STATE HORTICULTUKAL bOCIETY. 133 



we call the most tender varieties ran into and through this piece of 

 soil, such as Early Harvest, Wagener, etc., and they passed the win- 

 ter with very little injury; beyond the limit of this piece of ground, 

 where they were kept defoliated, they were all ruined. 



We will now again take up our stone fruits. Our cherry trees 

 were killed by leaf blight and cold, combined. Our European plums 

 were rendered useless by the plum curculio,'rotting of the fruit, and 

 cold. The apricot and nectarine have had their fruit entirely des- 

 troyed since the advent of the plum curculio. Severe cold, the 

 introduction of blue grass, the plum curculio, and the gradual intro- 

 duction of foliage diseases, combined with the peach-tree borer, has 

 obliterated the peach as a cultivated fruit in Northern Illinois, 

 leaving us no stone fruit of any value save the native plums. Are 

 these of any value? I am constrained to believe that at least nine- 

 tenths of those who have attemped to fruit them would answer 

 quickly and emphatically, no ! Nearly all who have planted and 

 cared for them have completely failed to get any fruit, while a few 

 of us who have studied out their necessities, or stumbled on them 

 accidentally, have found them among the most reliable, useful and 

 profitable of fruits, through a long series of years, and these years 

 the very worst in point of weather this state has ever known. 



Why do we find this contradiction in opinion as to the value of 

 these plums? It is simply because of one point in their nature that 

 has not been understood, namely: But very few of them are fertile 

 with their own pollen. They must have acceptable pollen from 

 another variety or species, to render their flowers fertile. For 

 instance, the variety known as Wild Goose, has been growing on my 

 place for years, as individual isolated trees, and in groups all of that 

 variety. So has the variety known as Miner. In all such cases 

 neither of them has in that time matured a fruit. I have, also, seen 

 many instances where these two varieties are growing quite near 

 each other. In all such cases both varieties have been yearly pro- 

 ductive of fine, marketable fruit. The same facts have proven true 

 of many other varieties growing here. A few varieties are fully fer- 

 tile with their own pollen. 



So far as tested, the variety known as Miner fertilizes the flowers 

 of all others, and all others those of the Miner; therefore, so far north 

 as the Miner is hardy, the question of how to fruit the native plums 

 in abundance is very easily answered. How? By planting them in 

 rows four to six feet apart, with every third tree a Miner, with the 

 rows twelve to twenty feet apart. Anyone having good, healthy 

 trees of these plums that refuse to produce fruit, can quickly make 

 them productive by grafting the Miner into their uppermost branches. 

 The Miner, when isolated, is rendered enormously productive by graft- 

 ing into it Wild Goose, Newman, and perhaps other varieties of the 

 Chickasaw group. The plum curculio has no more to do with the 

 native plum crop than it has with the corn or potato crop. The 



