SYSTEMATIC POMOLOGY 



CHAPTER I 

 INTRODVCTORY 



The first human beings who used language must have classi- 

 fied plants. Then as now, men were bewildered by the great 

 number of kinds ; then as now, some use was made of many 

 plants. It was not possible then, as it is not at present, to inter- 

 change ideas about plants without names for the lesser and 

 greater groups. In the dawn of the human race there must have 

 been family names to distinguish fruits from nuts ; generic 

 names to separate pomes from drupes ; and possibly specific 

 names for some of the kinds of the different fruits. These sim- 

 ple facts make plain the necessity and the naturalness of sys- 

 tematic pomology. 



One w^orking wdth a group of fruits is seldom able to see all 

 of the kinds. No fruit-grower, for example, ever can observe 

 all of the varieties of plums under cultivation ; no . student of 

 the botany of plums has ever seen all of the species growing 

 side by side. Workers, to obtain even a superficial knowledge 

 of a group of plants, must always be dependent on descriptions 

 and illustrations. To save space and to secure accuracy in 

 these descriptions, so necessar}^ to pomologists, there must be a 

 set of special technical rules and terms which, put in use, con- 

 stitute descriptive pomology. 



1. Systematic pomology defined. — Systematic pomology is 

 the study of the kinds of fruits and their relationships. In 

 practice, the structure and arrangements of the various organs 

 are studied to determine wherein they differ, so that individuals 

 may be put together in groups, the members of which have 

 certain degrees of resemblance. As far as possible, systematic 

 pomology is a classification of fruits according to their natural 



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