The name is pecan in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Kansas; pecan nut and pecan tree in Louisiana. The name is of Indian origin, and means walnut. The tree’s natural range is smaller than the present area in which the tree is found, for it has been extensively planted in recent years. It is found as far north as Iowa, south to Texas, and east to Alabama and Kentucky. The highest development of the wild tree is in the lower Ohio valley. Forest trees were once found there which were said to be six feet in diameter and 170 high. Specimens that large would be hard to find now. The pecan is a hickory. As to wood, it is the poorest of the hickories, and as to nuts it is the best. Its compound leaves are from twelve to twenty inches long with from nine to seventeen leaflets. The latter are from four to eight inches in length, and from one to three wide. The first pairs on the petiole are smallest. The fruit grows in clusters of from three to eleven, the number exceeding any other hickory. The nuts are four-angled, and long for their width. The wood of pecan has disappointed those who have attempted to use it like other hickories. It does not differ much from them in appearance, but it falls low in mechanical tests. In strength, toughness, and stiffness it is inferior to the poorest of the other hickories. It has less than half the strength and half the stiffness of shagbark hickory. It is a fairly good fuel, but is high in ash. The inferior quality of the wood has saved many a pecan tree from the sawmill and the wagon shop. Fine trunks stand near public highways, along river banks, and in fields, while all merchantable hickories of other species have been sent to market. The uses of the wood are few. If some of it goes to wagon shops or to factories where agricultural vehicles are made, it is employed for parts which are not required to endure strain or sustain sudden jars. Fortunately it is a tree with a value of another kind. It is the most important nut tree of the United States at this time, and it promises to remain so. The forest-grown pecans were an article of food for Indians who once lived in the region, and though white settlers who succeeded the Indians as occupants of the land, depended less upon forest fruits than the red men had done, yet the pecan was often of supreme importance in the early years of settlement. The nuts have constituted an article of commerce ever since the region had markets.