Pecan, the Queen of Texas Trees
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Pecans (puh-CONNS) are wonderful Texas trees that bear delicious nuts. They are native to Texas, and they are prolific. You still find pecans in the oddest places, where parks and such have been built where homesteads used to be.
You have to have at least two trees in the same small area for them to bear nuts. But that’s a good thing. Pecans are great trees for shade, especially if planted on the north and west sides of the house to keep it cool. Then the leaves fall off in the winter when you need the sun to keep it warm.
Also, pecan trees put down deep taproots instead of spreading all over the top of the ground, breaking up the sidewalks and messing with the foundation of the house the way oak trees do. And also unlike oaks, pecans don’t topple over during windstorms the way oak trees sometimes do if the ground is really saturated with rain for a few days.
Pecans even tend to keep the grass from growing so deep underneath them, which makes less work for whoever has to mow. And, of course, they are hardwoods, so when a pecan tree dies—or has to be cut down for some other reason—you have really fine wood to burn or build with.
Pecan wood soaked in water is great for smoking meat. It’s much more subtle than mesquite.
It used to be just about everyone who had a yard would plant pecans if they could. We Texans do love our pecans, especially in pecan pies. They are great in cookies, and brownies, and used to decorate the tops of cakes. But we also like them candied or baked with cinnamon sugar, or just toasted with salt.
Buttered-pecan ice cream was a big Texas favorite for generations. In recent years, though, our hearts were won over by the Blue Bell ice cream flavor, Pralines and Cream, made with crumbled up pecan pralines. Naturally we pronounce “pralines” the Texas way (PRAY-leens).
It takes about 7 to 9 years after you plant a pecan seedling for it to bear nuts. And that’s if you go to a nursery and buy a really big one in a giant tub about 3 feet deep (because of the taproot, you know).
Naturally there’s a family story about a pecan tree. My grandparents lived on a corner in a tiny little town. There were deep drainage ditches along the roads on two sides of the property. All kinds of seeds and flower bulbs used to float up and take root at the edge of their yard, which was made up of four city lots.
One year my grandfather dug up a seedling that he said was a pecan, and he planted it in the front yard near my grandmother’s fig orchard (on the north, of course, so the figs would still get plenty of sun). He was a great gardener, who had grown up on the remnants of the family plantation, and he figured he knew his trees.
Well, Nana was annoyed. She was a knowledgeable country Texan, too, and she knew a black walnut when she saw one.
Pampa had dug up the seedling from the ditch right near the big old black walnut tree in the back, which had nuts that were almost impossible to shell and pretty much inedible. So planting a tree like that was just a waste of good orchard space to a fig lover. They argued about it for years!
Pampa planted that tree when I was one year old, and there are family photos of me beside that tree as we both grew up. But it just took forever to bear nuts. And the argument about what it really was became kind of a long-running joke in the family.
I had just turned 17 when Pampa died, and the tree had still not done anything but get taller and taller. Nana thought it was downright useless, but of course she would never cut it down, because it was Pampa’s tree.
That fall, though, the tree finally bore nuts for all to see. It was a pecan.
We all just knew that somewhere up there in Heaven, Pampa was smiling.
