356 CALIFORNIA FRUITS : HOW TO GROW THEM 



ings and one reason why the demonstration at Bidwells Bar was so 

 widely accepted as complete, when it was brought forward as a guar- 

 anty for commercial planting in the later eighties, was because similar 

 instances of successful old trees existed in many and widely separated 

 places. 



This question naturally suggests itself : Why, if such early demon- 

 stration was had, was large commercial planning of the orange delayed 

 at the north until after southern California became famous for its 

 orange product? Several good reasons can be adduced. In the first 

 place a disposition toward wider planting did at one time arise and 

 quickly subsided. In the later seventies when the general rush to fruit 

 growing, which has resulted in the present vast extension of the inter- 

 est, began, citrus fruits were not overlooked. There was a sharp de- 

 mand for orange trees. Southern California nurseries had a large over- 

 stock of trees budded on China lemon roots which southern California 

 planters had learned to despise as forcing excessive growth of tree, 

 and large, coarse fruit. The natural tendency of such a root, exag- 

 gerated by excessive irrigation in the nursery, gave a stem as thick as 

 a broom stick and higher than a man in a few months' time, and these 

 soft monstrosities were sent north by carloads, by astute tree specula- 

 tors, and sold to unwary planters, who thought they were getting a great 

 deal for their money. Such trees were planted in all sorts of situations 

 and their broad leaves made a fine display as soon as planted. There 

 were fond anticipations of evergreen orchards everywhere from the 

 swamps to the hillsides. Then came the cold winter of 1878-9. The 

 temperature in places reasonably situated was not very low not lower 

 than is frequently encountered in southern California and not low 

 enough to injure well placed old trees, though it did destroy some ill- 

 placed ones and helped to define suitable situations for citrus culture 

 in the north as such temperatures have also defined them at the south. 

 But the degree reached was fatal to those soft trees on a lemon 

 foundation almost everywhere, and the disappointment of the new 

 planters who based calculations upon them, discouraged them from 

 further efforts toward citrus culture for some time. It was not a 

 logical conclusion because a careful inquiry made after the frosts in 1879 

 elicited careful written statements from sixty-nine orange growers, 

 living in thirty counties and fully justified this conclusion, which was 

 at that time published: "this mass of testimony shows that orange 

 growing is no longer an experiment in the north, and that, notwith- 

 standing the severe frosts of such winters as this, orange and lemon 

 trees can be profitably cultivated in nearly every county in the State, 

 and by selecting favorable localities, no district, except it be situated in 

 the high Sierra, need be without these most beautiful and useful fruits." 



But there was another and more logical reason why the well suited 

 lands in the central part of the State were not at that time given to 

 citrus fruit culture. Citrus fruits require irrigation everywhere ; decid- 

 uous fruits, including the grape, do not require irrigation except in 

 places of shallow soil or light rainfall. Without waiting for irrigation 

 facilities then, hundreds of thousands of acres of deep valley loams 

 were immediately available for the planting of deciduous fruits. The 



