ROSE FAMILY 



Flowers. May. Perfect, rose-like, about half an inch broad, 

 borne in terminal or axillary, loose racemose or paniculate clus- 

 ters, white ; pedicels slender. 



Calyx. Persistent, tube short and broad ; border deeply five- 

 parted ; segments acuminate. 



Corolla. Petals five, white, imbricate in bud, inserted on the 

 disk that lines the calyx tube. 



Stamens. Numerous, inserted with the petals on the calyx. 

 Pistil. Carpels numerous, crowded upon a convex receptacle, 

 ripening into drupelets. 



Fruit. Consists of many drupelets that adhere and form an 

 aggregate fruit, which falls away from the white spongy recep- 

 tacle when ripe. Red, delicious. July. 



The Red Raspberry of our hillsides and fence cor- 

 ners is the progenitor of all the cultivated varieties 

 found in our gardens ; and they really differ very little 

 from it. At first the effort was made to acclimate va- 

 rieties of Rubus idceus, the Red Raspberry of Europe, 

 but this was not a success. Our climate seemed like the 

 woodman's historic trap, especially adapted " to ketch 

 'em comin' and goin'." If the carefully imported plants 

 survived our summers for a few years, they finally 

 succumbed to our winters. Or, if sheltered from the se- 

 verity of our winters, one hot dry summer finished them. 

 They simply could not live here. Professor Card con- 

 siders that over one hundred varieties have been plant- 

 ed, of which not more than eight or ten survive, and 

 these in the gardens of amateurs. All the commercial 

 varieties are either chance seedlings, careful hybridiza- 

 tions, or sports, of Rubus strigosus, and their name is 

 legion. It is believed, however, that in several of the 

 best there still lingers a strain of the European rasp- 

 berry which never fails to improve the quality of the 



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