A very welcome sight indeed.
A second variety of the pecan trees is waking up and starting to shoot buds and getting ready to form leaves.
This variety is the orchards main variety called Wichita after the native american tribe of the same name.
In a typical pecan orchard one usually plants at least 2 varieties, so that one acts as the pollinator variety for the other.
In most pecan varieties the female flowers emerge at different times to the male flowers, therefore, you need to have one variety with male flowers and another variety with female flowers at times that overlap to ensure that pollination can take place and nuts will form.
Most orchards have an 80 - 20 split between main variety and pollinator variety. In our case we have three.
Wichita are the main variety with Navaho and Chocktaw as the pollinators.
The Navaho woke up fist last week with most of them now producing buds and the earliest one looking splendid with tiny leaves!
