t I saw a Stuart bearing nuts in Mr.
Roper's orchard down at Petersburg, Virginia. It has grown beautifully.
There is a strictly southern pecan, nurtured by the waters of the Gulf
of Mexico, which has the widest latitude. You can find the same thing up
north. The fact that the Burlington grows at Burlington, Iowa, means
this, that it ought to grow in all similar latitudes, or else violate
known laws of horticulture. But it does not mean that some other pecan
that grew 250 miles south of that might not grow still further north.
The questions asked are important. Why does not the association, just as
fast as it gets information, stick a pin there and fasten it down? For
example, will pecan trees grow, say, on the thirty-ninth parallel, which
runs through my grove down in Maryland. They will. Will they bear? There
is one Major there that has this summer fifty pecans on it; another one
there with perhaps a dozen. On the 27th day of March of this year, which
was Easter Sunday, the temperature dropped sixty-eight degrees in
twenty-four hours. It is a wonder it did not kill the forest trees. But
with all that the pecan stood there just as hardy as the oak. It
destroyed some of the ends of the swelling buds, not the dormant buds
but some of those that had begun to swell a little, and that no doubt
affected the crop or we would have had, perhaps, all the varieties, the
Butterick, the Warrick, the Niblack, the Busseron, the Major, and the
Green River fruiting. Do we want to grow a Major? I do not know. But the
man that makes the mistake is the man who fails to set nut trees. How
about the Stabler walnut bearing? It bore matured nuts at the age of
four years on my farm in Maryland this year. The nuts are here. That
answers that question. I have very grave doubts about pecan trees
thriving in the Lancaster latitude; yet it may be that I am wrong about
that. There may be some particular variety that will thrive here. If I
lived in this section I would set out the trees so that when the one,
two, three or four varieties are found that will thrive here we will
have something to work on. There isn't any question about the black
walnut or filbert thriving here, or the hickory, because we find them
growing. If you go through southern Michigan and northern Indiana, you
will see the shagbark hickory by the thousands growing along the
railroad. This association should endeavor to get some affirmative data
and distribute it among its members.