Injured Apple Trees, 299 



Injured Apple Trees. 



I HAVE in former articles, in various horticultural publications, called attention 

 to the tall, old, and in quality of fruit, not the best apple trees in New Jersey, 

 damaged by causes that operate in the feebleness of age, and whose value as orchard 

 or dooryard trees had ceased. And I wrote certain articles ridiculing the want of 

 thrift in these matters in that State, which suflPered these trees to stand. Last year I 

 saw whole orchards dead or dying in New England, by a cause more serious than that 

 in New Jersey. This year the blighting cause is severe, which began only two 

 years since in the inexhaustable lands of Central New York, and is now threatening 

 us with a similar loss. It is not a thing to be looked for with us in all the wheat 

 region of this large State, that an apple tree should cease its healthy foliage, and a 

 reasonable fruitage, no matter how old it may get to be ; but last year, and this year 

 also, it is quite a common sight to see trees in a decline, with stunted, yellow leaves, 

 dead ends of small branches and occasionally large limbs dead. And, as in New 

 Jersey and Massachusetts, the cause is not very apparent. I see, too, that it is quite 

 common to speak trivially of it, as in the July, 1873, number, of the monthly 

 report of the Agricultural department, where this disease with others is not spoken 

 of as diseases, but as " the intense cold of last winter, and in the southern sections 

 of the country, late severe frosts and freezes in the spring." "Vast numbers of 

 peach trees and many apple trees were killed outright." Others speak of being 

 " killed to the ground " by the cold, not to quote others equally in error. Now we 

 apprehend that while the frost and cold may damage the blossoms and kill them, 

 and injure to a certain extent, the foliage of the apple ; so hardy a tree is not so 

 commonly killed in limb or "to the ground" by the effect of the winter only. And 

 that it becomes all intelligent writers to feel that these generalizations of "hard 

 last winter on apples and peaches, the late frost," and " hot sun of early spring, did 

 the damage," and other like expressions, are but mere confessions of their igno- 

 rance ; that knowledge must go beyond these more vague guesses, which are from 

 immemorial barefaced assertions. It is as true, that " the corn died because it 

 was planted in the old of the moon" or "in the wrong sign" (when neither "the 

 sign" nor "the moon " had the least knowledge of any corn planted on the face of 

 the earth), as to repeat the old moon story or the everlastzug sign, over the death of 

 trees and vines, merely because "the winter killing" was the last of a series of 

 causes, or not the great cause ; this is contemptible if viewed in its proper light. 

 It is honorable to say the winter of 1872-3, was followed in the spring of 1873, by 

 a loss of vigor in apple trees, and in many cases by the death of the tree "to the 

 ground," for then the writer acknowledges indirectly, that he is ignorant of the 

 cause of death. It is correct, that a man, say Col. Live-long, died very old, but to 

 say " he died of old age " is absolutely false, for there is no disease of that name, 

 and not one of the human race dies, unless disease is in some form the cause of death. 

 He is almost a fool in knowledge, who asserts such absurdities, solely as causes of 

 death. 



We say not this in the emphatic way we have just written it, to wound the feel- 

 ings of any one, but as a bitter medicine to cure the evil of hastily attributing to 

 our climate and to our winters, what does not properly belong to them. We also 



