Macoiin: Plant Breedins: in Canada 



401 



tries for her fruits, and many of the 

 varieties introduced from warm coun- 

 tries have only been suitable for the 

 most favored districts in Canada, hence 

 an effort has been made to obtain other 

 and hardier sorts which will cover the 

 season better. As the Horticultural 

 Division was not organized to do much 

 work in cross-breeding, the writer, in 

 1898, believing that in an orchard at the 

 Central Experimental Farm containing 

 between 400 and 500 named varieties 

 of apples all sorts of combinations of 

 characters would be taking place by 

 natural pollination and that the chance 

 of obtaining some good varieties would 

 be very great, had seed saved of some 

 of the best flavored apples then fruiting 

 in the orchard as well as some other 

 varieties desirable on account of other 

 characteristics. There were included in 

 these Mcintosh, St. Lawrence, Fameuse, 

 Wealthy, Shiawassee, Swayzie, North- 

 ern Spy, Winter St. Lawrence, Lang- 

 ford Beauty, Scott Winter, Salome, 

 Lawver, Gano and American Golden 

 Russet. 



OPEN-POLLINATION SEEDLINGS 



The seedlings from these were planted 

 in the orchard in 1901 and later until 

 about 2,000 were set out. The results 

 from this work have been very grati- 

 fying. The first tree to fruit from seed 

 was a Wealthy seedling now called 

 Crusoe which fruited in 1903, two years 

 after planting and five years from seed. 

 Detailed descriptions have been made 

 of the fruit of more than 1,200 of these 

 seedlings. There have been so many 

 good apples among them that 100 

 varieties have been named because giv- 

 ing promise of being useful in some part 

 of Canada. The male parent was 

 unknown in this series of seedlings, 

 but it is very interesting to note that a 

 large proportion of such seedling varie- 

 ties from Mcintosh, Wealthy, and 

 Northern Spy had characteristics 

 strongly resembling the mother parent, 

 while Fameuse, Swayzie, St. Lawrence 

 and others were lacking in this respect, 

 although in the case of Swayzie the 

 spicy flavor of the mother parent was 

 marked in most of the seedlings. Only 

 about 5% of the seedlings have been 



small or crab-like. Further details in 

 regard to these seedlings will be found 

 in the reports of the Experimental 

 Farms. 



Following are the names of some of 

 the best varieties : 



Mcintosh Seedlings. — Melba, Joyce, Pedro. 

 These are three apples of the Mcintosh type: 

 the Melba, an August apple, the Joyce, a 

 September apple, and the Pedro, an Octoloer 

 apple, thus extending the season of apples of 

 this type. 



Northern Spy Seedlings. — Autumn: Galton, 

 Epsom, Thurso, Rocket, Tasty. Early winter: 

 Lipton, Ascot. Winter: Elmer, Emilia, Spar- 

 ta, Niobe. 



While it is not claimed for any of 

 these that they are better than Northern 

 Spy or quite as good in most cases, they 

 have all proved hardier than Northern 

 Spy at Ottawa and they give a longer 

 season of apples of the Northern Spy 

 type. 



The names might be given of seedlings 

 of other varieties but as Mcintosh and 

 Northern Spy are two of the most 

 popular varieties grown, their seedlings 

 are given as examples. Detailed de- 

 scriptions will be found in the annual 

 reports of the Experimental Farms. 



Previous to this series of seedlings, 

 some 3,000 trees raised from seed 

 received from north of Riga in Russia 

 in 1890 had been tested but had given 

 practically nothing of value as the 

 fruit as a rule was of inferior quality. 



CROSS-BREEDING APPLES 



A little work in cross-breeding was 

 done in the Horticultural Division in 

 1895 when McMahan was crossed with 

 Scott Winter and Walbridge with Nor- 

 thern Spy, but beginning in 1899 some 

 work has been done almost every year 

 since. The parents used in making 

 crosses are Anis, Anisim, Antonovka, 

 Baldwin, Baxter, Bethel, Bingo, Cobalt, 

 Crusoe, Duchess of Oldenburgh, Dyer, 

 Danville, Fameuse, Forest, Glenton, 

 Gravenstein, Hibernal, Lawver, Low- 

 land Raspberry, Malinda, Milwaukee, 

 Mcintosh, McMahan, Newton, Nor- 

 thern Spy, North Western Greening, 

 R. I. Greening, Rosalie, Rouleau, Scott, 

 Winter, Stone, Winter Rose, and Wal- 

 t on . Reciprocal crosses have been made 

 in manv cases. There have been two 



