THE STONELESS PLUM 39 



known for a long time as a curiosity. About 

 1890 I sent to the Transom Freres Xurseries in 

 France and secured grafts of this pkim, which 

 was known merely as the Sans Noyau. 



These w^ere grafted on one of my plum trees, 

 and in due course produced a crop of fruit, which, 

 as expected, proved to be a blue-black, cranberry- 

 sized fruit, extremely sour, soft, and unfit for 

 eating either raw or cooked. The original shrub, 

 as I have been informed, and as it grew here, is 

 a rambling, thorny bush rather than a tree, utter- 

 ly worthless for any purpose except the one for 

 which I desired it. The fruit, besides being 

 flavorless and unpalatable, was scanty in yield. 



Moreover the fruit was by no means stoneless, 

 notwithstanding its French name. It was only 

 partially stoneless, as most specimens produced 

 fair-sized kernels in the fruit, and every kernel 

 had a thick rim of stone around one side partially 

 half covering the kernel. While it therefore 

 lacked much of exhibiting the condition of stone- 

 lessness that I had hoped to see, it did never- 

 theless show a tendency to abandon the stony 

 covering that has always characterized all the 

 fruits of the plum family. 



From the outset I was convinced that by 

 proper hybridizing and selective breeding it 

 could be made valuable. 



