LUTHER BURBANK 



chanced to hear of a so-called seedless plum that 

 was said to grow in France, where it had been 

 known for a long time as a curiosity. About 

 1890 I sent to the Transom Freres Nurseries in 

 France and secured twigs of this plum, which was 

 known merely as the Sans Noyau. 



These were 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, utterly 

 worthless for any purpose except the one for 

 which I desired it. 



The fruit, besides being flavorless and unpal- 

 atable, was scanty in yield. 



Moreover the fruit was by no means seedless, 

 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 

 covering the kernel. While it therefore lacked 

 much of exhibiting the condition of stonelessness 

 that I had hoped to see, it did, nevertheless, show 

 a tendency to abandon the stony covering that has 

 always characterized all the fruits of the plum 

 family. 



[108] 



