Stuart
Chance seedling of unknown parentage, from nuts sourced at Mobile, Alabama
The record
- Parentage
- Chance seedling of unknown parentage, from nuts sourced at Mobile, Alabama
- Origin
- Near Pascagoula, Jackson County, Mississippi · the original tree planted about 1874
- Rights
- freely propagated — Planted around 1874, long predating the US Plant Patent Act of 1930. No IP claim found in the sources consulted.
- Pollination
- Type II, protogynous
- History
- Dominant across the southeastern United States from the 1920s to the 1950s
Description
The cultivar that built the southeastern pecan industry. A tree planted around 1874 near Pascagoula from nuts of unknown parentage, it dominated southeastern plantings for three decades on yield and scab resistance.
It is the first entry in a sequence this file records three times over: ‘Stuart’ gave way to ‘Desirable’, which the University of Georgia is now replacing with patented scab-resistant releases. Each incumbent was displaced not because the plant changed but because the pathogen population did, and because the economics of spraying moved. A cultivar’s standing is a relationship with a moment, not a property of the tree.
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.