322 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Native Plums, Their Hybrids and Their Improvement. 



DEWAIN COOK, JEFFERS, MINN. 



Native Plums. 



Of these little need be said at this time. Growing wild in our 

 woods and thickets, and cultivated in our gardens, most of us 

 know about all there is to know about this, the most popular of 

 native fruits. 



Owing mostly to numerous insects and diseases that prey 

 upon the trees and fruit they cannot be depended ,upon as a class 

 to bear crops of fruit with regularity. This fruit is excellent 

 to grow for home use, but owing to its perishable nature, even 

 when placed in cold storage, it is not a fruit to be depended upon 

 for market purposes. Whatever disappointments we may have 

 experienced in growing this fine native fruit have been mostly 

 because we have been led to expect altogether too much from it. 

 It is a fruit to make plum jell from, also for eating out of hand, 

 and is sometimes used for canning purposes, plum butter, etc. 

 The improvement of the native plum through native plum seed- 

 lings is a slow process at best. To the best of my knowledge 

 there has been no improvement in the Americana plum through 

 cultivation and seedling selection up to the present time. This 

 brings us to the subject of hybrid plums. Judging from experi- 

 ence in growing hybrid and other plums on our farm here in 

 southern Minnesota, I size the situation up something like this 

 — the short road to a better plum than any we now nape of 

 the native varieties, a plum that will be suitable for commercial 

 purposes, must come as a hybrid of our native plum with one 

 of foreign origin. If this method fails us, and we are left to 

 depend upon the slow process of seedling selection of native 

 varieties, then very little improvement can be expected dur- 

 ing the lifetime of any one person — but we have hopes, and these 

 hopes lie in the hybrid plum class. 



We hope to get firmness of fruit through the hybrids of 

 native and European plums. Two varieties fruited on my farm 

 the past season indicate it. 



" We hope to get added size of fruit, better quality and greater 

 productiveness through the native and Japanese hybrids. These 

 hopes are based upon our experience with the Emerald, the Stella 

 and the Waneta, and others, all of which are Japanese hybrid 

 varieties. 



