64 OUR COMMON FRUITS. 



is true, to the Greengage in point of flavour, but sur- 

 passing in size and beauty every plnm that has ever been 

 grown. The parent tree of the " Washington " grew on 

 a farm near New York, but, being used as a mere stock 

 and grafted with another kind, escaped notice, until a 

 sucker from it was sold by a market woman to Mr. Bolmer, 

 a merchant, in whose garden it came into bearing in 1818, 

 and attracted universal attention. One of its descendants 

 was soon after sent to the Horticultural Society of Lon- 

 don, and it is now known throughout Europe, and regis- 

 tered A 1 in all collections. This tree has large broad 

 glossy foliage quite unlike any other kind, and the fruit 

 is of a roundish oval form, about 2-L in. diameter by 2, 

 with the furrow very slightly marked except just near the 

 stalk ; and in colour, when fully ripe, is deep yellow, re- 

 lieved with pale crimson, either suffused in a blush on 

 the sunny side or scattered in dots upon the cheek. The 

 stalk, which is a little downy, is scarcely in. long; and 

 on the whole the fruit is not unlike in appearance to its 

 pomal compatriots, the little American Lady Apples. It 

 ripens in August, and the flesh is yellow, ifirm, and very 

 sweet and luscious. 



The same influences, however, which foster vegetative 

 luxuriance, act with equal power upon its great antago- 

 nism, insect life, and the ardent American sun, which 

 mellows the fruit to unusual size and savour, also warms 

 into existence more determined foes than have ever at- 

 tacked it in our cooler clime. The two great obstacles to 

 plum culture in the United States, and which prevail in 

 some districts to so great a degree as almost to destroy 

 the value of the tree, are the " knots," a disease which 

 appears in the form of tumours on the bark, and the cause 

 of which is not yet satisfactorily ascertained, and the far 

 more deadly curculis, scientifically termed the RJiynclice- 

 mus Nenuphar, or plum weevil, an insect which is the 

 special bane of all smooth stone fruit in America. A 

 week or two after the blossom has fallen, the small newly- 

 formed fruit begins to show the little half-moon-shaped 

 mark, which denotes that the destroyer has marked it 

 for his own, and. if the tree be then struck, down falls a 



