THE PLUMS OF NEW YORK. 29 



during the reign of that monarch which began in 1494 and ended 1547, 

 these dates fixing as accurately as possible the origin of the name. Green 

 Gage, the commonest synonym of either the Reine Claude group or of the 

 variety, comes from the fact that this fruit was introduced into England by 

 the Gage family. Phillips' gives the following account of its introduction 

 into England: 



" The Gage family, in the last century, procured from the monastery 

 of the Chartreuse at Paris, a collection of fruit trees. When these trees 

 arrived at the Mansion of Hengrave Hall, the tickets were safely affixed 

 to all of them, excepting only to the Reine Claude, which had either not 

 been put on, or had been rubbed off in the package. The gardener, therefore, 

 being ignorant of the name, called it, when it first bore fruit, the Green Gage. " 



Because of the high esteem in which the plums of this group have 

 always been held in England the early English colonists probably brought 

 seeds or plants of the Reine Claudes to America. This supposition is 

 strengthened by the fact that Prince, in his efforts in 1790 to improve 

 plums, chose the "Green Gage," planting the pits of twenty-five quarts of 

 plums of this variety. McMahon, in his list of thirty varieties of plums, 

 published in 1806, gives the names of at least seven varieties belonging to 

 this group. The varieties of the group first came into America, without 

 doubt, under one of the Green Gage names, but afterwards, probably in 

 the early part of the Nineteenth Century, importations from France 

 brought several varieties under Reine Claude names though the identity 

 of the plums under the two names seems to have been recognized in 

 American pomology from the first. 



In appearance the trees of this group are low and the heads well 

 rounded. The bark is dark in color and cracks rather deeply. The 

 shoots are thick and do not lose their pubescence. The leaves are large, 

 broad, more or less wrinkled, coarsely crenate and sometimes doubh- 

 serrated, a character not usually found in Domestica plums, and bear from 

 one to four glands. The fruit is spherical or ovoid, green or yellow, some- 

 times with a faint blush, stems short and pubescent, suture shallow, bloom 

 thin, texture firm, qualit}- of the best, flesh sweet, tender, juicy, stone 

 free or clinging. 



The leading varieties of the Reine Claude plums are: Reine Claude, 

 Bavay, Spaulding, Yellow Gage, Washington, McLaughlin, Hand, Peters, 

 Imperial Gage, Jefferson and Bryanston. 



' Phillips, Henry Comp. Orch. 306. 1831. 



