Major
Native chance seedling
The record
- Parentage
- Native chance seedling
- Origin
- Found by Mrs. L. B. Major · Woods on the Major farm near the confluence of the Green and Ohio rivers, Henderson County, Kentucky · found about 1907, introduced 1908
- Rights
- freely propagated — Found in 1907 and introduced in 1908, long predating the US Plant Patent Act of 1930. No IP claim found in the sources consulted.
- Scab
- Resistant, and the source of resistance in several bred cultivars
- Pollination
- Type I, protandrous
- Hardiness
- Cold hardy; the foundation of the northern pecan group
Description
The most important tree in this file, and nobody bred it.
A woman walking her own farm woods in Henderson County, Kentucky noticed a pecan worth keeping, and it was introduced in 1908. It is a parent of ‘Kanza’, of ‘Lakota’, and of ‘Hark’. Whatever cold hardiness and scab tolerance those cultivars carry, they carry from here.
That is the argument for a genetics database stated as compactly as it can be. The single most valuable contribution to northern pecan growing was not made in a breeding block. It was made by somebody who recognised an unusual wild tree and told someone. The programmes that followed could only work with what had already been found and named.
Where to find it
No source recorded. That does not mean the cultivar is unavailable, only that this record does not yet name a nursery carrying it. Point us at one and it goes in.