An Enslaved Gardener Transformed the Pecan into a Cash Crop | Hacker News Reader

An Enslaved Gardener Transformed the Pecan into a Cash Crop

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72 pointsPaulHoule47 comments

‘working by candlelight would have provided Antoine a focused, well-lit environment for the delicate dissection of two seedlings’

I think the author needs to try using a candle for light.

Candlelight doesn't mean a single solitary candle. As an example, here's the famous scene Kubrik's Barry Lyndon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQE73GDo4So

Yet this is an infamously dimly-lit scene.

Yeah, I don't quite agree with that, or think of it as any kind of a criticism. The candles are placed in such a way that the faces of the important characters are easily visible, while the spectators fade into the background. This is fine! You're not meant to see their reactions, only hear them. The lighting functions like stage lighting, or (more likely Kubrick's inspiration) chiaroscuro, focusing viewers' attention where it's meant to be.

As an aside: I've always suspected that the next scene (outside the house, at the end of this clip) is not naturally lit, though I've never seen anyone write anything about it. Even there, though, the lighting is used dramatically: as she turns, her face goes into shadow, leaving her reaction to his approach unseen, and therefore ambiguous.

Sorry / not-sorry , you were making a quick point, which I've totally hijacked to geek out about one of my favorite films of all time. Carry on.

For a camera exposing onto Kodak 5254, probably the fastest available in 1975, blazing ISO 100 film stock. Yeah it’s dim for that. To your eyes as I understand it’s pretty well lit.

The photo nerd hacking tweak of note here was the pushing of the stock to 200 and using uniquely crafted NASA lenses built to photograph the dark side of the moon with not seen before aparture.

Arguably a youtube rending of a compressed digital source viewed on a computer screen falls short of a 1970s full cinema via film live viweing.

Technically it was pushing well past the envelope for the day: https://neiloseman.com/barry-lyndon-the-full-story-of-the-fa...

Often a sign of AI writing.

To modern ears it seems dim, but to contemporary ears it would be very bright compared to normal nighttime!

> If composed of two parts, there is often a scion—the upper or shoot portion of a plant—which is joined with a separate rootstock to produce, if successful, a healthy grafted plant.

And like that, I finally figured out why Toyota named their offshoot brand Scion.

Article doesn't say the "trick" - it was a technique now known as inlay grafting.

> Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson planted pecans at their plantations

At the time of Washington and Jefferson, they were known in English as Illinois nuts. And, living in Illinois, a few years ago I bought a selection of 2-3 year old seedlings of Illinois-native trees from the state department of natural resources to plant on my property. Pecan seedlings were included...

When people say that pecan trees grow slowly, they are understating reality. Mine are growing at maybe an inch a year. I get one or two small leaves at the top. No branches yet. I planted a plum tree near one at the exact same time and it has doubled in height.

The natural range of the Pecan is somewhat limited, so unless you're in southern Illinois or by the river, it might not be its preferred habitat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecan#/media/File:Carya_illino...

They're actually considered a fast growing tree when in the right place--1 to 2 ft per year at first.

I had never heard about it being called a fast-growing tree :)

I am outside the natural range, but close to a [different] river and feel that with climate change it should be fairly ok. But it appears I am wrong!

If your river often freezes over (e.g. Rock), you're not in the right place. The Mississippi River almost never does where the Pecans grow.

"The tree can only survive in areas with warm winter nights, which severely restricts its distribution.

To ensure your pecan tree grows at the expected rate (1-3 feet per year for non-bearing and 5-12 inches for existing bearing trees) and produces nuts, the two most critical parts of pecan tree care are consistent watering and fertilizing."

>A pecan tree purchased from a nursery will reach its full height of four to six feet in 8 to 10 years if planted in the right spot.

That has to be a dwarf variety. I have seen pecan trees that are more than 80' tall or about half as tall as an Olympic swimming pool is long, with a crown diameter of over 110' or about 2/3 as long as an Olympic swimming pool. The trunk at chest height was more than 3 grown men wide, or about 1/10 the width of an Olympic swimming pool.

These trees get large and if they were solid objects their volume could store nearly as much water as an Olympic sized swimming pool. That is just the part above ground that we can see. Remarkable trees.

