With Thanksgiving and other winter holidays in our midst, many stores will be busy with shoppers securing items to make homemade treats. One of the popular items that customers may be purchasing is pecans, destined to be turned into a decadent pecan pie.
Pecans are the fruit of a tree native to North America, often found growing up and down the Mississippi River Valley. The tree has been growing here for centuries, and indigenous people often collected pecans as a food source. Pecans are also a common food source for many of our native wildlife, like squirrels, deer and bluejays.
Pecans are produced in a similar way to the nuts of related trees, like hickories and walnuts. The edible portion is encased in a hard shell that must be opened to extract the full pecan. Nowadays, when we imagine a pecan, they are rather large. That was not always the case, though, and we really have one man to thank for the large pecans we see today.
Occasionally, pecan trees would grow to produce much larger pecans than normal. In the 1800s, an enslaved Creole man named Antoine, located at the Oak Alley plantation in Louisiana, got his hands on a piece of one of these large-fruited trees and managed to successfully graft it onto some traditionally small-fruit pecan varieties. The resulting graft performed well, and Antoine went on to graft over 100 pecan trees this way. The large pecans were eventually exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition in 1875 and were so popular that the variety was aptly named “Centennial” and became the first commercially successful pecan variety.
Historically, the pecan tree has been a popular crop to grow in bottomlands along the Mississippi Valley. From Louisiana to the southwest corner of Ohio, you could find pecans growing, but they are currently rare in the northern reaches of their range. However, one interesting thing to consider is how our changing climate may impact the native range.
Climate models are always changing, but the consensus is that our climate may be shifting to become more like that of Arkansas. This will certainly change things for Ohio’s agricultural sector, with a lengthened growing season probable. It could also introduce new potential crops, like pecans. Perhaps in the next century, families in Southern Ohio will be able to go outside, gather pecans and shell them to make their homemade pies for Thanksgiving. What a neat thought!
As always, if you have any questions about the contents of this article, reach out to me at OSU Extension – Vinton County at 740-596-5212. Happy Thanksgiving and enjoy that pecan pie!
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