58 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



But travel is making all people less and less fastidious as to foods, 

 as the numerous new foreign dishes in daily use in our own homes 

 give evidence. Only savages and those w^ho must struggle for 

 sufficient food to sustain life line on one or a few foods. 



Let us hastily run over a few foreign plants that may well receive 

 more attention in America, naming fruits first as of most interest 

 to this audience. Japanese plums and persimmons came to 

 America in the medieval days of horticultural progress, and interest 

 in them seems to have ceased. We need new importations of the 

 many types not yet in the country. The fig is an ancient immi- 

 grant, but many desirable relatives were left behind. Date cul- 

 ture is now" a most promising infant industry in the southwest. 

 The Chinese jujube promises to be one of the most valuable of the 

 many plants recently introduced into this country. The jujube 

 is a hardy tree which has been cultivated in China for more than 

 4,000 years, being one of the five principal fruits of the new republic. 

 There are hundreds of varieties differing in flavor and sizes, some 

 growing less than an inch in length and others equaling the size of 

 a hen's egg. One variety is seedless. Some kinds are eaten fresh, 

 some are stewed. 



Among the newest of the new on probation, but all clamoring 

 for recognition, are the avocada from tropical America; the feijoa 

 from Brazil; a dozen or more annonaceous fruits from the tropics, 

 of which the cherimoya seems now to be most prominent; an edible 

 Osage orange from Central China; the roselle, an annual from the 

 Old World tropics, valuable for its fruit, stalks and seed. Several 

 species of Berberis supply a refreshing fruit in northern Asia and 

 might add variety to the rather spare fruit diet of the colder parts 

 of this continent. Beside these are innumerable new citrus fruits, 

 the number of species and varieties of which seem to be legion — 

 the speaker is neither able to enumerate them not to tell where they 

 begin or where they leave off. Swingle's splendid work with this 

 genus is one of the most notable contributions to horticulture in 

 recent years. 



The mango has long been grown in Florida, but interest in mangos 

 has recently been renewed through the introduction of choice 

 Indian varieties. Poponoe describes 312 varieties of mangos 

 grown in various parts of the world, of which as yet I judge there 



