THE SMALL FRUITS OF NEW YORK 7 



THE RED RASPBERRY IN AMERICA 



There was little need of introducing European red raspberries in 

 America or attempting to domesticate the native red until towns and 

 cities were built. Wherever its culture could have succeeded the native 

 plant nins riot in waste places. It is one of the first plants to follow forest 

 fires, to creep into newly cleared lands, and becomes a weed in fence comers 

 and neglected fields. Not tintil agrictdture was well advanced, with little 

 land in waste, could there have been a need for cultivated raspberries. 



There seems to be no mention of the American red raspberry as a 

 garden fniit tmtil 1771 when in a list of plants to be sold by William Prince, 

 at Flushing Landing, New York, three raspberries are offered for sale. 

 These are the White, English Red, and American Red. In 1790, in a 

 similar list, the Large Canada is added. Thus it would seem that at the 

 ^nd of the eighteenth century four red raspberries were cultivated in New 

 York, two of which, according to the names, were of the Old World species 

 and two of the New World type. But William Robert Prince in 1831, in 

 a statement to be quoted later, says that English Red is a native raspberry 

 and changes its name to Common Red. So far as records show, the first 

 native raspberry to come into cultivation was the English Red, the origin 

 of which is unknown but antedates 1771. 



In his American Gardener s Calendar, the first American book in which 

 orchards and gardens receive detailed attention, McMahon' has this to 

 say of raspberries: 



" There are many varieties of the Rnbus -idaeus, or European rasp- 

 berry, but the most preferable are the large common red, the large com- 

 mon white, the red Antwerp, and the white Antwerp raspberries. The 

 smooth cane double-bearing raspberry, is cultivated in some places, as it 

 produces one crop of fruit in June, and another in October; but the fruit 

 are few and small, which has occasioned its being neglected. Of the Rubus 

 occidentalis, or American raspberry, we have two varieties, the black fruited ; 

 and the red fruited; the latter is preferable in taste and flavour to the black 

 variety." 



All of MclMahon's named sorts are probably Europeans. 



For the first satisfactory accovint of red raspberries in America we must 

 wait for William Prince,- in 1828, who says of varieties then growing in 

 America: 



• McMahon, Bernard Am. Card. Cal. 517. 1806. 

 = Prince, William Treat. Hort. 39. 1 828. 



