THE PRUNE 45 



This work began about 1885, when I was 

 growing seedlings of the European plum, 

 Prunus domestica, from which practically all the 

 prunes have been developed. 



I have told in an earlier chapter of the suc- 

 cess that ultimately attained the effort, through 

 the development of the sugar prune. Here I 

 wish to tell a little more at length of some of the 

 tentative efforts and partial successes that paved 

 the way for the final realization of an ideal. 



As already told, these experiments were con- 

 ducted by hybridizing the French prune with the 

 larger and handsomer but less sugary variety 

 known as Pond's seedling, and in California 

 often called the Hungarian prune. The little 

 French prune was selected as the parent tree and 

 many thousands of blossoms were pollinated 

 from the Hungarian. This was in 1885. 



Four years later, at the meeting of the Cali- 

 fornia State Horticultural Society, I had the 

 pleasure of exhibiting fruit of seventy different 

 varieties of these crossbreed seedlings. 



During the next winter a purchaser of the 

 commercial part of my nurseries, being ignorant 

 of the value of these crossbred prunes, destroyed 

 sixty or more of them. Fortunately, however, 

 cions from several of the most promising had 

 been grafted on older trees. 



