Blackberries. 



513 



strawberry or raspberry, and often brings better prices. The best 

 varieties are enormously productive, their cultivation comparatively 

 easy, and a well kept plantation of them should last a life time." 

 Whilst all these figures and statements are tempting, it must never- 

 theless be said that the blackberry, like all other fruits, yields the 

 golden harvest only to those who work for it, and who think whilst 

 they work. 



Accidents and diseases. — The only serious accident which is 

 known to injure the blackberry crop in this State is frost ; and in 

 most cases the injury is unavoidable, even though the grower has 

 warning of its approach. In the six crops which we have grown 

 in our patches here, only this year have we suffered from frost, and 

 even this year, when the cold wave was unusually late and severe, 

 only the lowest places suffered seriously. Drawings of blackberry 

 ilowers were made upon the spot, two or three days after the frost, 

 and they are here reproduced, natural size. A normal, uninjured 

 flower is shown in Fig. 94. Inside the five white petals or leaves. 



94.— Blackberry flower. Full size. 95.— Blackberry flower injured by frost. 



are seen the numerous sprawling stamens or so called male organs, 

 each one bearing an enlargement or anther on the end, inside 

 which the pollen is borne. In the center of the flower is the head 

 or cluster of pistils or so-called female organs, each of which ripens 

 into one of the little grains which go to make up the blackberry. 

 The frost killed these organs, so that the center of the flower bore 

 only a small black column of dead pistils. (Fig. 95). Kow and 

 then, one or more of these pistils in the head escaped and developed 

 into a fruit-grain, so that the berry became a " nubbin." Fig. 96 

 shows the dead and aborted fruits at picking time. At the top of 

 the picture are some fruits in which one or two grains or drupes are 

 full grown, whilst all the rest of the berry did not develop. 



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