Snyder of Center Point, Iowa. (He later became president of the
Association.) In one of his letters to me the following summer, Mr.
Snyder mentioned that there were wild pecan trees growing near Des
Moines and Burlington. I decided I wanted to know more about them and at
my request, he collected ten pounds of the nuts for me. I found they
were the long type of pecan, small, but surprisingly thin-shelled and
having a kernel of very high quality.

I first planted these nuts in an open garden in St. Paul, but after a
year I moved them to my farm, where I set them out in nursery rows in an
open field. The soil there was a poor grade of clay, not really suited
to nut trees, but even so, most of the ones still remaining there have
made reasonably good growth. I used a commercial fertilizing compound
around about half of these seedlings which greatly increased their rate
of growth, although they became less hardy than the unfertilized ones.
After five years, I transplanted a number of them to better soil, in
orchard formation. Although I have only about fifty of the original
three hundred seedlings, having lost the others mainly during droughts,
these remaining ones have done very well. Some of these trees have been
bearing small crops of nuts during the years 1947 to date. The most
mature nuts of these were planted and to date I have 17 second
generation pure pecan trees to testify as to the ability of the northern
pecan to become acclimated.

I gave several of the original seedlings to friends who planted them in
their gardens, where rich soil has stimulated them to grow at twice the
rate of those on my farm. There were four individual pecan trees growing
in or near St. Paul from my first planting, the largest being about 25
feet high with a caliber of five inches a foot above ground. Although
this tree did not bear nuts I have used it as a source of scionwood for