1514 



HORTICULTURE 



HORTICULTURE 



try;" and in 1825 William Prince offered 116 varie- 

 ties for sale — at 37 J4 cents a tree — of which seventeen 

 were set aside — after the custom of the time — as par- 

 ticularly adapted to the making of cider. Of these 116 

 varieties, sixty-one were considered to be of American 

 origin. In 1872, Downing's list of apples which had 

 been fruited and described in America, had swollen to 

 1,856 varieties, of which 1,099 were of known American 

 origin. Of this great inventory, probably not over one- 



1857. The fruit-house of Charles Downing. 



third were actually in cultivation at any one time, and 

 very many of them are now lost. In 1892, the trade- 

 lists showed that 878 varieties were actually offered for 

 sale by the nurserymen of North America. 



The style of illustration in these old books is well dis- 

 played in Fig. 1858, from Coxe, original size. 



There has been a noticeable tendency toward the 

 origination of varieties of apples in this country, and 

 the consequent exclusion of varieties of European ori- 

 gin. As early as 1700, cions of American varieties were 

 sent to England. Before the Revolution, apples were 

 exported. The origination of indigenous varieties was, 

 of course, largely accidental, and was a necessary result 

 of the method of growing apple trees directly from 

 seeds, and top-grafting them in case they should turn 

 out profitless. A critical study of American horti- 

 culture will show that all species of plants which have 

 been widely cultivated in this country have gradually 

 run into indigenous varieties, and the whole body of our 

 domesticated flora has undergone a progressive evolu- 

 tion and adaptation without our knowing it. By far the 

 greater number of the apples of the older apple-growing 

 regions of the country are indigenous varieties, and the 

 same process is now operating in the Northwest, where 

 the American seedlings of the Russian stock are prov- 

 ing to be more valuable than the original importations. 



Pears were amongst the earhest fruits introduced into 

 the New World, and the French, particularly, dissemi- 

 nated them far and wide along the waterways, as wit- 

 nessed by the patriarchal trees of the Detroit River 

 and parts of the Mississippi system (p. 1512). Bar- 

 tram's Petre pear (Fig. 18.51) is one of the patriarchs of 

 the last century, although the tree is not large. The 

 first American book devoted exclusively to the pear was 

 Field's, published in 1859. The Japanese type of pears 

 had been brought into the country from two and per- 

 haps three separate introductions, early in the fifties, 

 but they had not gained sufficient prominence to 

 attract Field's attention. From this oriental stock has 



come a race of promising kinds represented chiefly by 

 the Kieffer, LeConte and Garber. 



Peaches were early introduced into the New World 

 by various colonists, and they thrived so well that they 

 soon became spontaneous. Nuttall found them natu- 

 ralized in the forests of Arkansas in 1819, and the spe- 

 cies now grows in waste and forest lands from Georgia 

 and the CaroUnas to the westward of the Mississippi. 

 There is probably no country in which peaches grow 

 and bear so freely over such a wide territory 

 as in North America. The old Spanish or 

 Melocoton type is now the most popular 

 race of peaches, giving rise to the Craw- 

 fords and their derivatives. 



Of late years there has been a contraction 

 of some of the original peach areas, and 

 man}' good people have thought tiiat the 

 climate is growing uncongenial, but it is only 

 the natural result of the civilization of the 

 country and the change in methods. Peaches 

 had never been an industry, but the or- 

 chards were planted here and there as very 

 minor appendages to the general farming. 

 For generations insect pests were not com- 

 mon. There were no good markets, and the 

 fruit sold as low as 25 cents a bushel from 

 the wagon-box. In fact, the fruit was growTi 

 more for the home-supply than with an idea 

 of shipping it to market. Under such con- 

 ditions, it did not matter if half the crop 

 was wormy, or if many trees failed and died 

 each year. Such facts often passed almost 

 unnoticed. The trees bore well, to be sure; 

 but the crop was not measured in baskets 

 and accounted for in dollars and cents, and 

 under such conditions only the most pro- 

 ductive trees left their impress on the 

 memory. The soils had not undergone such a long 

 system of robbery then as now. When the old 

 orchards wore out, there was no special incentive to 

 plant more, for there was little money in them. Often 

 the young and energetic men had gone West, there to 

 repeat the history perhaps, and the old people did not 

 care to set orchards. And on this contracting area, all 

 the borers and other pests which had been bred in the 

 many old orchards now concentrated their energies, 

 until they have left scarcely enough trees in some locaU- 

 ties upon which to perpetuate their kind. A new coun- 

 try or a new industry is usually free of serious attacks 

 of those insects that follow the crop in older communi- 

 ties. But the foes come in unnoticed, and for a time 

 spread unmolested, when finally, perhaps almost sud- 

 denly, their number becomes so great that they threaten 

 destruction, and the farmer looks on in amazement. 



Oranges. — The orange is another tree that has thrived 

 so well in the new country that the spontaneous 

 thickets of Florida, known to be descendants of early 

 Spanish introductions, are supposed by residents to be 

 indigenous to the soil. 



As to oranges and similar fruits on the Pacific coast, 

 Coit writes in "Citrus Fruits" (1915) as follows: 

 "Citrus seeds were fu-st brought into California from the 

 peninsula of Lower CaUfornia, where peoples of Spanish 

 descent have cultivated various kinds of European 

 fruit frees and vines since the year 1701. In 1768 the 

 Jesuit missionaries were supplanted by the Franciscans, 

 some of whom under the leadership of Junipero Serra 

 pushed northward into the territory which is now the 

 state of CaUfornia. These hardy pioneers founded the 

 first Mission in Upper California at San Diego in 1769, 

 and proceeding northward established a chain of Mis- 

 sions extending 400 miles along the coast, the last 

 being estabhshed at Somoma in 1823." 



Plums and cherries. — The progress of the plum in 

 America nearly equals that of the grape in historic 

 interest. The small spontaneous plums, known as 



