I have not seen any graft incompatibility between pecan and any other pecan. I am not aware of any hickory which is graft incompatible with pecan. I only have 2 hickory varieties currently grafted so my experience is not very extensive.
Your local climate suggests hardy pecan should be used. The four I suggested are generally hardier and adapted further north than the varieties suggested by the dutch nursery.
How many trees do you want to grow? If only 40 or 50, you may be able to get that many seed nuts from Peter who posts here on GF as āNutā.
Great information, thanks a lot! The final size of the orchard is not decided yet. But I will for sure get in touch with Peter, also because Iād love to visit his trees one day.
Any graft incompatibilities between pecan understock and hickory cultivars are largely anecdotal, and if they exist at all, it may be akin to what our friend @clarkinks has described for some individual callery pear seedlings, which seem to reject grafts of some specific edible pear varieties.
I have a 25-y.o.graft of āWurthā shagbark, on pecan, which requires yearly removal of vigorous shoots from below the graft, and the grafted scion variety is one- third the diameter of the rootstock. Anthropomorphizing this, one would think that the pecan doesnāt ālikeā the hickory scion variety and continues to attempt to throw it off, or at least outgrow it
That said, there are some that seem to be plausibleā¦several growers, myself included, have noticed that āLake Icariaā shagbark hickory seems not to ālikeā pecan rootstockā¦as grafts often fail, and those which do take, on pecan, barely grow.
The most plausible graft incompatibility claim Iāve seen is that 32 chromosome hickory species are not always graft compatible with 64 chromosome species.
With that said, Iāve tried twice to graft Elliott on a rootstock in my yard. Each time it failed. This is a possible example of incompatibility, but would have to be tried a few dozen more times before anything definitive could be said. It is far more likely that my Elliott scionwood was not in good enough shape.
Iāve tried, for the past 2 years, to get a successful graft of āBarnesā mockernut hickory (64-chromosome) on pecan (32-c), with no success. If I can get scions again this coming spring, I have a couple of mockernut seedlings flagged to use as rootstock.
I do not know. I presume it is a selection made for thinner shell/easier kernel extraction. Our friend @carya may be able to provide some infoā¦
Nearly 30 years ago, NNGA Hickory chairman, David Johnson, attended the spring KNGA meeting, with a large cooler full of scionwood, and I got several varieties from him, including one mockernut, which was named āLakeviewā or something similar. I did not get a successful graft of it, and have attempted to contact Dr. Johnson on several occasions in the intervening years, but could never get a response from him.
A lot of scionwood gets passed around at nut growers meetings that never gets documented. Then again, a lot of good varieties also get passed around. Eventually, if they are good enough, they get enough attention to make it into the literature.
Andā¦ particularly with regard to hickories, there are lots of āwarm fuzziesā associated with many of themā¦ a favorite local nut for an individualā¦ may be better than the average local nut, but may be less desirable than some others, and evaluation of hickories has not been tied to productivity, disease resistance, etc., as it has for pecans.
I thought I had a picture of Barnes, but if I did I canāt find it. I should be visiting the tree at Etterās mid-October. There it is grafted in pecan. I have it grafted on pecan, 2nd year now. I would like to put it on mockernut. The nut is large, like a shellbark, with similar cracking qualities. Shell is moderate, but very thin for a mockernut, maybe 1/8" or a little less. Seems like a pretty amazing selection for itās class of mockernut, but not worth it compared to any good shagbark or shellbark nut. I imagine itād be most useful topworking native mockernut stands on acidic upland soils and slopes, where that species thrives.
The one thing I can say is special re mockernut is that the single best flavored hickory nut of any type Iāve eaten was a mockernut found growing beside Natchez Trace a few years ago. Most of them are bland. A few are amazing.
Man, what inspired you to even crack it open? The mockers around here have shells so thick and kernels so tiny and convoluted, I rarely go to the effort!
Iāve not cracked many, but all Iāve sampled have had - as you noted with your Natchez Trace tree - the best hickory flavorā¦ almost approaching black walnutā¦ of any hickory Iāve ever eaten. Butā¦ as Pete noted, for most, the shell is so thick and convoluted that all I can ever extract are small kernel fragments.
I visited the shagbark across the road from my house today and gathered about a gallon of nuts. They are average for shagbark, crack fairly well, lots of halves and quarters, and decent but not exceptional flavor. It is an interesting tree being in a group with mockernut, shagbark, and bitternut all within a hundred feet of each other. This is a typical association found where an Amerindian village once stood which wound up with hickory trees of several species growing near each other. The largest number of species Iāve seen was south of Selma Alabama where Mockernut, Pignut, Shagbark, bitternut, and shellbark all grow within an area the size of a football field.
Has anyone found a bitternut that is not bitter? Asking because one of the bitternuts appears to have relatively bland nuts with no bitterness. I have not checked it in detail so there is a possibility it is a hybrid. The nuts are very typical for bitternut with small round nuts and very thin shells.
Years ago, Guy Sternberg recounted his attempt to play a prank on a young nephew, cracking bitternut nuts and pretending to eat them, with the kid gobbling down the kernels, nonplussed. When Guy sampled them, they were, indeed, nonastringentā¦but he could not identify the tree they had been collected from. Soā¦itās possible that there are nonastringent bitternuts, or perhaps that one was a bitshag that phenotypically was more reminiscent of the bitternut side of its family tree.
If one were found, it might be worthwhile getting it into a hickory breeding program (if anyone is doing any serious hickory breeding). A while back, Alex Tanke told me about the āVestā hickory, a named historical non-astringent bitternut that was at least occasionally used as rootstock back in the day. I believe heād be interested in knowing of any non-astringent bits.
