled at the claim. “Evidence to support this claim,” it huffed, “is entirely lacking.” The very fact that such information was in circulation among farmers, however, meant that they would be extra cautious about abandoning something as simple as planting a seed for something as complex as grafting a seedling, or, even more threatening to one’s independence, purchasing one from a nursery. Autonomy, or at least the perception of it, was critical to these farmers. With the advent of pecan grafting, a quiet rift thus formed between agricultural scientists and farmers. Bridging this divide—and how to do so—became a matter of the utmost importance.23 In a sense, as we will see in the next chapter, an information war was taking shape.

  From the pecan growers’ perspective, there were powerful forces working against the adoption of grafted trees. For one thing, the startup costs were substantial because it took ten years for the returns to flow in from grafted varieties, assuming they turned out to be healthy. Doubling this risk was the fact that farmers would be forgoing returns from wild pecans at the same time, since labor and land would be consumed by the grafts. In addition to this economic factor’s mitigation against the adaptation of grafting in native regions, there was very likely a subtle cultural issue in play as well. Farmers who were passively cultivating pecans were doing so as a supplemental endeavor—usually raising cattle was their main business. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that men whose primary occupation was raising cattle were hesitant about the gender and status implications of trading in the title of cowboy for that of pecan orchardist.

  These considerations notwithstanding, one factor that did nudge growers to think about embracing improved varieties was the potential to expand pecans beyond the native range. Many manuals at the time explained that if the soil was right and the seedlings were hardy, geographical expansion of the pecan to areas where it traditionally did not grow (such as inland areas) was quite possible. According to a 1902 publication, planters could plant “in almost any kind of soil” if there was proper fertilization and irrigation. An interesting trend developed on the back of this advice. During the second half of the nineteenth century, when grafters, tinkerers, and gardeners such as Antoine and Frotscher were actively improving pecan trees to enhance uniformity and yield, there emerged a tendency among agriculturists to move with caution into new territory, primarily by experimentally planting pecans in places well beyond their native locales. Growing their crop in non-native locations encouraged pecan farmers to grow with non-native seeds—seeds that were likely to do well in unfamiliar soil. Fertilizers and irrigation might nurture wild seedlings for a while, but eventually these growers became a cohort that would be more open to grafts than were those farmers working wild pecans on native soil. New land needed new seed, and farmers on that new land, not surrounded by wild pecans, were more inclined to try them out, even if only experimentally.24

  Enthusiasm over the mere possibility of bringing pecans to non-native regions of the United States picked up steam during the latter decades of the century. This willingness to experiment with new seeds in new locales proved to be a prerequisite for adopting pecan improvement. Not that growers were going to risk substantial labor and land on such a venture—at least not initially. A California newspaper, for example, advocated planting pecans—but only along railroad lines. Not only could the trees “attain great size in a few years,” but the presence of pecan groves would provide wood for fencing, nuts for eating, and shade “to modify the summer heats.” If farmers grew “pecan trees along the Sacramento River,” they could avoid importing hickory wood to build wagons, an expense that ran $100 for 1,000 feet of wood. Another California article praised “the practicality of growing hard timber on our treeless plains” (a very popular idea during the homesteading era) and urged in particular “the cultivation of the pecan tree.” By 1922, the Christian Science Monitor could report: “Experiments made at California show that pecan trees will thrive there.”25 California had never seen a native pecan tree, but the idea of domesticated imports began to gain traction, if only on modest plots for experimental rather than commercial purposes.

  It wasn’t just the west coast that was branching out into pecan cultivation. A report in the Floridian insisted (erroneously) that the pecan “grows as well [in Florida] as on the banks of the Mississippi,” arguing (correctly) that it “can be made as productive as any crop in America.” Thus pecans were moving into new territories by the late nineteenth century, with at least some vocal, if exaggerated, encouragement. The combination of nascent progress in pecan grafting during an era of agricultural improvement (with considerable governmental incentive to plant trees) and a growing consumer interest in pecans was indeed leading many farmers to expand pecan cultivation beyond the native habitat. As one newspaper urged: “Plant Trees,” adding that the “farmer of today, considering the slight trouble and labor, can do nothing more certain to return a rich yield than to plant in fence corners and waste plac
es, walnuts and pecans by the thousand.”

