H. Witte of Burlington.
Cuts of these nuts, natural size, are shown opposite page 48. The
Marquardt is being propagated by me and the other three varieties by
Snyder Bros., Center Point, Iowa.

From the appearance of the leaves, buds and habit of growth of the
Marquardt pecan, it seemed to me that the tree had hickory blood in it,
although the nut did not suggest it; and I intended to look into this
matter fully, on a trip to Iowa the past fall, but finding I could not
go, I gave Mr. Bixby samples of the nuts, leaves and twigs and told him
what I expected, and he had this in mind during his trip. He never found
young pecan trees growing in the woods but did find them growing in
large numbers on the levees and on the edges of cultivated fields. A
careful examination showed a very considerable variation in leaf, bud
and habit of growth and there seemed little question but that there were
among them many hybrids between the pecan and the big bottom shellbark,
_Carya laciniosa_, which is found growing on the bottom lands and the
islands along with the pecan. As a matter of fact, two of the four Iowa
pecans selected for propagation, the Burlington and the Greenbay, show
unmistakable evidence of hybrid parentage in the nut, in the leaves and
buds. The Marquardt gives no hint of such parentage in the nut, but the
leaves and buds do suggest that it has hickory blood in its make up, and
it is believed that this is so. The Witte is seemingly a pure pecan.

There has recently been much done near Burlington in reclaiming
valuable, cultivatable lands from the river which formerly overflowed
them each year so that people were afraid to plant crops and they were
therefore abandoned to the forests. Levees have recently been built to
keep the water off these lands in time of high water. Drainage ditches
have been made behind them and pumping plants put in to pump the water
out of them. The cost of these improvements, which has given to
cultivation much very fertile land, has been assessed on the owners of
the lands benefited, as is also the upkeep expense. Many owners had not
the money to pay the assessments and have sold the land to those who are
clearing off the timber. This means the clearing of thousands of acres
of bottom land and the pecan is one of the principle trees on these
bottom lands. This condition makes it necessary to locate and propagate
at once, the best and most promising of these Iowa pecans and hybrids
and observe