HORTICULTURE 



HORTICULTURE 



1515 



Damsons, the offspring of introductions from Europe, 

 were early abundant in New England. Plum-culture 

 has never thrived far south of Mason and Dixon's 

 line or west of Lake Michigan, except, of course, on the 

 Pacific slope and parts of the far southwestern country. 

 There are climatic limitations which more or less 

 restrict the area of plum-growing, and the leaf-blight 

 fungus, black-knot, and fruit-rot have added to the 

 perplexities. In these great interior and southern areas 

 various native plums, offshoots of several indigenous 

 species, have now spread themselves, and they have 

 already laid the foundation of a new type of plum-cul- 

 ture. The first of these novel plums to receive a name 

 was that which we now know as the Miner, and the 

 seed from which it sprung was planted by William 

 Dodd, an officer under General Jackson, in Knox 

 County, Tennessee, in 1814. The second of these 

 native plums to come into prominence, and the one 

 which really marks the popularization of the fruit, is the 

 Wild Goose. Some time before 1830, it is related, a 

 man shot a wild goose near Columbia, Tennessee, and 

 where the remains were thrown this plum sprang 

 forth. It was introduced to the trade about 1850. by 

 the late J. S. Downer, of Fairview, Kentucky. Over 

 200 named varieties of these native plums are now 

 described, and some of them are widely disseminated 

 and deservedly popular. In the South and on the 

 plains, these natives are a prominent horticultural 

 group. The complexity of the cultivated plum flora is 

 now further increased by the introduction of the Japa- 

 nese or Chinese type, which first came in by way of 

 California in 1870. Finally, about 1880, the apricot 

 plum, or Prunus Simonii, was introduced from China 

 by way of France; and the American plum industry, 

 with no less than ten specific types to draw upon and 

 which represent the entire circuit of the northern hemi- 

 sphere, is now fairly launched upon an experimental 

 career which already has produced remarkable results. 



The cherry was early introduced from Europe. In 

 1641 trees were planted in Virginia in the orchard of 

 Governor Berkeley. As early as 1663 it was grown in 

 Massachusetts. The commercial cherries of this coun- 

 try are derived from the same species as those of 

 Europe, although the dwarf sand-cherry of the Plains 

 has been improved or cultivated to some extent. 



Grapes. In America, no crop has been the subject of 

 so much book-writing as the grape. Counting the 

 various editions, no doubt a hundred books have 

 appeared, being the work of at least fifty authors. 

 Since the American grape is a product of our own woods 

 within about a century, the progress in grape-growing 

 has been ahead of the books. Most of the books 

 are founded largely on European advice, and therefore 

 are not applicable to American conditions. In general 

 pomology, the books seem to have had much influence 

 upon fruit-growing; but in the grape the books and 

 actual commercial grape-growing seem to have had , 

 little relation one to the other. Some of the later books 

 have more nearly caught the right point of view. 



The grape of North America is of two unlike types, 

 the natives, which comprise all commercial outdoor 

 varieties in the interior and eastern states; and the vinif- 

 era or Old World kinds, which are grown under glass 

 and in California. The native types were developed 

 within the nineteenth century. The oldest commercial 

 variety is the Catawba, which dates from 1802; the 

 cosmopolitan variety the Concord, which first fruited 

 in 1849 (see p. 1374). A full review of the history is 

 made in "Evolution of Our Native Fruits." With the first 

 settlement of the country, efforts were made to grow 

 the European wine-grape. Thus in 1619 vine-dressers 

 and vines were sent from France to Virginia; the 

 subsequent history of the wine-grape in North America 

 is a record of repeated attempts and continuous fail- 

 ures; and these failures, due largely to phylloxera and 

 mildew, finally forced the cultivation of the native 



species of Vitis. In Mexico and on the Pacific slope, 

 however, the wine-grape established itself readily 

 about the missions, and it is now the foundation of the 

 grape-culture of California. It is very likely that these 

 introductions of the padres preceded those in the 

 eastern American colonies. 



A very interesting error appears to have crept into 

 North American history in connection with the native 

 grapes. The "wineberry" found by the Norsemen on 

 the American coast in the eleventh century has pre- 

 vailingly been identified as grapes, and this interpre- 

 tation has made it apparent that the explorers came 

 south as far as the present New England. Recently, 

 however, M. L. Fernald has concluded (Rhodora, 

 xii, 17-38, Feb., 1910), that the wineberries of the Norse- 

 men were certainly not grapes, but most likely the 

 mountain cranberry, Vaccinium Vitis-Idsea. 



To show how far we have come in grape-culture, 

 the examples in Fig. 1859 will be interesting. This 

 cut is from S. W. Johnson's "Rural Economy," 1806, 

 published in New Jersey. It shows the method with the 

 European wine-grape. Just twenty years later appeared 

 Dufour's book on the grape; he also represents a foreign 

 method (Fig. 1860). 



Strawberry. There was no commercial strawberry- 

 culture in America, worthy of the name, until the 

 introduction of the Hovey (Fig. 1861) late in the 

 thirties of last century. This and the Boston Pine 

 were seedlings of C. M. Hovey's, Cambridge, Massa- 

 chusetts. They first fruited in 1836 and 1837, and 

 from them are supposed to have descended many of the 

 garden strawberries of the present day. These were 

 seedlings of the old Pine type of strawberry, which is 

 apparently a descendant of the wild strawberry of Chile. 

 The Wilson, or Wilson's Albany, which originated with 

 John Wilson, of Albany, New York, began to attract 



1858. Example of the earliest illustrations of American fruits. 

 Esopus Spitzenberg, figured by Coxe in 1817. 



attention about 1856 or 1857, and it marked the begin- 

 ning of the modern epoch in American strawberry- 

 growing. In the Middle West, strawberry-growing was 

 given a great impulse by Longworth and Warder. 



Bramble fruits. Raspberries were grown in North 

 America in the eighteenth century, but they were of the 

 tender European species, of which the Antwerps were 

 the common types. This type of raspberry is now 

 almost wholly superseded by the offspring of the 



