10 NEBRASKA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



ovate, crenate, when young hairy, when old smooth, or 

 nearly so; twigs at first sparsely hairy, becoming smooth, 

 flower-stalk and calyx mostly smooth ; fruit yellowish or 

 reddish, f inch in diameter on a stalk about as long, very 

 sour and bitter. A tree 25 to 30 feet high, native of cen- 

 tral Europe. 



5. HAIRY WILD APPLE (Pirus mains L.). Leaves ovate or el- 

 liptical, crenate, more or less hairy, as are the twigs also; 

 flower-stalk and calyx white-woolly; fruit longer than its 

 stalk, larger than the preceding, from sour to sweet. Two 

 quite well marked wild varieties are commonly recognized 

 as follows: 



var. dasyphylla, a tree of moderate size with horizontal 

 branches, bearing large leaves (3 to 4 inches long and 2 to 

 2J broad). Native of the Orient. 



var. pumila, a shrub or small tree, native of southeast Rus- 

 sia, the Caucasus, Tartary, etc. From this variety have 

 come the dwarf apples known as Paradise and Doucain ap- 

 ples, so frequently used by propagators for dwarfing the 

 larger cultivated sorts. 



This species with its varieties appears to have given rise to most of 

 the cultivated apples of the world. It is doubtful whether the pre- 

 ceding species (P. silvestris) should be kept distinct from P. mains. 

 They appear to freely intercross and produce gradations from one type 

 to the other. 



The cultivated varieties, as the Baldwin, Jonathan, Ben Davis, 

 Grimes' Golden, are what the botanist calls " horticultural varieties," 

 which differ from varieties in the botanical sense by being less stable. 

 A botanical variety will reproduce itself from seed, but these " horti- 

 cultural varieties' 7 will not do so. And yet the two differ only in de- 

 gree, not in kind. The horticultural variety is a slight temporary 

 variation which will easily lose its identity, while the botanical vari- 

 ety is the same in kind, but with such stability that it reproduces itself 

 year by year from the seed. 



The extremely variable character of this species may be inferred 

 from the statement made by Professor Bailey, that the horticultural 

 varieties undoubtedly reach four or five thousand.* Downing gives 



*See the article "Apple" in the new edition of Johnson's Cyclopaedia, 1893, pp. 

 260-261. 



