Page:Tree Crops; A Permanent Agriculture (1929).pdf/261

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Easton, Maryland, contains the largest planted pecan tree known:^[1] girth (1920) 15 feet breast high; reach 129 x 138. In 1927 it measured 16 feet, 1 inch girth at 4 feet, 6 inches.

There is a pecan tree at Sayville, Long Island, on the estate of Morris J. Terry which is "45 years old, having a diameter of about two fect and bearing annually."^[2]

In a park in Hartford, Connecticut, there is a pecan tree ten feet in circumference, perfectly hardy. It was planted as a nut in 1858 by Frederick Law Olmstead. It ripened at least one nut in the season of 1923.^[3] It ripened that nut because Dr. W. C. Deming fertilized the blossom by hand with bitternut pollen, a very significant fact.

The pecan is a native of North America. Therefore, it is accustomed to spring frosts by hundreds of thousands of years' experience. Therefore, it sleeps late in the spring. Therefore, it can survive winters in places where the summer will let it ripen its fruit rarely or possibly not at all. Hence such surprising facts as these: (1) Thrifty trees at Michigan Agricultural College, East Lansing, grown from lowa seed planted

hillside, and is reported to be bearing well. (Facts from J. F. Jones, Lancaster. Pennsylvania.)

↑ Information, C. A. Reed. U. S. Department of Agriculture.

On Spesutia Island in the Chesapeake Bay, latitude 39° 15' is "a giant one hundred and six feet tall. It has a spread of one hundred and ten feet. It has two limbs, respectively fifty-seven and sixty feet long, and is thirteen feet in circumference, three feet from the ground. It is an annual bearer of thin-shelled nuts that, though rather small now, are mighty good to eat."

"A seedling from this tree is eighty feet tall with an equal spread and is a particularly beautiful tree—when I saw it there were two or three nuts on nearly every twig end. They are fair size too, very thin-shelled, and very pleasant-tasted." (Extract from newspaper article, by Wilmer Hoopes, Forest Hill, Md., information from Robert II. Smith, Spesutia Island, Perryman. Md., January 23, 1915.)
↑ Long Island Agronomist, published for a time by the Long Island Railroad.
↑ Information from Dr. W. C. Deming, long time Secretary of the Northern Nut Growers' Association. The tree would probably produce abundant crops except for a habit very common among pecans, namely that its pistillate blossoms do not mature at the same time as do its staminate blossoms.

[1] Information, C. A. Reed. U. S. Department of Agriculture.

On Spesutia Island in the Chesapeake Bay, latitude 39° 15' is "a giant one hundred and six feet tall. It has a spread of one hundred and ten feet. It has two limbs, respectively fifty-seven and sixty feet long, and is thirteen feet in circumference, three feet from the ground. It is an annual bearer of thin-shelled nuts that, though rather small now, are mighty good to eat."

"A seedling from this tree is eighty feet tall with an equal spread and is a particularly beautiful tree—when I saw it there were two or three nuts on nearly every twig end. They are fair size too, very thin-shelled, and very pleasant-tasted." (Extract from newspaper article, by Wilmer Hoopes, Forest Hill, Md., information from Robert II. Smith, Spesutia Island, Perryman. Md., January 23, 1915.)

[2] Long Island Agronomist, published for a time by the Long Island Railroad.

[3] Information from Dr. W. C. Deming, long time Secretary of the Northern Nut Growers' Association. The tree would probably produce abundant crops except for a habit very common among pecans, namely that its pistillate blossoms do not mature at the same time as do its staminate blossoms.

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