434 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



are annually worked off upon our people at exorbitant prices by the 

 tree agents from southern and eastern states. This ought not to be 

 so, but the time, money and persistent efforts should be transferred 

 from the nursing of an alien to the education and improvement of 

 the native citizen. In a bulletin of the Cornell University, in 1892, 

 Prof. L. F. Bailey says "since the introduction of the Wild Goose 

 plum forty years ago there has been a steadily growing interest in 

 the development of our native plums. The native species possesses 

 certain advantages over the common plums of the prunus domes- 

 tica type, and they are so widely distributed and are naturally so 

 variable that they have been brought into cultivation under a great 

 number of forms." He says further that, so far as he knows, "there 

 has been no attempt to make a comprehensive study of these fruits, 

 and, as a consequence, our knowledge of them is vague and con- 

 fused, and, in fact, the native plums constitute probably the hardest 

 knot in American pomology." 



Until the present decade native plums have been grouped into 

 two species — the American, or Canadian, wild plum (Prunus Ameri- 

 cana) and the Chickasaw plum (Prunus Chickasaw); but within a 

 few years Prof. Bailey has given them a careful study, and classi- 

 fied the Chickasaw under some four groups, viz: Miner group, Wild 

 Goose group, Chickasaw group and Marianna group. 



As none of these are sufficiently hardy to warrant their general 

 planting in the northwest, we would advise the planters of Minne- 

 sota to let them alone, and apply their whole attention to planting 

 the Anaerican group (Prunus Americana). This species is entirely 

 hardy and embraces a great number of quite distinct varieties of 

 great excellence that are found growing wild from New England to 

 the Rocky Mountains, and from Manitoba to Texas ; but up to the 

 present time the best varieties that are being brought to notice 

 have been found in Minnesota, western Wisconsin and northern 

 Iowa, and it is probable that some varieties as good or better than 

 any now known are entirely lost. I am of the further opinion that 

 in the long ago our plum was cultivated by some people who in- 

 habited this region before the Indian, and it might have been ad- 

 vanced from further south and a fruit of a size and quality much 

 superior to that of the present time. Every valuable cultivated 

 fruit of the present day is believed to be advanced from wild origin- 

 als or types that present no comparison in quality to the best of 

 our plums, and a like improvement should give a fruit of rarest 

 excellence. Thus far nothing more has been accomplished than the 

 selecting of varieties, but now a number of specialists are at work, 

 and we may expect that new and improved varieties will be brought 

 out and follow each other in rapid succession. 



We now start out with the assertion that every farm in the state 

 ought to contain a plum orchard, and that no village garden is 

 complete unless it contains a few plum trees. With proper care 

 plums can be grown almost anywhere and on almost any kind of 

 soil, but the most suitable and best adapted location and soil 

 should be selected whenever it is possible to do so. The best loca- 

 tion is undoubtedly a north or northwest aspect that has some pro- 