  The reasoning seemed to be that if these samples planted in non-native places took root, then it might make sense to undertake a more direct effort to plant and manage orchards with more-expensive and improved varieties. This was a natural and perfectly sensible progression. An obvious connection existed between the willingness to plant pecans in non-native regions and a willingness to plant improved varieties. This connection may very well explain the observation of one modern assessment of the pecan that “improved varieties of the pecan have been developed commercially in states east of the native pecan belt, rather than where they are native.”26

  Nowhere was the enthusiasm for early pecan expansion and experimentation more evident than in Georgia. Before the arrival of improved varieties, not a single native pecan ever grew in the state. In 1887 a Macon newspaper reported on “testing the home raised pecan nut grown on the place of Mrs. F. E. Burke” and finding the samples to be “very much superior in taste and flavor to the imported nut.” From Gainesville, Georgia, in 1886 came the news that a Mr. F. Pfeffer “contemplates setting out several hundred pecan trees on his farm near town” under the assumption that “pecans will pay better than apples.” Given the time required for trees to begin bearing fruit—about ten years—all eyes were on the future. “Within twenty or twenty-five years,” the article continued, “a few acres of land so planted and well attended to would yield a fortune.” Farther south, in Savannah, one Capt. W. W. Gordon produced pecan nuts that were “unusually large and fine flavored.” The speculation based on Gordon’s accomplishment was that “if good crops of such pecans can be raised in this latitude the growing of them would be quite profitable.” Little did anyone at the time know how correct this assessment was. Today Georgia, growing exclusively improved pecans, is one of the world’s leading producers of the nut.27

  Agriculturalists did not limit this experimentation in expansion to regions similar in climate to Texas and Louisiana. They also moved into more far-flung and less geographically amenable locations, places prone to cold weather and hard freezes. Even if they did so in only a haphazard sort of way, their actions revealed an emerging national interest in planting an unfamiliar tree in unfamiliar locations. An 1896 publication, Nut Culture in the United States, identified “an orchard of 150 trees, about 7 years old, at Federalsburg, Maryland.” The trees evidently showed “thrifty growth.” In addition to the fact that “several persons in Delaware are growing a few trees,” there was a seventy-year-old transplanted tree in Ohio that was “bearing good crops,” as well as “40 or 50 4-year old trees making satisfactory growth” in Dansville, New York. Even more unlikely, there was the case of Robert Manning, of Salem, Massachusetts, who nurtured “a promising [pecan] tree, grown from a nut sent him from Illinois.” Not surprisingly, all the seedlings that came from Texas nuts “have winterkilled as fast as grown.” Still, the effort itself is worth noting. Assessing this nationwide habit of experimentation, the pecan expert William Corsa opined in 1893, “The pecan is probably destined to become the leading nut of the American market.”28

  As it turned out, Corsa was right. Once again, though, it is important to appreciate the halting nature of this transition in the wake of Antoine’s graft and the Centennial’s success. As noted, a centralized and coherent pecan industry did not immediately emerge around improved pecan varieties. It might be helpful to remember Max Planck’s summarization of why scientific and technological change happens gradually: “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”29 This assessment seems especially apt when it comes to the improved pecan. Pecan orchardists, after all, had a hard time leaving behind the habit of either passively cultivating pecans or growing pecans from seed. Repeatedly, progressive farmers and the USDA were still forced to point out the critical fact that pecan nuts do not come true, even as enterprising farmers were optimistically trying out pecan seedlings to establish commercial orchards.

  The message was publicized in a variety of venues. The Division of Pomology recounted the case of a Louisiana pecan farmer who “sends us numerous specimen nuts grown from seed which came from a single tree that stood at least one fourth a mile from any other bearing tree.” The result: “These nuts show a wide variation, none of them being alike, nor like the nuts from the parent tree.” In case the lesson was missed, the report reiterated that pecan trees “can not be depended on to reproduce from seed.” This information, in other words, was becoming abundantly available and consistently reiterated, but rarely followed in places where pecans grew wild.30 The planting of choice seedlings continued to dominate—and it would do so well into the twentieth century. Considerable evidence demonstrates that despite the promotion and increasing availability of improved varieties in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, conventional pecan wisdom remained: plant choice seeds harvested from choice trees where one wanted an orchard to grow, if only to passively cultivate.

