96 ANNUAL REPORT 



American cultivated apples, ami from the seed raise up a new cosmopolitan trite of tlie veiy choicest 

 sorts for grafting and budding. In our next selections let us embody more delicious fragrance, aroma, 

 spice and variety of tiavor. 



How wide does the horticultural revolt extend.' From Ohio and Michigan on the Kast to Califor- 

 nia on the West. Hardier trees with as choice varieties of fruits would be welcomed by the whole coun. 

 try. The entire Northwest wants ironclad trees enduring si.'cty below zero unharmed. 



What foundation is there for this talk about choice Western ironclads, especially winter ironclads? 

 We have now summer and fall ironclad Siberian crabs ; ironclad Russian, as Duchess of Oldenburg, 

 Tefofsky, Yellow Transparent, etc.; ironclad natives, as the Wealthy apple, and many hybrid summeri 

 fall and winter Siberians, and old choice winter sorts like Blue Pearmain, Golden Russet, etc., almost 

 ironclad, with many very hardy winter apple seedlings. In far northern ironclad orchards, from the 

 Atlantic to the furtliest Western bearing apple trees, we have the best reason to believe there are do/ens 

 of ironclad winter apple seedlings (and perhaps grafts) of the highest quality, only needing to be hunted 

 out and propagated from buds and cions as rapidly as possible. Only iron-bound regions would natu- 

 rally develop ironclads. So far as I know, our most northern apple regions have not, until very lately, 

 been even looked into, and now are probably not one-hundredth part explored. 



Given ironclads, can the West produce as fine apples for the markets of the world as the East.'" 

 Most emphatically, yes. Under culture. Western soil certainly improves for fruit-growing; and West- 

 ern apples, for high flavor, color and fine quality throughout, I have never seen excelled. Every needed 

 fruit element is here, "lying around loose" in separate varieties, only waiting for us to give nature, thg 

 master workman, the opportunity to combine into new and more perfect seedling forms. 



How are we to get the desired choice ironclads? As our forefathers got their (and our) best grafted 

 varieties, by growing from the best seed millions of native seedlings, testing, and selecting out only the 

 very best trees and fruits for given locations. By seedlings they got deliverence fi'om inferior foreign 

 varieties. Imitating their example we shall escape this galling yoke of bondage to sectional, tyrant 

 varieties. Seedlings are nature's horticultural plaster casts, fruit studies, fruit pioneers mine, from 

 which the best selections, one in one, or ten, one in a hundred or a thousand are the refined gold. 



But why go back to the seed and through the wilderness of despised seedlings? Because there and 

 nowhere else can we find what we want. Only in the seed and through the wilderne.ss of seedlings can 

 we escape present bondage in a worse wilderness of fruitless or inferior grafts, of worthless tree-ped 

 dling taxation. We now pay probably not less than two million a year for the privilege of doing with, 

 out home nurseries, profitable orchards or a supply of first-class fruit, to say uotliing of galling tree- . 

 peddlers tricks and impositions, which the present order of things enforces upon us. I submit that 

 western men and women are not the ones to sit down in hopeless inferiority. We can do better or try 

 to. We can stop throwing away money, time, labor on worthless, tender, anti- western trash and be- 

 gin back at the seed, the root of the whole matter. Another important point we have but touched 

 upon. At least three-fourths of all our orchards should be winter ironclad varieties. Now it may be 

 our ignorance, but we do not know of so much as one strictly ironclad winter apple tree ortered in any 

 of all American nurseries! Yet we hope, we believe there are already several hopeful sorts promisiag 

 to be winter ironclads now under full trial and propagation. 



In this dilemma what can we do? Stop planting till winter ironclads are propagated in sufficient 

 numbers to supply planters or go on in the old, old way? Do neither; plant summer and fall iron- 

 clads as far as you want and can get them direct from reliable nurseries, home nurseries preferred. 

 Aside from that, 'et all wno can do so, get ironclad or the hardiest winter apple seed procurable. Sow 

 it and grow trees for their own planting, not merely for even winter apple seedlings but for the chance 

 of getting choice sorts. Needing winter ironclads far more than the East, the West must take the lead 

 in getting them up. It is true that from seed of winter ironclads we could not depend on getting all 

 winter or all ironclad seedings. But as like begets like, so would ironclad winter apple seed be most 

 likely of any trees, seeds or grafts in reach, to produce what we most need. Probably half the produce 

 of average ironclad winter apple seed can be depended on to give ironclad winter apple trees. Every 

 ironclad winter apple seedling fruited ircreases our chances for these very choice selected seedlings we 

 all want for budding and grafting. Let us stop putting the fruit before the tree. Let us strike for the 

 fundamental bedrock of hardiliood first and having thus started right we can safely go ahead. This 

 job, however tedious and diflicult, has to be done and done right. Every Western man is interested in 

 its speedy accomplishment and so we ask everybody's help. The more go at it the quicker and easier 

 will it be done as it should be. Please note carefully that I do not recommend common apple 



