270 



PURPLE RASPBERRIES 



WINEBERRY 



extensive territory in which it is found. Gregg, 

 Ohio, Kansas, and Cumberland are typical 

 black raspberries. 



The first act toward formal domestication 

 seems to have taken place in 1832, when 

 Nicholas Longworth, an early horticulturist 

 of note in Cincinnati, transferred a wild plant 

 to his garden. The plant thus brought under 

 cultivation was the Ohio Everbearing, a va- 

 riety which long remained a standard. The 

 growing of black raspberries can hardly be 

 said to have become an established industry 

 until after 1850, when H. H. Doolittle, Oaks 

 Corners, New York, introduced the Doolittle, 

 a vigorous, hardy, productive, large-fruited 

 sort which was easily propagated from the 

 tips of one-year-old plants. The spread of 

 this variety, together with the discovery that 

 black raspberries could be easily cured into 

 dried fruits, did much to establish the culti- 

 vation of this berry. 



The black raspberry thrives so remarkably 

 well under cultivation, the plants being vig- 

 orous and productive, that until the beginning 

 of the present century it was probably more 

 widely cultivated than the native red rasp- 

 berry. Its adaptability for evaporation, be- 

 cause of firm flesh, and because the crop ripens 

 in a short season, also gives stimulus to its 

 cultivation. But fungus diseases, especially 

 anthracnose, take so great a toll from the 

 black raspberry, and evaporated fruit is giving 

 way to the canned product so rapidly, that the 

 black raspberry is now much less popular than 

 the red, with the prospect that the purple-cane 

 varieties will soon overtake the black sorts. 

 Possibly no fruit is more easily improved, how- 

 ever, than the black raspberry, seedlings of 

 crossed varieties usually showing a large per- 

 centage of improved offspring, so that the in- 

 troduction of better varieties may give the 

 cultivation of this fruit a new impetus. 



Varieties of black raspberries are readily 

 propagated from the tips of canes, which are 

 bent over and covered with earth, whereupon 

 the tips take root. Tipping is done in north- 

 ern latitudes about the middle or toward the 

 end of August from young, healthy, and vig- 

 orous plants. Cheapness of young plants, be- 

 cause of ease of propagation, is a strong point 

 in favor of the black raspberry. 



Purple Raspberries 



Purple raspberries are hybrids between na- 

 tive red raspberries and black raspberries, 

 occurring both naturally and under cultiva- 

 tion. Therefore these purple varieties, of 

 which some twenty or thirty have been under 

 cultivation, need not be grouped in a distinct 

 species, as they long have been under the 

 name R. neglectus, Peck; for, like other hybrid 

 plants, they are a most variable race, their 

 offspring sometimes being so nearly like one 

 or the other parent as to be indistinguishable, 

 and at other times being intermediates quite 

 too inconstant and mutable to pass as a single 

 species. Whether or not the European red 

 raspberry has ever been one of the parents of 



these purple sorts does not appear, but almost 

 certainly it would cross with the black rasp- 

 berry as readily as does the native red. Shaffer 

 and Columbian are now the most prominent 

 representatives of the purple sorts. These 

 hybrid plants propagate either by tips or 

 suckers, the former being the most common 

 method. 



While exceedingly variable, sometimes re- 

 sembling the black and sometimes the red 

 parent, the purple varieties selected for culti- 

 vation have fairly well-marked characteristics. 

 The plants are more vigorous and more pro- 

 ductive than those of either parent; the fruit- 

 clusters contain more berries and are more 

 open and straggling; the berries are larger and 

 juicier and range in color from yellow to red 

 and dark purple. While the named varieties 

 of purple raspberries may usually be distin- 

 guished as belonging to this group by the 

 marks given, not all are so characterized; for 

 example, Philadelphia, almost certainly a 

 hybrid, and its numerous seedlings, are much 

 more like the red than the typical purple 

 plant, and the berries are very like red rasp- 

 berries only of a darker color. 



The purple raspberries have been cultivated 

 since 1835, in which year the Philadelphia was 

 found wild near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 

 Shaffer, still one of the good commercial purple 

 sorts, was found near Scottsville, New York, in 

 1871. This type of raspberry has recently re- 

 ceived a great impetus through the develop- 

 ment of the canning industry, for the purple 

 varieties are preeminently the best raspberries 

 for canning, jams, and conserves. 



Oriental Raspberries 



China and Japan are now prolific sources of 

 profitable horticultural plants, not the least 

 of which are several interesting raspberries. 

 These, although long known, acquire new and 

 greater interest because of the possibility of 

 hybridizing them with other brambles. The 

 possibilities of hybridization have been made 

 more apparent by the recent development in 

 knowledge of the laws of hybridization, and 

 by the introduction of several remarkable 

 bramble hybrids. 



Wineberry. Fig. 237. 



The wineberry of the Orient, R. phce- 

 nicolasius, Maxim, a native of the mountains 

 of China and Japan, is an interesting orna- 

 mental and food-plant introduced into America 

 as the Japanese wineberry in 1889. It is a 

 bushy bramble, attaining a height of six feet, 

 the canes long, recurving, spreading, rambling, 

 and covered with bright reddish-brown, glandu- 

 lar hairs and weak prickles, which give it a 

 characteristic appearance. The flowers are 

 white, very small, and are borne in dense, 

 hairy clusters, which in their turn spring from 

 a large, loose, leafy panicle. The bristly and 

 viscous calyx-lobes envelop the growing fruits, 

 keeping them covered until they ripen, after 

 which the calyx opens, showing a small, soft, 

 insipid, whitish raspberry, that quickly be- 



