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Pecan
America's Native Nut Tree
By Lenny Wells The University of Alabama Press
Copyright © 2017 University of Alabama Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-8896-6
CHAPTER 1
Origins of the Pecan
We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men.
— John Muir
From the forested bottomlands of the mighty Mississippi River and the rivers of southeastern Texas and Mexico, pecans have emerged to become a valuable crop in the southern United States. Very few food crops offer a detailed record concerning their cultivation and spread as an agricultural industry. Many have been utilized for so long that records either do not exist or have been lost to the ages. For many crops, such as wheat and rice, the wild ancestral species from which the crop was derived no longer even exist.
The domestication of perennial tree crops is a much slower process than that of annual crops because of the extended period of time required for tree crops to bear fruit. Most fruit and nut crops introduced to North America underwent many generations of human selection before being brought to the New World. The peach, for example, has been cultivated in China since at least 1100 BC and finally found its way to America in the seventeenth century, when George Minifie planted peach trees at his estate in Buckland, Virginia. The domestication of the pecan, by comparison, is still in its infancy. Because of its recent introduction to cultivation, we have a relatively good record of its domestication, offering an interesting glimpse of this species as it developed into the crop we know today.
Domestication can be an ambiguous term, depending on the context in which it is used. From the botanical or evolutionary perspective, pecans are still considered to be relatively "un-domesticated" because of the genetic similarity between cultivated and "wild" pecans. From the layman's perspective, the pecan is domesticated in that it has been adapted to life in association with and to the advantage of humans. Using this working definition, a species is maintained through isolation of the plant from its wild population and the selection of traits based on a certain set of requirements. In the case of the pecan, these traits may include nut size and quality, disease and insect resistance, precocity or earliness of bearing, and harvest date, among other characteristics. In most cases, human selection runs counter to natural selection in order to shape the plant's traits for human use. As we will see, pecan production provides a good example of how we have adapted our growing techniques to meet the genetic capabilities of the tree without significant alteration of the tree's genetic makeup.
The story of the pecan, in many ways, reflects that of our own nation. The humble nut is intertwined with the path of American history from the earliest inhabitants of the North American continent to the conquistadors, our founding fathers, the Old West, the New South, and the global economy. Rodney True, one of our foremost agricultural historians, called the pecan "America's most important contribution to the world's stock of edible nuts."
Since Cabeza de Vaca's description of the pecan following his long and arduous journey, pecans have been linked to the history of the New World. Indians and settlers alike utilized the pecan as a food source and trade item before the nation came into being and throughout its infancy. As the nation grew and developed, so did the spread, utilization, and eventually the cultivation of pecans into a thriving industry in the southern half of the United States. From there, pecans have spread to each continent of the world, with the exception of Antarctica. Yet despite its growing international recognition, the pecan is still unknown in many parts of the world.
A PECAN BY ANY OTHER NAME
The pecan is scientifically classified as a hickory, belonging to the walnut family (Juglandaceae). The word "carya" was coined by biologist Thomas Nuttall in 1818 to differentiate hickory trees from more distantly related walnut trees; it is derived from the Greek karya, which means "nut tree." The word "pecan" has many pronunciations, all of which originate from the Native American word pakan, meaning nuts that require a stone to crack or "a hard-shelled nut." To many Native Americans, pakan referred not only to the nuts that we know today as pecans, but also to hickories and walnuts.
The history of this word survives by rather inauspicious circumstances. Around nine in the morning on November 28, 1729, a group of Natchez Indians attacked Fort Rosalie, a French garrison made up of small farmers and planters in what is now the city of Natchez in Adams County, Mississippi. Established in 1716, the post served to protect a settlement established two years prior from the Indians. The Natchez were considered to be among the most civilized of all the original inhabitants of North America. Upon their arrival to the area, the French were greeted by Natchez warriors bearing their king, who was called "The Great Sun," on their shoulders. The Natchez king welcomed the Frenchmen and a treaty of friendship was struck, in which the Natchez allowed the French to establish the fort and a trading post.
The friendship between the French and the Natchez people was betrayed by a single man, M. de Chopart, commander of Fort Rosalie. The commander was harsh in his treatment of the friendly tribe, finally ordering the Great Sun and his people to leave the land of their ancestors, a village called "The White Apple." Located near the mouth of Second Creek, approximately 12 miles south of the fort, the village spread over an area of about 3 miles. The Great Sun made several attempts to reason with Chopart, all of which fell on deaf ears. To the great Natchez king, this left only one option.
