Pecan "fruit of the walnut". They noted the particularly thin shell and acorn-like shape of the fruit, indicating they were indeed referring to pecans. The Spaniards took the pecan into Europe, Asia, and Africa beginning in the 16th century. In 1792, William Bartram reported in his botanical book, "Travels", a nut tree, "Juglans exalata" that some botanists today argue was the American pecan tree, but others argue was hickory, "Carya ovata". Pecan trees are native to the United States, and writing about the pecan tree goes back to the nation's founders. Thomas Jefferson planted pecan trees, "C. illinoinensis" (Illinois nuts), in
Forbidden fruit Paramhansa Yogananda cites an interpretation by his master Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri that the Garden of Eden refers to man's body, with the fruit in the center being that of the sexual organs. In Western Europe, the fruit was often depicted as an apple. This was possibly because of a misunderstanding of – or a pun on – "mălum", a native Latin noun which means evil (from the adjective "malus"), and "mālum", another Latin noun, borrowed from Greek μῆλον, which means apple. In the Vulgate, Genesis 2:17 describes the tree as "de ligno autem scientiae boni et mali" : "but