The Persian walnut is evidently quite at home from the eastern shore of Maryland up through Delaware and New Jersey to Long Island and lower Connecticut. From this strip west inland to well toward York and Harrisburg in Southern Pennsylvania, it is by no means uncommon. To some extent, it is grown in Western New York and close to Lake Erie in Northern Ohio. There are some trees in Eastern Michigan and a very few in what is known as the Niagara Peninsula of Ontario, but with few exceptions, the crops they bear are uncertain.
The tree before us is the parent of the Aurand variety named in honor of Mr. Geo. D. Aurand of Lewistown, Mifflin County, Pennsylvania. The gentleman in the foreground is Mr. Aurand in the act of examining a split in the bark caused by winter-injury. This trouble is fairly prevalent over a great part of the east.
Leaving the walnut industry for the time being, we will take a fleeting glance at the pecan industry. The greater part of our pecan crop comes from wild trees in the Southwest. The view before us is typical of Texas scenes especially in such towns as San Saba, Brownwood and others where nuts are brought from the country in wagon loads much the same as are cereals in the northern states. Pecan orchard development has taken place almost wholly in states east of the limits of the native range. In sections to which the pecan has been indigenous development has been very slow. The greatest and most extensive development of any section happens to be in Southwestern Georgia.
The view before us was taken in an orchard of Frotscher trees in Thomasville some 20 miles north of the Georgia-Florida state line. The trees were planted in 1905, set fifty feet apart, and last spring, because of crowding, the alternate trees were removed. The lower limbs had begun to die and the nuts from the lower branches had, for several years, been inferior in both size and filling quality.
The trees in the orchard before you were three years planted when photographed. This is an orchard in the Albany district of southwestern Georgia. It is in the immediate Albany district that more pecan planting has taken place than in any other one district of the whole South. It is possible to go from Albany in most any direction and to pass through orchards on both sides of the road with rows of pecan trees extending as far as the eye can see in each direction.