Armed with knives and weapons, the Great Sun and his warriors approached the fort that November morning posing as neighbors wishing to procure a supply of ammunition for a hunting excursion by bartering with poultry and corn. Once inside, at the signal of their king, the warriors began a brutal attack in which most of the fort's inhabitants — men, women, and children — were killed. As the smoke began to rise from the fort, other parties entered and joined in the attack. While the massacre proceeded, the Great Sun seated himself in the French warehouse and smoked his pipe as the warriors dropped the heads of their victims in a pile at his feet. Within three hours, almost every male inhabitant of the colony was dead. Only slaves, a few women and children, and those known to have useful skills such as carpenters and tailors were spared.
Andre Penicaut, a ship's carpenter, had accompanied Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville's second expedition to Mississippi in 1699 at the age of 19 aboard the vessel Le Marin. He established himself in Mobile and later explored the new continent, possibly as far north as Minnesota and west to Texas, although some scholars doubt Penicaut's claims of the extent of his travels. The fact that Penicaut spent much time at Natchez from 1704 until 1721, however, is not in dispute. Here, he became a student of the Natchez people. Going blind in 1721, he returned to his native country, where he wrote a manuscript, "Annals of Louisiana," which made its way into the king's library in Paris. Penicaut's writings provide a valuable record of early life in the region, including an accurate description of the deteriorating relationship between the Natchez people and the French colonists. In addition, he would call upon his time with the Natchez to describe a nut previously unknown throughout most of Europe.
Penicaut reports that upon his arrival at the village of Natchez in 1704, the Natchez people had three kinds of walnut trees, one of which bore nuts as large as a man's fist, from which the Indians made bread for their soup. A second tree Penicaut described as producing nuts not much larger than a thumb. These, which the Indians called pacanes, he described as the tastiest of all. Ironically, it was the subsequent misfortune of Penicaut's blindness that may have spared his life so he could return to France several years before the massacre at Natchez, allowing him to enlighten the rest of the world about the pecan's existence.
The French also found the pecan farther up the Mississippi River to the north. Father Gabriel Marest's journal entry of November 9, 1712, describes "les pacanes," the fruit of a nut tree that "have a better flavor than our nuts in France," in the Kaskaskia region along the Mississippi River near the mouth of the Kaskaskia River in Illinois. Another French missionary, Xavier Charlevoix, described the pecan in his diary entry of October 21, 1721: "Among the fruits that are peculiar to this country the most remarkable are the pecan. The pecan is a nut having the length and form of a large acorn. There are those with a very thin shell. ... All have a fine and delicate taste." While the name is often attributed to the Algonquin language, it is not known whether "pecan" truly is derived from the Algonquin, or from the Natchez, or simply from a term commonly used among many Native American groups. We do know, however, that from the French spelling of the Native American word pacane, we have derived the word "pecan."
While the spelling is pretty much universal today, pronunciations of "pecan" can be quite varied. Some folks say "pee-can," some say "puhkhan," and some even say "pee-khan." I once heard a farmer explain the difference between pee-cans and puh-khans: "When the crop brings two dollars per pound, they are puh-khans and when they bring fifty cents per pound, they are pee-cans." Another colorful Southern commentary on the pronunciation of pecan is "a pee-can is a can you keep under your bed for emergencies at night; a puh-khan is a nut that you eat."
All plants known to science have been given latinized scientific names, in addition to their common names. Unlike the common name, which can vary from country to country and even between regions, the scientific name is internationally accepted and does not change, at least once it is settled upon. Scientists have historically had a difficult time deciding what to call the pecan. The first recorded scientific name of the pecan was Juglans illinea, given by Richard Weston, an English botanist, in 1775. Weston, although employed as a thread-hosier in Leicester, England, fancied himself a "country gentleman." He was regarded as having a very wide knowledge of plants and plant literature and served as secretary of Leicester's agricultural society. Weston published his name for the pecan in English Flora, a list of epithets he developed along with their English common names, arranged by family. He referred to Juglans illinea as the Illinois walnut tree. However, plant taxonomists refer to Weston's name for the pecan as a "nomen nudum," or naked name. This term is used to describe a name or phrase that looks like a scientific name and may have been intended to be a scientific name, but fails to be recognized as such because it was not published with an adequate description of the organism and is thus "bare" or "naked."
The next official moniker given to the pecan was Juglans pecan, a name given by Humphrey Marshall, a Pennsylvania Quaker botanist and younger cousin to the famed botanist John Bartram, in 1785. Published only two years after the formalization of American independence, Marshall's Arbustrum Americanum is the first botanical treatise on American plants written and produced by an American.
