244 ™^ SMALL FRUITS OF NEW YORK 



and white, are known. The black currant belongs to a distinct species and 

 will be so treated. 



RED AND WHITE CURRANTS 



The currant was probably first cultivated as a common garden plant 

 in Holland, Denmark, and the coastal plains about the Baltic. Certainly 

 it has long been and still is a favorite fruit in these regions. Several names 

 of old varieties of red currants bespeak a Dutch origin, and an old French 

 name, still current in parts of France, groseillier d' outre nier (currant from 

 over the sea) may mean that the plant was brought to France from beyond 

 the Baltic, the northern sea. Species of currants from which cultivated 

 currants have been derived, it is true, grow wild in northern France, 

 Germany, and Austria, but neither wild nor cultivated do the fruits attain 

 the size and quality of more northern plants, and in competition with the 

 tree fruits of these countries would scarcely attract attention. 



The red currant first appears in English agricultural literature at the 

 close of the sixteenth century. Gerarde in his Herball or General Historic 

 of Plants, 1597, seems to be the earliest EngHsh writer to notice the currant 

 as a garden plant but calls them gooseberries and not currants. He ' says, 

 writing of gooseberries: " We have also in our London gardens another 

 sort altogether without prickes, whose fruit is verie small, lesser by much 

 than the common kinde, but of a perfect red colour, wherein it differeth 

 from the rest of his kinde." Surely this plant is a currant and not a goose- 

 berry. Thomas Tusser in his several editions of Five Hundred Pointes of 

 Good Husbandrie, 1557-1580, in which it is supposed that every food plant 

 then cultivated in England is listed, does not include the currant. 



Curiously enough the next reference to the currant in English agricul- 

 tural records has to do with sending plants to America. In a memorandum 

 of the Massachusetts Company, dated March 16, 1629, the interests of 

 the colony in the New World are thus prepared for:^ "To provide to send 

 for New England, Vyne Planters, Stones of all sorts of f mites, as peaches, 

 plums, filberts, cherries, pear, aple, quince kemells, pomegranats, also 

 wheate, rye, barley, oates, woad, safTron, liquorice seed, and madder rootes, 

 potatoes, hop rootes, currant plants." It appears from future accovmts 

 that these seeds and plants having been sent over, most of them grew, and 

 we may assume that the currant, as easy to propagate as any, was thus 

 introduced in America. 



» Phillips, Henry Po7n. Brit. 137. 1820. 

 • Mass. Rec. 1:24. 



