BREEDING HARDY STRAWBERRIES AND RASPBERRIES. 



253' 



Stand the same amount of cold that the gooseberry will. The apple 

 trees that come to us from the mild climate of France will not grow 

 as far north as will the Russian apples. The apple of Russia came 

 from a climate that gives us a much colder temperature than that 

 of southern France. 



I believe that is enough on that point. It is the same way with 

 the raspberry. Where did we get our tame raspberry? The first 

 settlers from Europe brought both raspberry and strawberry. The 

 pilgrim fathers and others brought over choice raspberries fr.om 

 England, France, Germany, all milder sections than ours ; they 

 thought they were good enough. These failed to endure our cli- 



Raspberry breeding at South Dakota Exp. Station. The field before selections were made. 



mate. The same thing happened to the grape ; so they looked in 

 the woods and found the wild ones. These were crossed with the 

 European grapes, and they soon found that the less tender foreign 

 blood there was in these fruits the better it was for them. The 

 native pure blood, easLern raspberries form the basis of our present 

 cultivated raspberries in the west. We are a lazy lot of fellows not 

 to raise more seedlings all these years. We did not get deep 

 enough into the problem. This breeding work is now progressing 

 rapidly. The native types of these fruits are hardy enough here, but 

 neither the European nor New England type is adapted to our condi- 

 tions. I came back from a visit to Luther Burbank this fall and 

 stopped at Winnipeg. I saw some wild plums there and bought a 

 big pailful from the Indians. That is all there is to it. We have to 

 get at tiie fundamental physiological basis of it all and bear in mind 

 that hardiness is something we cannot put into the plant by selec- 



