President Morris: I have found that nurserymen to whom I have talked for the most part were men of naturally esthetic taste, but dropped their esthetic taste in order to adjust themselves to economic principles. If a customer says, "Please give me a thousand Carolina poplars," the nurseryman knows these will be beautiful for about fifteen years, then ragged and dead and unsightly; but the customer wants them, and the nurseryman has to furnish Carolina poplars.
Mr. Barron: The nurseryman, as a rule, doesn't take much trouble towards educating the people up to the better stuff.
President Morris: I believe that if the nurserymen make a concerted movement—or not necessarily a concerted movement—if any one firm or two or three firms will make a business of introducing beautiful, useful trees of the nut-bearing group, they will open up a new group. People just haven't thought about it. They give an order for trees in a sort of perfunctory way, because they must have them.
If there is no further discussion, we will go on to the Indiana pecan, by Mr. T. P. Littlepage, and this will be the last paper of the afternoon.
THE INDIANA PECAN.
T. P. Littlepage, Washington, D. C.
The subject of the northern pecan is one that I have been interested in for more than thirty years. Away down in Spencer County, Indiana, on the banks of the Ohio River, stand many large native pecan trees, and some of my earliest recollections and most pleasant experiences are connected with gathering the nuts from under these large trees; and, without realizing it, I acquired much of the information in those early days that has of late enabled me to carefully discriminate between the desirable and undesirable varieties of pecans, viewed from the standpoint of one who propagates them for orchard purposes. My interest in the various points connected with pecan growing was at that time a very direct interest, and the only motive I had for determining various facts was the fundamental motive which largely dominates the world today, and that is the question of securing the thing we desire for our immediate use.
The large, magnificent pecan trees growing on the banks of the beautiful Ohio year after year became a matter of the deepest interest to me. I have seen the Ohio surging swiftly through their branches in the winter, have seen them withstand the storms and vicissitudes of snow and ice and raging floods; and as the spring came on I have beheld them, with more or less surprise and pleasure, laden with blossoms. As summer advanced, I watched the growing clusters of delicious nuts; and as the nuts began to ripen in the fall, I soon learned to pick out the best bearing trees. It was not a matter of science or unselfish research that enabled me to determine the fact that some trees rarely ever missed a crop, while others were very uncertain; that some nuts were large, thin-shelled, and of fine flavor, while others were small and hard to crack, and otherwise undesirable; that some of the trees ripened their nuts early, long before frost, while others seemed to hang on and resent the coming of autumn with all their might. At the age of nine, I could take many different varieties of Indiana seedling pecans, separate them, and locate the trees from whence they came, and give the essential points of their bearing record. I could also tell whether the respective owners watched them very carefully, kept a dog, or lived at a safe distance away, all of which points were just as essential so far as I was concerned as the size of the nut and its quality. The pecan captured me early in life, and I have been a willing victim ever since. My interest in this nut of late years is based on more scientific principles, but I doubt if the facts arrived at are any more reliable than the facts which came from the simple desire to appease a boyish appetite with the best nut that nature has ever produced.
When I was about fourteen years old I came into personal possession of twelve acres of land which had descended to me from my father's estate. The land was almost valueless for general cropping purposes, but I had already, at that age, determined something of the value of a pecan orchard, and I proceeded to gather nuts from the best trees in that section, and the following spring planted the whole twelve acres in pecans. I knew, however, that even though the ground was not very productive it would have to be cultivated that summer, so I planted the pecans around stumps where the young trees would be protected. My information as to the value of pecans was accurate and unerring; however, there were several things I had not taken into consideration. First, that a pecan that is kept in the dry all winter is very slow to germinate in the spring, and in fact the percentage of them that does germinate is very small. Second, that the field mice have an abiding hunger for pecans. Third, that the pecan does not come true to seed, and that an orchard of seedlings is of very questionable value. The first two facts, which I failed to take into consideration—that is, the poor germinating qualities of a dry pecan, and the appetite of the field mice, relieved me from the embarrassment of the third, for it is needless to say that this attempt made twenty-five years ago was a complete failure, and for the time being discouraged my ambitions in this direction. But after many years they revived sufficiently to stimulate me to action again in the line of pecan culture.