Page:Tree Crops; A Permanent Agriculture (1929).pdf/263

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mercial dependence, but may produce an occasional crop, is a beautiful and majestic shade tree, with alluring possibilities through hybridization.

Another piece of pecan mythology is to the effect that the pecan is limited not only to the Cotton Belt but to alluvial soil. Most people east of the Mississippi believed this in 1910. Perhaps this piece of mythology spread eastward from the West. It is true in the southwestern pecan country because in many parts of Kansas and Oklahoma and Texas natural tree growth is limited to the valleys,^[1] beautifully pecan-bowered valleys reaching back with their long ribbons of green through the upland pastures of the hills yellow and brown with drought.

There was small reason for the people east of the Mississippi to believe the alluvium myth.

Mr. J. B. Garrett. Assistant Director in charge, North Louisiana Station, Louisiana State University, wrote me. July 1913:

↑ In a large part of the Texas area good tree growth of any species is limited to the river valleys in an area where the upland is often too dry for agriculture or good forest. Indeed the river valleys of a great area in central and western Texas are forest islands nursed by the waters of the adjacent streams and nearly or quite surrounded by slightly arid land. In places one can stand on a plateau with a rocky shallow soil a hundred feet or more above the stream. On this height the rainfall of twenty or twenty-five inches will support only a scrubby growth of drought-resisting scrub trees, but from this point one can look down into the valley which a stream has carved from the plateau. Because of the moisture from the stream its banks and flood plain are covered with magnificent trees, among them tens of thousands of pecans. These pecan islands reach far back, almost to the headwaters of the streams that drain the Edwards Plateau in west central Texas.

William A. Taylor, Chief Bureau, United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C, wrote me January 14, 1920:

"A cousin of my father, who located in what was then Tom Greene, a county of approximately the size of Massachusetts, told me thirty years ago that pecans being wagoned to San Angelo from points 160 to 120 miles further up the north fork of the Concho and its tributaries. (Latitude 32° north, longitude 102° west.) . . .

"Seventy-five miles to the southeast of Sweetwater at Coleman, . . . and at Brownwood, a little farther east, it, the pecan, is or was altogether the dominant river and creek bottom tree twenty years ago, and I presume it is still a conspicuous feature of the landscape."

[1] In a large part of the Texas area good tree growth of any species is limited to the river valleys in an area where the upland is often too dry for agriculture or good forest. Indeed the river valleys of a great area in central and western Texas are forest islands nursed by the waters of the adjacent streams and nearly or quite surrounded by slightly arid land. In places one can stand on a plateau with a rocky shallow soil a hundred feet or more above the stream. On this height the rainfall of twenty or twenty-five inches will support only a scrubby growth of drought-resisting scrub trees, but from this point one can look down into the valley which a stream has carved from the plateau. Because of the moisture from the stream its banks and flood plain are covered with magnificent trees, among them tens of thousands of pecans. These pecan islands reach far back, almost to the headwaters of the streams that drain the Edwards Plateau in west central Texas.

William A. Taylor, Chief Bureau, United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C, wrote me January 14, 1920:

"A cousin of my father, who located in what was then Tom Greene, a county of approximately the size of Massachusetts, told me thirty years ago that pecans being wagoned to San Angelo from points 160 to 120 miles further up the north fork of the Concho and its tributaries. (Latitude 32° north, longitude 102° west.) . . .

"Seventy-five miles to the southeast of Sweetwater at Coleman, . . . and at Brownwood, a little farther east, it, the pecan, is or was altogether the dominant river and creek bottom tree twenty years ago, and I presume it is still a conspicuous feature of the landscape."

[1]