The Cultivated ISTative Plums and Cherries. 77 



results have not been obtained. The only apparently authentic 

 hybrids have come from the union of the Wild Goovse and the 

 peach. Mr. Kerr has what appears to be an undoubted hybrid. 

 The tree, as I recall it, is large, spreading and peach-like. The 

 leaves are long and peach-like, although rather broad and short- 

 pointed, but the flower buds, although they form in profusion, 

 never open, so that the tree is barren. This is a hybrid between 

 the Wild Groose and Troth's Early peach. Tvi^enty-five flowers 

 of Wild Goose were emasculated in the bud and covered with 

 paper sacks. When in fifll bloom, peach pollen was applied, but 

 the flowers were not again covered. Twenty-one of the flowers 

 set fruit, and twenty-one trees were obtained from the seeds. 

 TAventy of the trees were indistinguishable from peach, but the 

 remaining one, as indicated above, gives every evidence of being 

 a hybrid. One other apparent hybrid is the 



95. Blackman. — Nearly thirty years ago Mrs. Charity Clark 

 procured from an orchard in Rutherford county, Tenu,, which con- 

 tained WUd G-oose and Washington plums, seeds of plums and 

 gave them to Dr. Blackman, of Nashville. One tree among 

 the residting seedlings bore good fmit aud it wais called the 

 Blackman, and was disseminated by a local nurseryman. A 

 competing nursery, in endeavoring to procure cions from this tree, 

 inadvertently cut them from an adjacent tree — itself one of the 

 batcli of seedlings — and sold the trees which it grew as Black- 

 man. Now this second tree makes fruit buds in abundance but 

 they never open; and from the resemblance of the leaves to those 

 of the peach the plant is generally thought to be a hybrid between, 

 the Wild Goose and the peach. This assimiption finds partial 

 confirmation in the expeiTments of Mr. Kerr, recorded above, for 

 this spurious Blackman is very much like his hybrid although 

 the leaves are more pointed and still more peach-like. Curiously 

 enough, the genuine Blackman has never been widely dissem- 

 inated, but the spurious and worthless sublstitute has been sold 

 in large quantities. In order to -avoid confusion, the original 

 Blackman has been rechristened Charity Clark. There are there- 

 fore, two Blackman plumls, one of which 'is practically unknown 



