460 PEACTICAL BOTANY 



ancestry. Cultivation has increased the bulk of the fruit sev- 

 eral hundred times; moreover, in the plants now cultivated 

 only one flower, or a few flowers, of the cluster develop fruit, 

 as is also the case with the pear. The importance of the apple 

 industry may be realized from the fact that a full crop for 

 the United States and Canada amounts to about 100,000,000 

 barrels. 



Apples are grown on a large scale in most of the cooler 

 portions of the United States, but there are large areas of 

 good orchard land not thus utilized, particularly in the cen- 

 tral Appalachian region. Apple growing in irrigated lands is 

 rapidly increasing in the United States. 



Pears are much less extensively grown than apples. Cali- 

 fornia pears, as is well known, are usually the largest and the 

 finest that are grown. It is interesting to note that while the 

 finest pears consumed in England were formerly of French 

 growth, the United States is now exporting pears for the 

 English market. Quinces are not of much commercial impor- 

 tance, being used for little else than as a basis for preserves 

 and jellies. A large part of those produced are ordinarily 

 grown for home use on one or two trees in a corner of the 

 garden or orchard. 



425. " Berries. " In the so-called berries of the Rose family 

 the ovaries ripen together, forming a thimble-shaped fruit 

 upon the end of the flower stem, or receptacle, as in the black- 

 berry; or it may be the receptacle itself which ripens, and, 

 with its seeds upon its surface, forms the fruit, as is true in 

 the strawberry. 



Cultivated strawberries are mostly descended from a Pacific 

 coast species which was introduced into cultivation from Chile 

 some two hundred years ago. The plant occurs wild along 

 the North American coast as far north as Alaska. Strawberry 

 growing in the United States began with the once famous 

 Hovey seedling, about 1834 or 1835, but was of little impor- 

 tance until after 1840. Strawberries grow readily in almost 

 all good farming lands of the country. In favorable situations 