  An 1870 report from Arkansas explained how “the pecan produces its good quality very generously by the seed.” An 1874 Mississippi account noted how “the pecan is of the hickory family and is easily propagated by the nuts.” Another letter from Arkansas promoted propagating pecan orchards from seed, observing, “the fruit can be sown almost broadcast.” A Savannah report noted that “individual trees are found which produce nuts much larger and with thinner shells than the average.” It was these nuts, it added, “that should be selected for propagation.” In Texas, a prospective orchardist chose “large nuts with soft shells” and planted “where trees were to grow.” The Centennial had been pioneered, marketed, and duly praised. Nonetheless, the simple act of planting seeds from desirable trees and hoping they bred true would not go gently. To this day, it remains common, primarily because it’s beautifully simple, and works just often enough to completely discourage the decision to do so.31

  Given this emphasis on growing seedlings, rather than grafting or buying grafted saplings, it comes as no surprise that discussions of agricultural matters, and of pecans in particular, often centered on specific trees that, in one way or another, were deemed outstanding for their size, duration, and, of course, seed quality. The Galveston Daily News praised a “tall and ancient pecan tree at Bonnet Carre Point, on the Mississippi River that, forty years ago, furnished the supply of pecans that Monsieur Bernard de Marigny, of New Orleans, sent yearly to his former guest, the Duke of Orleans.” From San Saba County, Texas, came news of a “pecan tree . . . the trunk of which measures six feet in diameter and a line drawn across its branches at the widest place measures one hundred fifty feet.” A Texas Monthly article praised a tree in Toledo, Texas, that “averaged 500 pounds of nuts yearly.” The message was clear enough. Prospective growers were urged to take note of these proud parents, plant their seeds, and await the brilliant results. Plant breeders and nurserymen, forlorn and frustrated, could only shake their heads in dismay, waiting for what they saw as agricultural enlightenment to take hold of the pecan and its bright future.32

  The days of hunting and gathering were over. So were the days of exclusive passive cultivation. With grafting, humans and pecans were entering a new phase of their relationship, one simultaneously marked by ecological balance and impending disruption. The balance inhered in the relationship that was evolving between cultivars and wild varieties. The persistence of wild pecans in the midst of this incipient grafting transition had an unappreciated but undoubtedly positive impact on the overall health of the pecan tree. Not only did seedling trees continue to contribute substantially to the nation’s supply of commercial pecans but, in all their sexually propagated genetic diversity, they decreased the chances that a disease might infect one genetically uniform variety, devastate it, and then jump to the next. In this sense, the wild pecans undoubtedly helped the cultivated ones. This same diversity also marked the impending change. I
t was, after all, the existence of vast genetic differentiation among pecan trees that enabled horticulturalists to take a found seedling and graft its scions onto other established wild pecans (or nursery stock) to ultimately drive the business and experimentation of grafting. As wild pecans were maintaining a tradition of genetic diversity and relatively seamless integration into native environments, cultivated ones were narrowing that diversity to create greater yield and uniformity. These qualities were essential for commercializing the pecan.

  This is where matters stood on the eve of the century’s turn. The pioneering work of a potter from South Carolina, a Louisiana slave, a couple of German immigrants, and a handful of nurserymen had led to the undeniable conclusion that the future of any viable pecan industry worthy of the name would be ultimately rooted in the science and technology of pecan production—namely, the use of improved varieties. However, innovation proved to be one thing, adaptation of that innovation another. Old habits die hard in agriculture and when it came to pecan cultivation, perhaps even more so. In native regions farmers continued to passively cultivate, as it was cheaper, easier, and less labor-intensive than clearing a field and starting an orchard from scratch. In places where farmers lacked access to native groves, they sometimes acquired seeds from the impressive trees that they read and heard about and planted them, working under the assumption that either those seeds would come true or they would at least create an orchard of above-average, if not entirely uniform, trees without the time and expense of grafting, transplanting, or buying from a nursery. These options made perfectly good sense. They did, however, inhibit the rapid transition that many—especially nurserymen and agricultural scientists—wanted to see happen.