STRAW 



5590 



STRAWBERRY 



Consult Huneker's Mezzotints in Modern Music; 

 Newman's Richard Strauss. 



STRAW, which consists of the dried stems 

 of oats, wheat, rye, barley and other grains, 

 has a wide range of usefulness. In the manu- 

 facture of paper, baskets, saddles, bottle covers, 

 strawboard, suit cases and hats it figures im- 

 portantly, but hat making is undoubtedly the 

 greatest straw industry. In America it is car- 

 ried on chiefly in Massachusetts. Foreign cen- 

 ters are in China, Germany, Austria, France, 

 Switzerland and Italy; in Bohemia and Sax- 

 ony there are probably between 20,000 and 

 30,000 persons engaged in making straw hats. 

 The most exquisite work is done in Tuscany, 

 where leghorn braids are made from a special 

 kind of straw. 



Wheat is the most desirable grain for hat 

 straw. The stems are pulled up, as mowing 

 would injure them. When cut in proper lengths 

 they are bleached in the sun, stripped of the 

 outer layer, bleached again with sulphur and 

 sorted with regard to size and color. Even 

 though looms have been invented for straw- 

 weaving, much of the work is still done by 

 hand. Straw is also used as filling for packing 

 cases, food and bedding for farm animals, and 

 an ingredient of fertilizer. Panama hats are 

 not made of straw, but from the leaf fiber of a 

 species of palm. 



STRAWBERRY, straw' her i, a luscious red 

 fruit, grown on a plant which is one of the most 

 popular members 

 of the rose 

 family. The 

 plant is a trailing 

 vine whose leaves 

 are borne in 

 clusters of three. 

 One can easily 

 understand 

 why Macaulay 

 exclaimed, on his 

 return from In- 

 dia, that he would 

 gladly trade all 

 the fruits of the 

 Orient for a sin- 

 gle basket of 

 strawberries. 

 Just as its rela- THE STRAWBERRY 

 tive, the rose, Plant: blossom, leaves and 

 queens it over fruit - 



the rest of the flowers, so the strawberry lords 

 it over the other berries. The domain over 

 which it reigns in America, where it is more ex- 



tensively cultivated than any other small fruit, 

 stretches from Mexico to Alaska, from New 

 England to the Pacific coast. It is at home in 

 every province of Canada, in Europe, in South 

 America ; and wherever it grows it is a favorite 



IN UNITED STATES 



Maryland 

 24 



^California 

 16 



NewJersey 

 19 



l5 



NewYorK 

 16 



Michigan 



IN CANADA 



^*& Ontario Quebec 



W H * 2 



Figures Represent Millions of Quarts 



THE STRAWBERRIES OF A YEAR 

 The figures represent the yield in average years 

 in the leading American states and Canadian 

 provinces. 



on account of its delicious flavor, delicate 

 aroma and rich beauty. 



As a matter of fact, the strawberry is not a 

 berry in the technical sense, for it lacks the 

 outer skin enclosing seeds and pulp that distin- 

 guishes true berries, like currants and huckle- 

 berries. It is a fleshy, swollen seed receptacle 

 bearing the dry, yellow seeds upon its pitted 

 outer surface; the star-shaped hull that is re- 

 moved before the berry is eaten was early in 

 the season the calyx of the blossom. Not every 

 blossom will produce fruit, for some lack sta- 

 mens and need to be grown in the neighbor- 

 hood of staminate plants, so their seeds may 

 be fertilized by the pollen. See CROSS-FER- 

 TILIZATION. 



Cultivation. It is the youngest plants that 

 give the best quality and quantity of fruit, and 

 some growers permit their vines to bear but 

 once or twice. Young plants should always 

 be used in "setting" a bed. Both spring and 

 fall planting are practiced, but if the climate 

 is severe fall planting necessitates a great deal of 

 attention in the way of covering the bed. Very 

 large and fine fruits are obtained by planting 

 in hills and cutting off the runners, but usually 

 strawberries are set in rows and the runners 

 allowed to mat. In the row the plants are from 

 fifteen to eighteen inches apart, while the rows 

 themselves have three or four feet between 

 them, to allow room for cultivation. 



Any good garden soil is suitable for straw- 

 berry growing, but the richer the soil the larger 

 the crop, and fertilization is usually necessary 



