Frost Injuries and Protection, Secondary Bloom 329 



may appear to be normal until the uninjured specimens 

 begin to swell rapidly at the beginning of the ripening 

 period, and then the injured fruit begins to fail, shows 

 gummy exudations, and ripens abnormally, or drops be- 

 fore ripening. When the injury is more extensive, the 

 fruit rarely shows any tendency to mature, usually drop- 

 ping in a short time. 



Apples frozen after the bloom has fallen show little 

 more tendency to recovery than does the bloom itself. 

 Injury that extends outside the seed 

 cavities proves fatal, and while the fruit 

 may continue to develop for some time, 

 the yellow color of the flesh at the stem 

 end soon indicates that the fruit is 

 doomed. Some growers contend that 

 discoloration of the flesh does not neces- 

 sarily mean death, but they base their 

 opinion on a hasty examination of the FIG. 90. Longitu- 

 fruit at the time of the freeze, not ^i 

 realizing what a small percentage of p ea r. 

 uninjured fruit it takes to make a fair 

 crop. They find later that they have a good crop, when 

 they thought it all gone, and they conclude that it must have 

 recovered; as a matter of fact, the crop undoubtedly rep- 

 resents the uninjured part. Death of the seeds does not 

 necessarily mean death to the fruit. As compared with 

 the normal specimens, the seedless specimens are a little 

 smaller, and in some cases we observe a sjightly shortened 

 axis. 



The injured fruit of the pear, like the bloom, makes a 

 remarkable recovery from frost injury. When the seeds 



