HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 125 



Mr. Thiellinan. He has probably four or five in there. 



A member. Is it clover or timothy? 



Mr. Thiellman. It is mixed. 



A paper on native plums was then read by Mr. Harris. 



NATIVE PLUMS IN 1889. 



By J. S. Harris, La Orescent, Minn. 



Mr. President and Members of the Minnesota State Horticultural 



Society: 



Peaches, cherries and tame plums are fruits which at present 

 cannot be successfully grown in any part of this state. Many vari- 

 eties of the plum have been given a fair test, but all have proved 

 to be too uncertain to warrant us in giving them further trial. Con- 

 siderable quantities of them find their way to our markets from 

 California and the South, and often peaches are offered in quanti- 

 ties in excess of the demand, but the prices at which they are sold 

 place them beyond the reach of the masses for every day use in 

 their season, and as they have to be picked and shipped before 

 fully ripe the quality is generally poor and many of them are not 

 fit to eat. At best they are a costly luxury, and it is no wonder 

 that our horticulturists are looking about to find something to take 

 their place, and at the same time keep our money at home. The 

 best substitute that offers is the native plum {Primus Canadensis). 

 This is found growing wild in a great number of varieties over a 

 considerable portion of this state and further north in Dakota and 

 Manitoba, which fact removes every doubt of its hardiness and 

 adaptation. The quality of some of them is excellent and a care- 

 ful selection of varieties might be made that would cover a 

 period of two months from August 1st to October 1st. I do not 

 claim that they would be a perfect substitute for good peaches and 

 tame plums, but I do claim that some varieties of them are better 

 for eating from the hand, equally good for canning and cooking, 

 and more wholesome than the unripe or half decayed imported 

 peaches and plums exposed for sale in our markets at the same 

 season of the year. 



Our once beautiful wild Plum groves are rapidly dis- 

 appearing from uprooting to make way for cultivated fields, or 

 from being thrown into pasture lands, so that in some seasons 

 there is a scarcity of the fruit which has started a demand for 

 trees of the best varieties for cultivation beyond the ability of 

 nurserymen to supply. 



I believe we cannot too soon make a canvas of the state for 

 seeking out varieties and testing them to learn which are best, so 

 that our markets may soon be supplied with the home grown fruit 

 at an annual saving to the people of more money than it would 

 cost to run this State Horticultural society twenty-five years, and 

 also save the farmers, the vexation of grubbing out worthless 



