Page:Tree Crops; A Permanent Agriculture (1929).pdf/253



The hickories are a great family of food producers. They will be even greater in the future if scientific agriculture prevails.

The pecan is, at present, the king of the hickory family, and affords an excellent and nearly completed case to illustrate the idea that wild trees can become the basis of new crops.

The pecan has passed rapidly through a number of interesting stages in its utilization by man.

1. It started as a wild tree, covering a large area and producing large quantities of fruit mostly unused by man.

2. Trees of superior producing quality were selected out of the mass of mediocrity, and the attempt was made to propagate them by planting seed.

3. Seedlings from superior trees produced many variations (Fig. 90), and almost without exception these seedlings were inferior to the mother tree. The result was paralysis of human enthusiasm and general neglect of the species.

4. The technique of propagation was worked out. Then in a manner exactly comparable to the development of varieties in apples, selected trees were propagated, giving rise to named varicties such as Stuart, San Saba, Schley, Busscron, Butterick, et cetera.

5. Grafted and budded pecan trees were planted by the hundreds of thousands. Orchards were developed. An industry was achieved.

The new industry gave proof of its reality by a product worth millions of dollars; a national association of growers; a