THE POME-FRUITS 109 



The apple has been cultivated from remote times in India, 

 Cashmere, and northern China. Carbonized apples are found 

 in the ancient lake habitations of Switzerland, showing that they 

 must have been known in Europe by prehistoric peoples. The 

 apple is mentioned by the earliest writers on agriculture in 

 China, India, Greece, Italy, France, Germany, and England. It 

 was introduced by the first colonists in all temperate parts of 

 the New World. It is now^ the most valuable fruit-plant of the 

 temperate regions of the world, and by selection and hybridiza- 

 tion several thousand varieties have been obtained. 



159. Distribution of apples in North America. — Apples may 

 be grown in every part of North America where general agri- 

 culture is an industry, excepting subtropical parts of the Gulf 

 States and California. In all of this vast territory they are the 

 commonest fruits of farms and gardens. Apple-growing as an 

 industry is much more localized. Commercial plantations of this 

 fruit are found in numbers that constitute an industry only in 

 about half the states of the Union and less than half of the 

 provinces of Canada. The apple is of most importance, com- 

 mercially, in North America in Virginia, Pennsylvania, New 

 York, the New England states, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Michigan, 

 Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, the northern states in the Rocky Moun- 

 tains, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and in some parts 

 of California. 



160. Botanical varieties of Pyrus Malus. — Possibly the culti- 

 vated varieties came from two original species; some of the 

 Russian apples seem distinct enough to constitute a distinct 

 species. Varieties have been so fused by hybridization that it is 

 now impossible to separate them into species, although some 

 authors attempt to do so. Others divide P. Malus into botanical 

 varieties. Most of these are groups of ornamental plants, but 

 three are recognized which are of interest to pomological stu- 

 dents. These are: 



Var. sylvestris, Linn. This variety is characterized by trees with 

 glabrous shoots and leaves whereas those in the type species are pubescent ; 

 the calyx-lobes are glabrous outside but pubescent within. The habitat 

 of the variety is west and central Europe. The distinction between this 

 variety and the species would be hardly worth making, were it not that some 

 European botanists give it the rank of a species and refer most or all of 

 the pomological varieties to it. 



