Ckapter 11 



THE ORCHARD FRUITS 



Cereals, legumes and many vegetables are annuals which need 

 to be raised from seed each season and therefore demand con- 

 siderable repetition of labor every year. On the other hand, 

 woody perennials which bear fruit for twenty or thirty years, 

 yielding an annual crop, are obviously a great horticultural asset. 

 Their cultivation goes back to the same distant period of human 

 civilization as does that of a number of the cereals and vegetables. 

 Many of the fruit trees, furthermore, originated in that part of 

 Asia where the human race is supposed to have had its origin. 

 Thus some of these fruits have gone with man in his migrations to 

 new lands, from their common ancestral home. The Mediter- 

 ranean region in particular, with its dry summers and mild 

 winters, proved an ideal home for many of these introduced fruit 

 trees. Fruit raising was as important an aspect of plant husbandry 

 among the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans as it is today. It was 

 early discovered that fruit trees could be cultivated in many 

 areas unsuited for cereal or vegetable crops because of geographic 

 or physiographic reasons, since woody perennials often thrive 

 where herbaceous food plants can not exist. 



The majority of our cultivated fruits belong to only two fami- 

 lies of plants. First in importance is the Rose Family which, 

 more than any other plant group, has given man a plentiful 

 variety of edible fruits. These include the pome fruits — apple, 

 pear and quince; and the drupe or stone fruits — cherry, plum, 

 peach, apricot and almond. Second in importance only to these 

 rosaceous fruits are the citrus fruits of the Rue Family — orange, 

 lemon, grapefruit, citron and lime. There are in addition a 

 scattering of edible fruits among various other families: the 

 banana, coconut, date, olive, persimmon, breadfruit, fig, guava 

 id pineapple. 



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