From its earliest use by Native Americans to today's pies, candies, condiments and snacks, the story of the nature, cultivation and uses of the pecan is shelled in this slender volume.
Jane Manaster, a geographer as well as a writer, details the natural history of the pecan tree and its native range,which extends south from Daveport, Iowa, and west to Eldorado, Texas. They grow wild up the Ohio River as far as Cincinnati, Indiana, and up the Tennessee River as far as Chattanooga. To the south, their range extends into northern Mexico, perhaps as far as Oaxaca. "The limits of the natural range have been gathered from official and personal reports dating back to sixteenth-century explorers and from later scientific revelations," she explains.
Alongside the highways from the south central to the southeastern states, roadside stands open their shutters each November. Drivers bring their cars to a halt and climb out, assuming they will be remembered from the previous year; often they are.