The size and shape of those nuts suggest is may be a seedling of a known variety.
Quite a bit depends on your expectations. I saw a tree growing in Florence Alabama 2 years ago that has produced a good crop each year since. It runs 58 nuts per pound with 54% kernel. This is at the low end of acceptable commercially. From my perspective, it is a fantastic tree because it is highly resistant to pests and diseases and is consistently productive. In addition, tree form is naturally columnar. I would not expect it to equal the best selected varieties, but it is much better than most seedlings.
Question about bearing age and grafts:
Let’s say I graft a scion from a bearing tree onto a young seedling #1. A year later I take a scion from grafted seedling #1 and graft it onto a similar aged seedling #2. Will the two grafted trees bear in roughly the same year, or will it take longer for tree #2 to bear because its scion came from a grafted tree that was not bearing yet?
Thanks
Your question is actually whether it is possible to revert pecan from adult phase to juvenile phase. The answer is yes, you can cause a pecan to revert to juvenile growth phase, but it takes a lot more than just grafting the same wood twice as described.
Darrel, thanks for easing my mind. Grafting scions from several hicans that are not yet bearing. I don’t understand the “adult to juvenile phase” science, but we can save that for another day.
Most plants go through at least 2 phases of growth. The first phase is vegetative where the plant puts most available nutrients and energy into growing a large plant. The second phase is reproductive which is when the plant transitions to producing seed and/or offspring. For example, a tomato starts with juvenile vegetative mode which is when most of the plant is grown, then transitions to adult reproductive mode to make fruit with seed. Note that tomatoes typically are grown as annuals which means the juvenile and reproductive phases occur in one year. Onion is a biennial meaning that the juvenile vegetative phase occurs in the first year of growth while the adult reproductive phase occurs in the second year. Carrots are similar to onions. It is possible to trick both carrots and onions into making seed in one year by inducing a short period of dormancy.
Pecans stay in the juvenile vegetative phase for multiple years. All buds on a juvenile tree are vegetative meaning they produce only leaves and limbs with more vegetative buds. If suppressed in the understory of a forest, a pecan may stay juvenile indefinitely. This is very important because a juvenile tree can adapt to growing conditions that would kill an adult tree. In open growing conditions, most pecans take between 7 and 15 years to transition to adult reproductive phase. A pecan typically transitions into adult phase one limb at a time with the top of the tree first and lower limbs taking one or more years after the first nuts are produced. It is often possible to collect juvenile wood off of the lowest limbs of a pecan while nuts are being produced higher in the tree.
Once a pecan transitions to adult phase, visible buds are one of 3 basic types. A bud may be a male catkin bud with a specific set of requirements to break dormancy, usually a combination of a specific number of days below 45 degrees followed by a number of days above 65 degrees. A bud may be a female fruit bud with its own set of requirements to break dormancy, a combination of days below 45 degrees followed by days above 65 degrees. This is how pecans exhibit dichogamy, because each reproductive bud type has different requirements to open. The third type of bud is a vegetative bud which grows new limbs and/or produces leaves to support the fruit. Vegetative buds in an adult/reproductive phase pecan tree are capable of producing more vegetative buds or male and female reproductive buds.
So how do you force a pecan to revert from adult to juvenile growth phase? The only way I am aware of it being done is by cutting a tree off so that adventitious buds are forced to grow. Adventitious buds near the base of a tree by default are in juvenile growth phase. Think about what happens when you cut off a tree limb. Multiple buds break from beneath the bark of the limb. Those are the buds that can revert to juvenile growth phase. Adventitious buds can be forced to revert from adult to juvenile.
What about scionwood used to make grafts? The best scionwood is from a water sprout - a fast growing limb on the tree that produces only vegetative buds. The water sprout is in an in-between status, growing on adult phase wood, but producing only vegetative buds. When grafted to a rootstock, it rapidly transitions to producing reproductive buds. This is why grafts produce heavy crops in 5 to 9 years while trees grown from seed have to go through the juvenile phase first.
Heh, Pecans grow very slow… Especially when they aren’t getting great sunlight and deer munch on ‘em occasionally. They’re a few feet tall. Still growing but it will be quite a few years before I know if they’re any good or not. The seedlings at least, the grafted one is ~5’ tall and will still be a long time… Just not as long as them most likely
Thanks for the reply. I have 3 pecans that are 8 years old. They were grafted trees and still didn’t produce until year 6. Last year was year 7 and they were about 13 feet tall and I got about a shoe box full per tree which I was quite happy with. This year the trees are even bigger- I’d say 15 ft now and still half a growing season to go, but have practically no nuts at all! I have read other accounts of biannual production but I’m saddened by it. But trees are doing GREAT- look healthy as can be.
I also have a few other pecans I planted at my workplace. They are just 2 years old but look great. HOWEVER, the point in my email is that I have one other pecan that was grafted (commercially purchased) but on year 2 the graft died but the rootstock lived. Because its way in the back of my workplace, I honestly just forgot about it for 3 years. The rootstock has now grown into a 6-7 ft foot tall tree. So what now??? Maybe I could cut it back and graft it, but I’m not good at grafting and have serious doubts I could get it to take. Its a pretty nice looking tree now, so I really am tempted to let it keep growing. I would assume that since its all from the rootstock, it is the equivalent (or exactly) of a seedling tree. But I now wonder what the chances are that a rootstock will become a productive pecan tree??? Its about 5 years old now so I shouldn’t have long to wait.
Your seedling tree was probably from a nursery in the deep south. It could be Elliott or Riverside or any one of a dozen or so other commonly used rootstocks. Odds of it eventually producing good pecans are about 1 in 10. Large pecans? about 1 in 60. Consistent production every year? about 1 in 20. Multiply them and the odds of a tree that produces large good quality pecans every year runs about 1 in 12,000. If you graft with a known productive variety, odds are about 100%.
