I82 THE PLUMS OF NEW YORK. 



When grown on strong soils and in some climates, Columbia is possibly 

 a plum of value and sometimes of superiority, but in New York in 

 the average plantation it falls far short of other fruits of its type — that 

 of the Reine Claude. The trees are productive and the fruit large and 

 handsome but not of highest quality and moreover drops badly and is very 

 susceptible to the brown-rot. Columbia originated early in the second 

 quarter of the Nineteenth Century with L. V. Lawrence of Hudson, New 

 York, from seed of Reine Claude. 



Tree large, medium in vigor, upright-spreading, open-topped, productive; trunk 

 stocky, rough; branches thick; branchlets pubescent; leaves folded upward, one and 

 seven-eighths inches wide, four and one-quarter inches long, oval, thick, leathery; 

 upper surface rugose; margin serrate or crenate, with small, dark glands; petiole thick, 

 tinged red, pubescent, with from one to three globose glands. 



Fruit mid-season; when well grown nearly one and one-half inches in diameter, 

 roundish-oval, the smaller specimens rather ovate, dark purplish-red, overspread with 

 thick bloom; stem surrounded by a fleshy ring at the cavity; skin tender, sour; 

 flesh golden-yellow, dry, firm, sweet, mild; of good quality; stone semi-free or free, 

 seven-eighths inch by three-quarters inch in size, roundish-oval, flattened; ventral 

 suture prominent; dorsal suture widely and deeply grooved. 



COMPASS 



Primus besseyi X Primus horttdana mineri 

 1. Northwestern A^r. 2,^?,. 1895. 2. Vt. Sta. Bui. 6t.io. 1898. 3. /a. S/a. Sj(i. 46:266. 1900. 

 4. Budd-Hansen Am. Hort. Man. 294. 1903. 5. S. Dak. Sta. Bui. 93:13. 1905. 

 Compass Cherry 2. Heidetnan Sand Clierry. 



In 1891 H. Knudson of Springfield, Minnesota, poUinated the Sand 

 Cherry with pollen from the Danish Morello cherry and the Miner plum. 

 The seed of the resulting cross, beyond question that of the Sand Chewy 

 and the plum, was planted on August seventh of the same year and, in 1894 

 produced fruit for the first time. In 1893 C. W. H. Heideman of New 

 Ulm, Minnesota, secured a cion from this tree and another the following 

 year. In 1895 Heideman introduced as his own, under the name of Heide- 

 man Sand Cherry, a hybrid between the Sand Cherry and a plum. In the 

 controversy which followed it developed that the two hybrids were 

 identical and that Knudson was the real originator. Subsequently C. W. 

 Sampson of Eureka, Minnesota, introduced Knudson 's plum tmder the 

 name Compass. The variety is of interest to plant -breeders and may 

 have some commercial value in the Northwest but is worthless for its fruit 

 in New York. 



