HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 123 



when growing wild in the old states. Especially is this the case 

 with the native plum, the strawberry and blackcaj) raspberry. 

 While so far as has come under my observation our native black- 

 berries are inferior to the natives of states further east and south. 



I think I am able to speak advisably on the comparative 

 quality of these fruits, as my residence in this Northwest covers 

 a period of thirty- eight years, and my acquaintance with the na- 

 tive fruits of the East and South was in my boyhood days when 

 the appetite was keen and the taste uncultivated. 



There are doubtless varieties among these wild fruits which, 

 with skillful cultivation and scientific propagation, will develop 

 peculiar merits that shall yet cause them to occupy i^rominent 

 places in the pomology of North America. Among them there 

 is no one class so inviting for the experimentalist as our wild 

 plums. They are quite universally distributed, and the trees 

 are found growing in clumps and groves in our lowest valleys, 

 on our highest hills, and in every locality wherever the annual 

 prairie fires have not destroyed everything of the tree kind. 

 They are always perfectly hardy and generally fruitful. 



While botanists claim that there is but one species of them, 

 they appear at some period to have broken into a number of 

 quite distinct varieties, producing fruit of similar characteris- 

 tics, yet differing widely in size, color, quality and seasons of 

 ripening. The colors are almost white, yellow, orange, salmon, 

 pink, deep red and purple. They also exhibit a wide difference 

 in foliage, the leaves of some being long, others nearly round, 

 pinate, serate, double serate, and nearly smooth. The varieties 

 also differ in size and habits of growth of the trees; some are of 

 straight trim growth fifteen to twenty feet high, others with 

 large branching heads, and others mere scraggy shrubs, but all 

 are more or less thorny. The size of the fruit varies from one- 

 half inch to one and one-fourth inch and over in diameter, and 

 from round to oblong in shape. In their wild state nearly all 

 have a pleasant tasting pulp, but the larger portion of them have 

 a thick, acrid skin, which in cooking has a tendency to dry up 

 and toughen. They also have an acrid taste about the seed that 

 often imparts an unpleasant flavor to the sauce. There are, how- 

 ever, here and there found a choice variety apparently several 

 removes from the average. A few varieties are found with skin 

 thin and tasteless, that disappears in cooking, and with a more 

 meaty flesh and a comparative freedom from acridity about the 

 pit. In some of them the flesh parts readily and clean from the 

 stone. 



