WHY FEW VARIETIES ARE GROWN 195 



if for any good reason found suitable, and become prominent as 

 their merits justify. 



Another reason why new varieties do not figure more largely in 

 California fruit growing is the smallness of the amateur interest. 

 There is, in fact, almost an absence of pure amateurs enthusiastic, 

 critical, discriminating, athirst for novelties. Even suburban plant- 

 ers follow the lead of commercial orchardists and plant chiefly that 

 which has shown adaptations to local growing conditions, and few 

 are averse to making what they can by sale of small surpluses. The 

 result is that California fruit growing is almost wholly commercial 

 in spirit, policy and point of view, which is perhaps only natural in 

 a state where the fruit crops yield the growers an annual aggregate 

 value of something like two hundred and fifty millions of dollars. 

 The effect is to concentrate attention upon varieties which have 

 achieved fame for profit, and to repress amateur devotion and in- 

 dulgence. 



At the same time there is, and has always been, quite a disposi- 

 tion toward trial of novelties among commercial growers, especially 

 manifested in search of specific characters which are seen to be 

 desirable rather than desire for newness for its own sake, which is 

 often a point of pride among amateurs. To this enterprising and 

 discriminating search is due the prominence of some of the leading 

 varieties, which were chance seedlings recognized as meeting special 

 requirements and having grown great because they really did so. 

 The California grower is, therefore, quite certain that he needs not 

 varieties new throughout and of startling characters, but improved 

 varieties which hold the good points of the old and add other points. 

 For instance, he calls for trees resistant to disease, for improvement 

 of the fruit in beauty, flavor and keeping qualities; for varieties, 

 similar in kind, which fill gaps in the ripening season so that he can 

 employ help continuously, and shippers and canners agree with him 

 so that they can keep the cars moving and the cannery plants at 

 work. The grower says he must be careful not to plant something 

 different from what is already growing and selling well in his region, 

 and this is also the advice of the trade to him. He can not risk 

 much on varieties of entirely different types, although most growers 

 are always doing a little experimenting. Nor should he undertake 

 too many varieties, because a profitable orchard is not a pomolog- 

 ical museum. There must be a large quantity of uniform fruit to 

 make any district commercially prominent. 



For these reasons the number of varieties now planted is but a 

 fraction of what it was a third of a century ago, and, stopping at 

 this point, one might get the idea of the California grower as a 

 monument of conservatism and lacking in enterprise and adventure. 

 The fact is that he has very definite ideas of the suitability and 

 desirability of the varieties which he chooses for planting. From 

 the beginning, California growers and nurserymen have exercised 

 painstaking discrimination and selection to secure varieties which 

 best served particular purposes, and in 1920 they co-operated in 

 organizing a Bud Selection Association in order that commercial 

 propagation might be more widely and systematically directed 