At the age of 12, Marshall was apprenticed to a stone mason, but his avid interest in nature led him to other pursuits. By the time he had reached his 20s, Marshall's botanical skills were recognized by the scientific community and he became a much-sought-after supplier of native plant and animal specimens. Eventually, Marshall corresponded with some of the leading botanists in England and America, including John Fothergill, Sir Joseph Banks, Benjamin Franklin, Timothy Pickering, Hector St. Jean de Crèvecoeur, and Johannes Fredericus Gronovius. By 1764 Marshall had constructed a rare plant conservatory on his farm in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Within 10 years Marshall's farm had developed into an export-oriented botanical garden stocked with local flora and exotic plants from throughout the United States and Europe.
Marshall was a prolific publisher of scientific papers. He produced works on the natural history of tortoises, sunspots, and agriculture. But it is for the Arbustrum Americanum that he is best remembered. This book is dedicated to Benjamin Franklin and the other members of the American Philosophical Society. Although not specifically devoted to the southeastern United States, Marshall's work is considered a valuable contribution to the botanical study of the region.
The problem with Marshall's name for pecan was that his description was inadequate to distinguish it from another species, Carya cordiformis, the bitternut hickory. So, in 1787, German botanist Julius von Wangenheim gave the pecan the name Juglans illinoinensis. Wangenheim's drawings show that he used poorly filled kernels in his description of the fruit, which are not uncommon under conditions of drought or environmental stress on the tree.
Karl Koch was another German botanist, best known for his explorations in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Sadly, most of the botanical collections that made up his life's work have been lost to history. Koch transferred the species from the Juglans to the Carya genus, apparently changing the species name from illinoinensis to illinoensis. Why this was done, no one is quite sure. Most believe it was a simple spelling mistake. Koch made no formal mention of his alteration of the name and consistently used illinoensis throughout his description of the tree. He made several other errors in reference to Wangenheim's work, including several dates and figures.
This problem led to a great deal of confusion among scientists as to which scientific name to use when referring to the pecan. Some camps spelled the Latin name for pecan Carya illinoensis, while others used the spelling Carya illinoinensis. In 1964, the spelling C. illinoinensis was rejected without much explanation. After much debate, C. illinoensis was submitted to a committee (the Standing Committee for the Stabilization of Nomenclature) that decides such things as the correct spelling of a scientific name. The proposal was rejected, finally lending the pecan a definitive name in the scientific literature, Carya illinoinensis.
PECANS AND HUMANS
Regardless of what they are called, pecans have a unique history among nut crops, in that their appearance and range were probably largely shaped by a close association with humans. The family to which pecans belong — Juglandaceae — is an old family that arose in the Cretaceous period, about 135 million years ago. The world at that time would be nearly unrecognizable today. There were two great supercontinents: Laurasia — a fusion of North America and Eurasia to the north — and Gondwana, made up of Antarctica, South America, Africa, Madagascar, Australia, New Zealand, Arabia, and India, to the south. The two great continents were separated by an equatorial seaway. There was little or no ice at the poles and any land along the equator was arid, as opposed to the humid tropical rain forests of today. The Arctic was covered with lush, green forests rather than ice, and dinosaurs roamed the land. The seas reached their highest levels in history, flooding much of the land that is today dry.
One of the most significant aspects of the Cretaceous environment was that global temperatures were approximately five degrees warmer than they are today. It was under these conditions that flowering plants arose, among which, of course, was the Juglandaceae or walnut family. The "hickory" family branch to which the pecan belongs — the Carinae — is believed to have evolved from the primitive members of the walnut family about 70 million years ago. The early hickories eventually came to be distributed across North America and Eurasia. The oldest specimens of "hickory-like" fruit, dating back about 34 million years, were recovered from places as far apart as Colorado, Germany, and later China, as a result of the cleaving of the great land mass of Laurasia millions of years ago, which distributed the hickory family around the world. As glaciation reached Europe about two million years ago, the hickories disappeared from the continent but remained in North America and China. At the same time as their European extinction, hickory diversity in North America was greatly reduced and they vanished from the North American west.
Biologists consider the place where a species has the widest array of forms to be its "center of diversity," or its ancestral home. For instance, there are hundreds of varieties of corn or maize in Mexico that are found nowhere else on earth. Thus, maize is recognized as originating in Mexico. Because the greatest diversity of species within the walnut family occurred in North America during the time of its radiation across the globe, it is believed that this continent is most likely the place in which the family originated. The earliest fossil "hickory-like" fruits lacked secondary septa or partitions in the walls of the nuts. As hickory species evolved, they developed secondary septa and thickened shells as a means of defending themselves against rodents. The one exception to this case was the pecan, possibly as a result of human intervention in the process of natural selection.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Pecan by Lenny Wells. Copyright © 2017 University of Alabama Press. Excerpted by permission of The University of Alabama Press.
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