I belong to the Dogwood Garden Club in Coquitlam. Two weeks ago Wim VanderZalm came to our monthly meeting to inform us about how to keep our gardens green. I asked him if it was possible to grow a pecan tree in Vancouver. He replied he had never seen one in Vancouver and imagined there was some reason they would not grow here, bid did not know what it was. Well, will pecan trees grow in Vancouver?
It should grow, as a fairly slow-growing specimen tree, without trouble (it does so rather further north in e.g. southern England). I doubt that it would get enough summer heat to mature any nuts, though.
One at the Seattle arboretum was 86 1/2 ft. high last year (2006), "sets some nuts but none ripen fully" (Jacobson, TREES OF SEATTLE - SECOND EDITION). Another in the same collection was 88 1/2 ft. tall the same year. Jacobson lists a total of 6 specific examples for Seattle, says pecan trees are "very rare" there. Vancouver is even less warm in summer. Walnut trees would be a much better bet, unless one wanted to have a large novelty tree grown primarily for its decorative foliage.
Out behind the West Coast Express platform at Coquitlam Central, there are several pecan trees that appear to have naturalized. I count at least four, and they are covered with nuts. This is in a depression (so relatively sheltered from wind and cold) and next to a stream (so somewhat protected from drought). But apparently it is possible for them to grow in our climate, at least with the appropriate microclimate.
18 years of global warming making a big difference. I've noticed the same here with warmer-climate trees that used not to mature fruit and self-seed here, now doing so. Notice how the climate warming graph has turned from shallow rise, to steeper rise, to very steep rise. And is now vertical. Five years from now, we won't even recognise today's climate, let alone our 1980-2000 climates.
