THE PLUMS OF NEW YORK. 269 



category with the Ben Davis apple and Kieffer pear, "good-looking but 

 poor." The variety ripens so early as to come in direct competition with 

 the peach and this hurts it not a little as a market plum. To be at its best 

 the crop shoiild be thinned and should be allowed to ripen fully on the 

 trees. Lombard is now much used in the canneries in New York and is 

 also planted in home orchards where only hardy plums stand the climate. 

 In the markets it is usually a low-priced plum. 



Lombard was raised by Judge Platt, Whitesboro, New York, from 

 seed received from Amsterdam (References, 2). Another writer (Refer- 

 ences, 10) reports that the trees were brought over from Holland by 

 some of the earliest Dutch settlers of Utica and Whitesboro. The name 

 was given to the plum about 1830 by the Massachusetts Horticultural 

 Society in honor of Daniel Lombard of Springfield, who was the first to 

 propagate the variety in that state. It was previously well known in New 

 York as Bleecker's Scarlet (References, 3), but was never formally de- 

 scribed under that name which must, therefore, though the older, be dis- 

 carded. In 1856, it was placed on the recommended list by the American 

 Pomological Society. Several varieties, as Communia, Tatge, Spanish 

 King and Odell, are very similar, if not identical to the Lombard and, 

 consequently, have caused much confusion in the nomenclature of the 

 variety. This similarity is probably explained by the fact that the Lombard 

 produces seedlings very nearly true to type. Professor J. L. Budd, in a 

 letter written in 1898 to this Station, says, "The fruit of Communia is 

 much like that of Lombard, but this can be said of a hundred or more 

 east European varieties." Professor Budd had traveled much in Europe 

 and knew plums very well. His statement, therefore, is entitled to credence 

 and indicates, together with other circumstances, that Lombard is one 

 of an old group of plums the varieties of which are very similar. 



Tree of medium size, round-topped, very hardy, productive; branches stocky, 

 dark ash-gray, smooth, with few, small lenticels; branchlets thick, medium to long, 

 with long internodes, greenish-red changing to dull brownish-red, marked with gray 

 scarf-skin, glabrous early in the season, becoming pubescent at maturity, with a few, 

 inconspicuous, small lenticels; leaf -buds of medium size and length, conical, appressed; 

 leaf-scars prominent. 



Leaves long-oval or long-obovate, one and five-eighths inches wide, three and one- 

 half inches long, medium to thick; upper surface dark green, thinly pubescent, with 

 a grooved midrib; lower surface silvery-green, lightly pubescent; apex acute, base some- 

 what tapering, margin often doubly serrate, eglandular or with small, dark glands; 



