THE CALIFORNIA PEACH BORER. 67 
NATIVE FOOD PLANTS. 
Mr. J. G. Grundell, who has been a resident in the mountains 
above Alma, Santa Clara County, since 1894, has many times 
collected moths on the wing in the foothills lying above the Santa 
Clara Valley, and he has furnished the only positive record of the 
rearing of this species from any native plants. Mr. Grundell was 
at one time experimenting in his little mountain orchard with 
cuttings of the western chokecherry (Cerasus demissa) as a native 
grafting stock for cultivated fruit varieties. This plant suckers 
readily and these suckers were cut and planted to be used as stocks 
for grafting. Mr. Grundell, by keeping such cuttings as became 
naturally infested confined in Jars, was able at many times to rear 
adult moths of the California peach borer. The western choke- 
cherry is indigenous to the Sierra Nevada Mountains, middle North 
Coast Range (Napa Mountains), Oakland Hills, Mount Hamilton 
Range, and the Santa Cruz Mountains, and it is undoubtedly one of 
the common native food plants of this insect. 
HISTORY OF FRUIT GROWING IN THE SANTA CLARA VALLEY. 
Mr. Grundell says that he has never collected or found the moths 
in flight in deep woods, but that they seem rather to seek the open 
or bushy country. He states also that the insect was most easily 
collected in the hills immediately at the edge of the Santa Clara Valley, 
and it was here, in the adjoining valley, that the insect first became 
injurious. The lower foothills and the upper western areas of the 
Santa Clara Valley were at one time covered with a dense growth 
of underbrush, which included especially the western chokecherry. 
Beginning about the year 1880 this land was gradually cleared and 
planted to orchards. Thus the cultivated varieties displaced some 
of the insect’s native food plants in its native habitat. It was there- 
fore natural for the insect to adapt itself to those cultivated plants 
which were closely related to the native varieties, and to extend its 
habitat into the open and adjoining country. The soil and climate 
are here especially well adapted to the growing of deciduous fruits, 
such as peaches, apricots, cherries, and plums, and the entire valley is 
now practically one continuous orchard. The insect attacks all of these 
species quite freely and here finds ideal conditions in which to live. 
LIMITS OF AREAS IN WHICH INJURY OCCURS. 
The writer can not understand why an insect which is so widely — 
distributed throughout the western coast States should be so local 
in its injury in cultivated orchards. The Santa Clara Valley, the 
areas on either side of San Francisco Bay in Alameda and San Mateo 
Counties, and small areas near Watsonville, Santa Clara County, are 
