uch towns as San Saba, Brownwood and others
where nuts are brought from the country in wagon loads much the same as
are cereals in the northern states. Pecan orchard development has taken
place almost wholly in states east of the limits of the native range. In
sections to which the pecan has been indigenous development has been
very slow. The greatest and most extensive development of any section
happens to be in Southwestern Georgia.
The view before us was taken in an orchard of Frotscher trees in
Thomasville some 20 miles north of the Georgia-Florida state line. The
trees were planted in 1905, set fifty feet apart, and last spring,
because of crowding, the alternate trees were removed. The lower limbs
had begun to die and the nuts from the lower branches had, for several
years, been inferior in both size and filling quality.
The trees in the orchard before you were three years planted when
photographed. This is an orchard in the Albany district of southwestern
Georgia. It is in the immediate Albany district that more pecan planting
has taken place than in any other one district of the whole South. It is
possible to go from Albany in most any direction and to pass through
orchards on both sides of the road with rows of pecan trees extending as
far as the eye can see in each direction.
There is more or less, of a prevailing idea that the pecan is a
California product but it is the exception rather than the rule to find
thrifty and productive trees in that state. The tree before you is one
which bore enough nuts during a recent year to bring $125 in the market,
at 20 cents a pound.
Coming considerably nearer home, we find the parent tree of the
Butterick variety situated on the Illinois side of the Wabash River a
short distance below Vincennes, Indiana. The range of the pecan, as the
most of you probably know, extends well up into Iowa along the bank of
the Mississippi River and also into Central Illinois along the Illinois
and other rivers and north to Terre Haute, Indiana, along the Wabash.
The Butterick has been regarded as one of the most promising northern
varieties. Reports which seem to be fairly well authenticated are to the
effect that this fine tree has since partially died because of having
its roots cut in the digging of a ditch.
Two years ago, Dr. J. B. Curtis (who is present in the audience) and
myself spent a week's vacation in Eastern Maryland. At Easton we were
greatly surprised to find what we
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