Pecan is furniture grade wood like black walnut and commands a premium. It is also prizes for smoking meats as it lends a nutty flavor to the brisket. It's my favorite.

When a pecan nut sprouts it sends all of its initial energy burst into growing a tap root, looking for the best source of dependable water, before you see any top growth at all above ground. Typically if your pecan tree seedling is 1' tall the tap root will already be more than 3' long. This is why nursery pecans are sold in planters that are about 3X taller than they are wide, so that the root is less likely to be coiling inside the pot. You don't want to strangle the tree by letting it become pot-bound.

This is why pecans need relatively deep soil with near surface water. If they have a dependable water supply they can stab that root through any crack and you will eventually have a huge, very productive nut tree.

Pecans are awesome trees. Mine have fed a murder of crows for several crow generations. They show up on the pecans every year about 2 weeks before the nuts are ripe enough to harvest and they strip my trees from the bottom up so that over the years, I have been able to harvest less than 5 buckets of pecans from 5 trees. Very efficient. I think they start at the bottom specifically to deprive me of the ones that are easiest for me to harvest. I surrendered the pecans to the crows a long time ago since they had a much more efficient system of exploitation than any I could conjure. I know the man who planted the trees had fought the same battles with them as I found the rubber snakes and the sad remains of a plastic owl in the trees while climbing them to assess their health right after we bought the place.

I'm on pretty good terms with the crows now. One has learned to ask for peanuts and I'm accommodating enough to provide them, almost on demand.

> full height of four to six feet

In South Carolina, they get to be 20-30 feet. They’re medium-sized trees. I’ve never heard of any variety that is full grown at 6 feet. That’s a baby.

Pecan trees grow best in hot climates. They can tolerate some freezes. In ideal conditions, they produce nuts in 4 years. I'm thinking in colder climates, greenhouse starting in larger containers for longer is basically required. My grandparents had 50' tall pecan trees in zone 8a that dropped about 8-10 lbs. of nuts per tree per year. I'd guess local critters walked off with a fraction small enough to not matter because cleaning up was a semi-nuisance but not as bad as cleaning up olive- and plum-like trees from sidewalks.

Is this article missing opening context?

First line:

>Pecan nuts were already a dietary staple for Native Americans in various parts of what is now the United States before Antoine’s innovation established the basis for a commercial pecan industry

Who is "Antoine"? Is it a first name? A last name? It doesn't ever seem to say.

At the bottom of the article, it says:

Usually this means that the article is actually a book excerpt (often the first chapter of the book), and in this case we can find online the book's table of contents:

    Preface
    Introduction: Life as Testimony
    1. Pecan Trees and the Roots of Stolen Botanical Knowledge
    2. Sycamore Trees as a Path to Freedom
    3. The Secret Lives of Willow Trees
    4. Poplar Trees Bear Strange Fruit
    5. The Sweeping Promise of Mulberry
    6. A Haven for Community in Historic Oak Trees
    7. Cotton Shrubs and Seeds of Subversion
    8. The Gift of Apple Trees
    Conclusion: Black Botanical Legacy Reclaimed

Usually the first chapter is self-contained, but in this case possibly there was some context about “Antoine’s innovation” in the Introduction that precedes the first chapter.

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...

A lot of slaves had no last name, or only their owners’.

Not to sound pedantic (I believe this is a very important distinction), but as far as I'm aware most slaves were not _given_ last names by their slavers. They often had (if taken into slavery) or were given (if born in slavery) their own names within their own cultures.

I'm curious, do native African cultures often have multiple names?

The number of different cultures in Africa, each with its own set of traditions and ceremonies makes that a very difficult question to answer in a generalised way.

Fair. I was curious since English only started having last names in the 11th century, once the population has grown too large for local governments to effectively govern without some way to better differentiate people.

This article from 2017 goes over the same story but provides better context: https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/slave-gardener-turned-pec...

Thanks, that was a better-written article than the above.

The missing context is the title.

Bittersweet sad-interesting.

Grandparents had 6 paper shell "Pawnee" trees producing 50 lbs. / 22 kg of nuts per year with no special maintenance. USDA hardiness zone 8A and humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa). They fell on their own once a year.

Similar, but also different, to the story of the guy who discovered how to scale vanilla pollination.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_Albius

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