STORAGE 



STOVE PLANTS 



3259 



ing. There is also a direct influence on the occurrence 

 of scald. Prompt cooling, as a rule, prevents the occur- 

 rence of this disease. This factor is of special importance 

 for early-season fruits or early varieties of apples like 

 Jonathan. The practice which prevails in many sec- 

 tions of allowing the fruit to accumulate for some time 

 before placing it in storage is likely to result disastrously 

 if the season happens to be warm. This is especially 

 true where the fruit must be packed while warm. The 

 ideal condition is the placing of the fruit under refrig- 

 eration immediately after picking from the tree and 

 the nearer this can be approached in practice, the 

 longer the fruit can be held in storage. 



The proper storage temperature for different kinds 

 and varieties of fruits has already been referred to. 

 The influence of a low temperature, especially for 

 apples, is most important. Experiments show the 

 occurrence of scald to be less severe at 32 than at a 

 higher temperature. The use of a low temperature is 

 also important because of the rapidity with which the 

 fruit within the package can be cooled. In operating 

 either a common- or cold-storage plant, the temperature 

 of the fruit is an important factor to consider. When a 

 fruit is first placed in the storage room, a considerable 

 length of time may be required to reduce its temperature 

 to the desired point, if means are not at hand to increase 

 the cooling effects. In cold-storage rooms the cooling 

 can be hastened by holding the air of the rooms at a 

 temperature several degrees lower than the desired 

 temperature. A temperature of 25 to 27 F. may be 

 safely maintained until the fruits in the packages 

 approach the storage temperature. In this way the 

 operator can materially hasten the cooling effect, and 

 this hastening is desirable. It is commonly assumed 

 that the cooling should be gradual, but as yet there is 

 no experimental evidence to indicate that rapid cool- 

 ing is at all injurious. 



The investigations of the United States Department 

 of Agriculture show conclusively that the character 

 of the treatment given the fruit in preparing it for 

 market or storage has a material influence upon its 

 keeping quality. Fruits which are roughly handled 

 and bruised or injured to any extent have their storage 

 qualities seriously affected, and decay and deterioration 

 follow the injuries. There are some forms of decay or 

 deterioration which cannot develop unless there are 

 injuries of some kind on the fruit. A break in the skin 

 will allow blue mold to gain entrance, while a sound 

 skin may prevenf the development of this form of 

 decay. Blue mold is one of the most common forms of 

 loss both in common and cold storage and occurrence 

 of this trouble is due almost exclusively to rough 

 handling. The blue mold does not grow upon the sound 

 skin of a healthy fruit. The importance, then, of 

 handling the fruits with extreme care throughout all 

 the processes of picking, grading, and packing cannot 

 be too strongly emphasized. Bruises or breaks in the 

 skin may mean a decayed fruit. This general principle 

 has been established through a long series of careful 

 investigations and thus far there has been no exception. 



There are other decays which affect apples and other 

 fruits: the principal diseases affecting apples are brown- 

 or ripe-rot, anthracnose, and bitter-rot. These dis- 

 eases are not dependent upon the care in handling 

 the fruit so far as the occurrence of bruises or injuries 

 is concerned. The spores are present on the fruit 

 when it is packed and the control of the disease in 

 storage goes back to the orchard treatment and the 

 control of the fungi on the trees. All three of these 

 decays occur on the trees as canker spots and the 

 spores which inhabit the fruits develop from these 

 cankers. Control of the cankers by cutting out or 

 spraying will materially reduce the occurrence of 

 decay in storage. 



There are other forms of deterioration which, so far, 

 have not been traced to any definite organism. These 



are obscure physiological diseases and result in the 

 breaking down of the flesh of the fruit, or in burning of 

 the tissues, or in a scalded appearance of the skin. 

 These physiological troubles have been found to be 

 due, at least to some extent, to rough handling or to 

 pressing. A physiological breakdown also occurs in 

 fruit which is over-ripe when it is stored. It also occurs 

 seriously in fruit which has been delayed in cooling 

 after picking. Physiological breakdown also occurs in 

 fruit which is held beyond its normal life limit. 



Ordinary storage-scald has already been referred to. 

 The nature of this disease is unknown but it is supposed 

 to be due to the action of enzymes upon the skin of the 

 fruit. There is another form of scald which, for want 

 of a better term, has been designated as "soft scald." 

 Ordinary storage-scald does not soften the skin except 

 in the most advanced stages. The soft scald produces 

 a softening of the skin and also of the flesh directly 

 beneath the skin. It occurs also in more or less dis- 

 tinct areas or zones, sometimes extending completely 

 around the fruit. The nature of this disease is obscure 

 and, so far, storage treatment, orchard treatment, and 

 temperature effects do not seem to have any bearing 

 on it. It has been attributed to the freezing of the 

 fruit in storage and, while definite results from the 

 effects of freezing have not been obtained, it is pos- 

 sible that in storage rooms of uneven temperature con- 

 ditions portions of the rooms may have temperature 

 conditions sufficiently low actually to injure the fruit. 



For discussion of precooling, see the article Trans- 

 portation. A. V. SrUBENHAtJCH. 



STOVE PLANTS. The term "stove" applied to 

 plants undoubtedly originated from the method of 

 heating the structures in which plants were grown 

 before the advent of hot water and steam. Glasshouses 

 such as then existed were heated by stoves and flues, 

 usually made of bricks. Such structures came to be 

 called stovehouses or stoves, and the plants g^own in 

 them "stove-plants." (A "greenhouse" was in those 

 days an unheated glasshouse in which plants were 

 merely kept alive over winter.) These terms still 

 exist in England, but are applied to strictly tropical 

 plants or those requiring a warm temperature for their 

 successful culture in glasshouses. In this country such 

 plants are usually spoken of as warmhouse or tropical 

 plants. 



In England, at the present time, more distinction is 

 made in the names applied to plant-houses than in this 

 country. For example, "greenhouse" in England means 

 the coolest glasshouse only, while in this country the 

 name is usually indiscriminately applied to all glass- 

 houses. The names applied to plant-houses in Eng- 

 land are therefore: stove, for tropical plants; interme- 

 diate house, for plants hailing from warm-temperate 

 climates; greenhouse, for those plants requiring the 

 least degree of heat. A conservatory or show-house is 

 one in which plants are placed while in flower and 

 usually kept at a cool temperature. 



In practice such terms may be greatly modified to 

 suit local conditions; for example, glasshouses are some- 

 times named cool-temperate house, warm-temperate 

 house, tropical house, palm-house, acacia- and succulent- 

 house, experiment-house and propagating-house, the 

 temperatures and moisture conditions being regulated 

 to suit the requirements of each class of plants. 



The cultivation of stove plants is too heterogeneous 

 a subject to be treated exhaustively in a single book, 

 because the stove contains thousands of dissimilar 

 plant treasures from the tropics, especially those 

 found at low altitudes. In general, the stove is the 

 house which requires the most expense and care, the 

 greatest heat and the highest atmospheric moisture. 

 For the general principles of its management, consult 

 Greenhouse Management, p. 1408. 



EDWARD J. CANNING. 



