HORTICULTURE 



HORTICULTURE 



765 



the general farming. For generations insect pests were 

 not common. There were no good markets, and the 

 fruit sold as low as 25 cents a bushel from the wagon box. 

 In fact it was grown more for the home supply than with 

 an idea of shipping it to market. Under such conditions, 

 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 productive trees left their impress upon the 

 memory. The soils had not undergone such a long sys- 

 tem of robbery then as now. When the old orchards 



'wore out, there was no particular 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 upon 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 locali- 

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

 try or a new industry is generally free of serious attacks 

 of those insects which follow the crop in older commu- 

 nities. 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. 



The orange is another tree which has thrived so well 

 in the new country that the spontaneous thickets of 

 Florida, known to be descendants of early Spanish in- 

 troductions, are confidently believed by residents to be 

 indigenous to the soil. 



The progress of the plum in America nearly equals 

 that of the grape in historic interest. The small, spon- 

 taneous plums, known as 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, 



I of course, upon the Pacific coast 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 this great in- 

 terior and southern area, various na- 

 tive plums, offshoots of several indig- 

 enous species, have now spread them- 

 selves, and they have already laid the 

 foundation of a new type of plum cul- 

 ture. The first of these novel plums 



i 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, 



j in 1814. The second of these native 



! plums to come into prominence, and 

 the one which really marks the popu- 

 larization of the fruit, is the Wild 

 Goose. Some time before 1850, a man 

 shot a wild goose near Columbia, Ten- 

 nessee, and where the carcass was 

 thrown this plum, Adonis-like, sprung 

 forth. It was introduced to the trade 



,. about 1850, by the late J. S. Downer, of 



! Pairview, 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 cultivate-" plum flora is 

 'W further increased by the introduction of the Japa- 

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



fornia in 1870. Finally, about 1880, the apricot plum, 



i>r Prunus Simonii, was introduced from China by way 



France; and the American plum industry, with no 



is than ten specific types to draw upon, and which 



represent the entire circuit of the northern hemisphere, 



is now fairly launched upon an experimental career 

 whose promise lies with the coming century. 



The grape of America is of two unlike types, the 

 natives, which comprise all commercial outdoor varie- 

 ties in the interior and eastern states; and the vinifera 

 or Old World kinds, which are grown in California. The 

 native types have been developed within the century. 

 The oldest commercial variety is the Catawba, which 

 dates from 1802. The cosmopolitan variety, the Con- 

 cord, which first fruited in 1849. A full review of the 

 history is made in "Evolution of our Native Fruits." 



There was no commercial strawberry culture in 

 America, worthy of the name, until the introduction of 

 the Hovey (Fig. 1088) late in the thirties. This and the 

 Boston Pine were seedlings of C. M. Hovey's, Cam- 

 bridge, Massachusetts. They first fruited in 1836 and 

 1837, and from them have descended most of the 

 garden strawberries of the present day. These were 

 seedlings of the old Pine type of strawberry, which is a 

 direct 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 atten- 

 tion about 1856 or 1857, and it marked the beginning of 

 the modern epoch in American strawberry growing. In 

 the middle West, strawberry growing was given a great 

 impulse by Longworth and Warder. 



Raspberries were grown in the last century, but they 

 were of the tender European species, of which the Ant- 

 werps were the common types. This type of raspberry 

 is now almost wholly superseded by the offspring of our 

 native red and black species, which first began to im- 

 press themselves upon cultivation about 1860. 



The blackberry, an indigenous American fruit, first 

 commended itself to cultivation with the introduction of 

 the New Rochelle or Lawton, towards the close of the 



1088. The original picture of the Hovey Strawberry. 

 Magazine of Horticulture, Aueust, 1840. Original size. 



fifties. The first named variety of blacubery of which 

 we have any record was the Dorchester, which was ex- 

 hibited before the Massachusetts Horticultural Society 

 in 1841. 



The dewberry, a peculiarly American fruit, first ap- 

 peared in cultivation early in the seventies in southern 

 Illinois under the name of the Bartel, which is a large 

 form of the common wild dewberry of that region. It 



