Page:Tree Crops; A Permanent Agriculture (1929).pdf/261

 Easton, Maryland, contains the largest planted pecan tree known: girth (1920) 15 feet breast high; reach 129 x 138. In 1927 it measured 16 feet, 1 inch girth at 4 feet, 6 inches.

There is a pecan tree at Sayville, Long Island, on the estate of Morris J. Terry which is "45 years old, having a diameter of about two fect and bearing annually."

In a park in Hartford, Connecticut, there is a pecan tree ten feet in circumference, perfectly hardy. It was planted as a nut in 1858 by Frederick Law Olmstead. It ripened at least one nut in the season of 1923. It ripened that nut because Dr. W. C. Deming fertilized the blossom by hand with bitternut pollen, a very significant fact.

The pecan is a native of North America. Therefore, it is accustomed to spring frosts by hundreds of thousands of years' experience. Therefore, it sleeps late in the spring. Therefore, it can survive winters in places where the summer will let it ripen its fruit rarely or possibly not at all. Hence such surprising facts as these: (1) Thrifty trees at Michigan Agricultural College, East Lansing, grown from lowa seed planted