THE MINNESOTA 



HORTICULTURIST. 



VOL. 24. DECEMBER, 1896. NO. 12. 



A LONGFIELD APPLE TREE AND ITS PLANTER, 

 A. F. TUTTLE, BARABOO, WIS. 



J. S. IIAKRIS, LA CKESCHNT. 



The subject of our frontispiece this month is a Longfield apple 

 tree in the fourth year after planting- in the orchard. Of course, it 

 was not such a tree as travelling tree venders usually furnish our 

 farmers, but was honestly grown and skillfully dug in the nursery 

 and replanted in his orchard by the veteran and oldest horticulturist 

 now living in his state, A. G. Tuttle, of Baraboo, Wisconsin, whose 

 portrait is seen in the foreground, 



Mr. A. G. Tuttle was born at Litchfield, Conn., in 1S51.^; consequently, 

 is now past eightj'-one years of age. He came to Madison, Wis., in 

 184G, to Portage City in 1847 and to Baraboo in 1848. He was engaged 

 in the mercantile business about five years, but abandoned it on ac- 

 count of failing health, and began orcharding in 180:1 His first 

 plantings were necessarily largely of untried varieties, and he earlj' 

 realized that the great majority of the then existing American va- 

 rieties were not adapted to this climate, and secured through Hon. 

 Cassius M. Clay, then consul to Russia, an importation of scions of a 

 considerable number of Russian varieties of the apple in 18(5<) and 

 again in 1868. He has planted these varieties extensively in orchard 

 for testing and found many of them entirely hardy with him and 

 producers of good fruit. At the late Wisconsin state fair, he had on 

 exhibition seventy-five varieties that for si7e, beauty of appearance 

 and (juality, were e(|ual to an^' like number of our moat popular 

 American varieties. His favorite for a general purpose apple is the 

 Tongfield. 



The Longtield apple is rapidly coming to the front as being about 

 the most valuable of all the varieties imported from Russia, and is 

 e((ual in most respects to the best of our American varieties, when 

 well-grown. 



Description of the fruit: Size, four to five, or full medium; weight, 

 four and a half to five ounces; form, smooth, round ovate: color 

 greenish-yellow in the shade ami clear, deep blush on the sun side; 

 stalk, medium long, elastic, and set in a small, narrow cavity, show- 

 ing a little russet at the bottom; calyx, closed, in a medium, deep 

 wrinkled basin; tlesh, white, fine grained, tender and juicy; llavor, 



