Does anyone know about the nursery in question?

Simpson Nurseries
Monticello, FL  32344

At least here in GA. they source a lot of material to the big Box stores and to me they represent a lot of mislabeled plants .Not sure about problems with their Figs labeling but last year Lowes had Jumbo Muscadines from them which where obviously not even a muscadine, but some sort of bunch grape. They as well had grapes listed as Southern Home, a Muscadine hybrid with a very distinct leaf and they were not as labeled, but in the same shipment had the real Southern Home mislabeled as Southland Muscadines. This year my local Lowes has potted Pecans from them and I could observe NO graft union on any of the trees. The graft union should be readily visible on a tree that young, and unless they have been successful with starting pecans from cutting or tissue culture it appears to me they are sticking labels on seedling trees, which would be dispicable. The labels were all freshly applied as well and it appears to me they just slapped lablel to match whatever the order read.  The thing about a pecan it will be several years until one realizes they don’t have a plant true to label.  I thought about reporting the pecans to the Dept of Agriculture to see what they thought, but maybe nut tree propagation has advanced past my knowledge of recent.

Thanks!

Regarding the pecan trees, did they advertise them being a certain cultivar?  I have read that wild pecan groves produce good quality pecans (though with lower yield than cultivated ones).  So I would think selling a seedling pecan would not be so objectionable, provided you identified it as such.

  Rob,

The Pecans were all were tagged as named cultivars such as Cape Fear, Desirable, Stuart, and I think Choctaw.  I was thinking of picking up a Cape Fear as I need another Protogynous   pollinating one. Some Seedling trees will turnout ok eventually, but where as a grafted tree you would hope to be putting at a few nuts in 6 or 7 years, earlier if you are lucky, you could be will be waiting many years on a seedling tree.  I have 2 seedlings trees planted in 1998? As 2-3  year plants and I have yet to see a nut or even a catkin bloom on either tree. They are beautiful trees in full sun, rich bottom land soil, probably 35 foot and each year I am hoping this is the year they bloom.  After 12, 15, 20? Years you will highly likely have an inferior nut.  Unless you have space to trial huge trees long term I would advise on a grafted cultivar. Again if they are propagating pecan in a manner other than grafting someone can correct me. Lowes had grapes from them that were definitely mislabeled which could be just issues with the huge operation that Simpson Nursery is and I assume the supplier does the labeling and not Lowes, But I might be wrong there. The Pecan really bothered me because of the long term commitment.

Darkman,

I am sure you are familiar with Just Fruits and Exotics close to Tallahassee and I would highly recommend them to you. Brandy and her crew are good fruit people.

Most definitely great people there. A guy I know had purchased some bananas from a secondary vendor that was labeled an Ice Cream but he is skeptical. The primary grower tag was from Simpson Nurseries. I knew we had some members here that live down there and was hoping one of them was familiar with them.

Charles, I live 15 minutes away from Simpson Nurseries. They are basically a retail nursery for builders and landscapers and big box stores. I would not rely on them for fruit trees. They carry the ubiquitous celeste/brown turkey fig varieties. Whoop-de-do.

When you come to Tallahassee, I can introduce you to an individual that has a private collection of the most varied tropical and non-tropical fruit trees you can imagine. Works out of his Tallahassee back yard and a 20 acre piece of land in Quincy complete with alligators and moccasins.