Pecan Tree

Pecan

Written in a manner suitable for a popular audience and including color photographs and recipes for some common uses of the nut, Pecan: America’s Native Nut Tree gathers scientific, historical, and anecdotal information to present a comprehensive view of the largely unknown story of the pecan. From the first written record of it made by the Spaniard Cabeza de Vaca in 1528 to its nineteenth-century domestication and its current development into a multimillion dollar crop, the pecan tree has been broadly appreciated for its nutritious nuts and its beautiful wood. In Pecan: America’s Native Nut Tree, Lenny Wells explores the rich and fascinating story of one of North America’s few native crops, long an iconic staple of southern foods and landscapes. Fueled largely by a booming international interest in the pecan, new discoveries about the remarkable health benefits of the nut, and a renewed enthusiasm for the crop in the United States, the pecan is currently experiencing a renaissance with the revitalization of America’s pecan industry. The crop’s transformation into a vital component of the US agricultural economy has taken many surprising and serendipitous twists along the way. Following the ravages of cotton farming, the pecan tree and its orchard ecosystem helped to heal the rural southern landscape. Today, pecan production offers a unique form of agriculture that can enhance biodiversity and protect the soil in a sustainable and productive manner. Among the many colorful anecdotes that make the book fascinating reading are the story of André Pénicaut’s introduction of the pecan to Europe, the development of a Latin name based on historical descriptions of the same plant over time, the use of explosives in planting orchard trees, the accidental discovery of zinc as an important micronutrient, and the birth of “kudzu clubs” in the 1940s promoting the weed as a cover crop in pecan orchards. **Published in cooperation with the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, Ellis Brothers Pecan, Inc., and The Mason Pecans Group**

The Pecan Tree ...

The Pecan Tree

"Travel anywhere in the southern United States today, and you will find pecan trees, either growing wild in the fertile flood plains of streams and rivers, or cultivated in orchards for profit. So popular are pecans that Thomas Jefferson once wrote home from Paris for a supply, while many people nowadays consider their holidays incomplete without a pecan pie." "This inviting and enlightening book explores the natural history, cultivation, and uses of the pecan tree for a general readership. Jane Manaster pieces together a fascinating mosaic of the peoples caught up in the pecan story - Native Americans who subsisted on pecans and traded them with Spanish explorers, the European immigrants and their American descendants who settled the southern states and began cultivating the pecan in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, African-Americans, including a slave named Antoine who first grafted pecan saplings in the 1840s, and Mexican-Americans who cracked and shelled millions of Texas pecans in the struggle to make ends meet." "Manaster also describes the natural history of the pecan tree, including its life cycle, the development of the many cultivated varieties of pecans that we enjoy today, and the predators and diseases that pecan growers must combat. She chronicles growers' successful efforts to extend the pecan's original range eastward from the Mississippi River basin to Florida and westward all the way to California. She also charts the growth of the commercial pecan industry into the largest native orchard crop in America, with centers of activity in Georgia, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona." "Not forgetting the pecan's popularity in candy and baked goods, Manaster includes over twenty traditional and modern recipes for such delights as pralines, candied pecans, pecan pie, and pecan logs. With such a wealth of information in so readable a format, The Pecan Tree will find a wide audience among pecan lovers and growers everywhere."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved