Q: A friend of mine in Savannah gave me several male and female pecan trees. Will they thrive here? How do I identify a male from a female tree?
A: Pecans don’t have male and female trees. However, many pecan varieties shed pollen at a different time than their flowers are able to receive it, making for marginal nut set some years. That’s why it’s good to plant two varieties. If you don’t know exactly which variety you have, it’s impossible to predict their pollination pattern. If the pecans grew from nuts on your friend’s property, it’s also impossible to predict how large the nuts will be or how resistant to disease they will be. It takes at least five years for a pecan to bear its first crop. You can plant these now if you’re willing to wait years to see if your experiment pans out. Or you can buy named varieties like ‘Stuart’, ‘Elliott’, ‘Gloria Grande’ or ‘Sumner’.