HORTICULTURE 



HORTICULTURE 



757 



coasts to obedience to English husbandry. What with 

 their garden beans, and Indian beans, and pease ('as 

 good as ever I eat in England,' says Higginson in 1629) ; 

 their beets, parsnips, turnips, and carrots ('our turnips, 

 parsnips, and carrots are both bigger and sweeter than 

 is ordinary to be found in England,' says the same rev- 

 erend writer); their cabbages and asparagus, both 

 thriving, we are told, exceedingly; their radishes and 

 lettuce; their sorrel, parsley, chervil, and marigold, for 

 pot-herbs; and their sage, thyme, savory of both kinds, 

 clary, anise, fennel, coriander, spearmint, and penny- 

 royal, for sweet herbs, not to mention the Indian pom- 

 pions and melons and squanter-squashes, 'and other odde 

 fruits of the country,' the first-named of which had got 

 to be so well approved among the settlers, when Josse- 

 lyn wrote in 1672, that, what he calls 'the ancient New- 

 England standing dish' (we may call it so now!) was 

 made of them; and, finally, their pleasant, familiar 

 flowers, lavender-cotton and hollyhocks and satin ('we 

 call this herbe, in Norfolke, sattin, 1 says Gerard; 'and, 

 among our women, it is called honestie') and gillyflow- 

 ers, which meant pinks as well, and dear English roses, 

 and eglantine, yes, possibly, hedges of eglantine, 

 surely the gardens of New England fifty years after the 

 settlement of the country, were as well stocked as they 

 were a hundred and fifty years after. Nor were the first 

 planters long behindhand in fruit. Even at his first 

 visit, in 1639, our author was treated with ' half a score 

 of very fair pippins,' from the Governor's Island in 

 Boston Harbor; though there was then, he says, 'not 

 one apple tree nor pear planted yet in no part of the 

 countrey but upon that island.' But he has a much bet- 

 ter account to give in 1671 : ' The quinces, cherries, 

 damsons, set the dames a work. Marmalad and pre- 

 served damsons is to be met with in every house. Our 

 fruit trees prosper abundantly, apple trees, pear trees, 

 quince trees, cherry trees, plum trees, barberry trees. 

 I have observed, with admiration, that the kernels sown, 

 or the succors planted, produce as fair and good fruit, 

 without grafting, as the tree from whence they were 

 taken. The countrey is replenished with fair and large 

 orchards. It was affirmed by one Mr. Woolcut (a magis- 

 trate in Connecticut Colony), at the Captain's messe 

 (of which I was), aboard the ship I came home in, that 

 he made five hundred hogsheads of syder out of his own 

 orchard in one year.' Voyages, p. 189-90. Our bar- 

 berry bushes, now so familiar inhabitants of the hedge- 

 rows of eastern New England, should seem from this 

 to have come, with the eglantines, from the gardens of 

 the first settlers. Barberries 'are planted in most of our 

 English gardens,' says Gerard." Relics of Josselyn's 

 time still persist in old apple trees in New England 

 (Fig. 1078). The foregoing lists and remarks show that 

 the colonists early brought their familiar home plants to 

 the new country; and there are many collateral evidences 

 of the same character. There was long and arduous ex- 

 perimenting with plants and methods. Several things 

 which were tried on a large scale failed so completely, 

 either from uncongenial conditions or for economic rea- 

 sons, that they are now unknown to us as commercial 

 crops ; amongst these are indigo, silk and the wine grape. 

 The histories of these things can be traced only as a 

 refrain is cotemporary writing. Indian corn, tobacco 

 and cotton early became the great staple crops. 



The Indians cultivated corn, beans, pumpkins and 

 other plants when America was discovered. They soon 

 adopted some of the fruits which were introduced by 

 the colonists. William Penn and others found peaches 

 among the Indians. Orchards of peaches and apples 

 were found in western New York by Sullivan's raid 

 against the Six Nations in revolutionary times. Josselyn, 

 Roger Williams, Wood and others speak of the corn 

 and squashes of the Indians. The word squash is 

 adopted from the Indian name,sqnontersquash, askuta- 

 squash, or isqowfvrsquash. C.C.Jones, in his "History 

 of Georgia," in describing the explorations of De Soto, 

 says that before reaching the Indian town of Canasa- 

 gua (whose location was in Gordon county^, Georgia), 

 DeSoto "was met by twenty men from the village, each 

 bearing a basket of mulberries. This fruit was here 

 abundant and well flavored. Plum and walnut trees 

 were growing luxuriantly throughout the country, at- 

 taining a size and beauty, without planting or pruning, 



which could not be surpassed in the irrigated and well- 

 cultivated gardens of Spain." For critical notes on the 

 plants cultivated by the American aborigines, see Gray 

 and Trumbull, Amer. Journ. of Science, vol. 25 (April, 

 May), vol. 26 (August). 



"Fruit-growing among the Indians of Georgia and 

 Alabama in the early history of these states," writes 

 Berckmans, "is demonstrated by the large quantity of 

 peaches which the Indian traders of the early colonial 

 period found growing in the Creek, Cherokee and Choc- 

 taw villages. It is on record that Indians often made 

 long trips to other tribes for exchanging various articles 



1077. Earliest picture of an American plant. 

 Monardes. 1571. 



of their making, and thus the seed from those peach 

 trees was undoubtedly procured from the Florida In- 

 dians, who, in turn, procured these from the trees 

 planted by the Spanish explorers. The peculiar type of 

 'Indian peaches,' found throughout the South and rec- 

 ognized by the downy and striped fruit and purple 

 bark on the young growth, was introduced from Spain and 

 gradually disseminated by the Indians. Apple-growing 

 was quite extensively carried on by the Cherokee In- 

 dians in the mountain regions of Georgia, Alabama and 

 North Carolina. The trees being all seedlings, as graft- 

 ing was likely unknown to the Red Man, vestiges of old 

 apple trees originally planted by these denizens of the 

 South are still occasionally found in upper Georgia. 

 Fifty years ago a large collection of apples was intro- 

 duced into cultivation, and to-day many of the best 

 southern winter apples owe their origin to the Indians, 

 who procured the first seeds from traders." 



One of the earliest glimpses of plant-growing in the 

 New World is an account in the Philosophical Trans- 

 actions of the Royal Society, early in the eighteenth 

 century, by Chief Justice Paul Dudley, of Roxbury, near 

 Boston. In the Abridgement of the Transactions are the 



