It’s “puh-kaan,” as could be heard in the Louisiana Legislature this session when lawmakers unanimously voted to make the pecan the official state nut. Gov. John Bel Edwards then signed the ...

They’re small, thickly shelled, and rocklike enough for “pecan” to have come from the Algonquian for “a nut too hard to crack by hand.” The trees they drop from can be similarly difficult.

Indians gratefully ate them and also gave them their name, an Algonquian word meaning a nut that it takes a stone to crack. A member of the family that includes walnuts and hickories, the pecan ...

Pecan growers and suppliers are hoping to sell U.S. consumers on the virtues of North America’s only native nut as a hedge against a potential trade war with China, the pecan’s largest export ...

The wild pecan (Carya illionoisnensis) is the only major nut native to North America (depending upon who you talk to, that is. Some say it’s the only native nut, while others cite the eastern American ...