CALIFORNIA FRUITS: HOW TO GROW THEM 



"petty prune" a free translation and a mispronunciation at the 

 same time, for a prune which seemed to be too small and inferior. 

 The people must have something large, and they happened to 

 mix a little German into the title which they manufactured, and 

 offered trees of the "gros prune d'Agen." When shown that if 

 the French had such fruit it would probably be called "grande" 

 and not "gros," because the French word "gros" is not a compli- 

 mentary term, the propagators simply changed their geographical 

 base and declared: "This immense prune, just what you need 

 to beat the French, is really German, and if you desire you may 

 call it Hungarian prune." It of course did not matter much 

 what it was called, because it did not come from either France 

 or Hungary, but was the fine, old, large, light red, English plum, 

 properly called Pond's Seedling, re-christened in California to 

 meet a long-felt want. But it did not meet such a want; it would 

 not dry sweet nor fleshy, but became merely a skin and pit, with 

 a sour streak between. Still the question persisted : Have we the 

 true French prune? It was definitely settled by the late W. B. 

 West of Stockton, who visited France in 1878, and after close 

 examination of the trees, announced that the variety grown in 

 California was really the prune d'Agen, and that we had made no 

 mistake so far as getting the main standard variety of French prune 

 was concerned. 



But still we needed a variety which would run more to large 

 sizes, and how to get it, with sweetness and flesh, characters 

 which would resemble the best French product, was, and even 

 now is, still a question. One of the early introductions to meet 

 this end is now generally known as Robe de Sergeant. Here 

 again confusion attends the name. Robe de Sergeant is one of 

 the synonyms of prune d'Agen, and yet the fruit we secured 

 was different. Much discussion was given to the elucidation of 

 this problem, and the conclusion seemed to be that the variety 

 is grown in France, but in another district, and is generally con- 

 sidered inferior to the prune d'Agen. Still it runs larger, and 

 has sold well, even though of distinctly different quality, and 

 would probably have cut a much larger figure in California 

 prune production if it had shown itself to be more free and reg- 

 ular in bearing. The same is true of the "prune d'ente, or 

 Imperial epineuse," which has been quite widely planted, but 

 because of shy bearing, especially when attacked by the thrips, 

 as discussed upon another page of this book, and because of the 

 difficulty in drying such a large prune which ripens rather late, 

 this variety, of which so much was expected, has fallen into dis- 

 favor, and many which were grafted in have been grafted out 

 again. Other introductions made much earlier, like the German 

 and Italian, also fell out of the race very early, for shy bearing 

 and for different flesh characters. Although the latter leads in 



