ROSE FAMILY 



Flowers. — May. Perfect, rose-like, about half an inch broad, 

 borne in terminal or axillary, loose racemose or paniculate clus- 

 ters, white ; pedicels slender. 



Calyx. — Persistent, tube short and broad j border deeply five- 

 parted ; segments acuminate. 



Corolla. — Petals five, white, imbricate in bud, inserted on the 

 disk that lines the calyx tube. 



Stamens. — Numerous, inserted with the petals on the calyx. 



Pistil. — Carpels numerous, crowded upon a convex receptacle, 

 ripening into drupelets. 



Fruit. — Consists of many drupelets that adhere and form an 

 aggregate fruit, which falls away from the white spongy recep- 

 tacle when ripe. Red, delicious. July. 



The Red Raspberry of our hillsides and fence cor- 

 ners is the progenitor of all the cultivated varieties 

 found in our gardens ; and they really differ very little 

 from it. At first the effort was made to acclimate va- 

 rieties of Rubus idceus, the Red Raspberry of Europe, 

 but this was not a success. Our climate seemed like the 

 woodman's historic trap, especially adapted " to ketch 

 'em comin' and goin'." If the carefully imported plants 

 survived our summers for a few years, they finally 

 succumbed to our winters. Or, if sheltered from the se- 

 verity of our winters, one hot dry summer finished them. 

 They simply could not live here. Professor Card con- 

 siders that over one hundred varieties have been plant- 

 ed, of which not more than eight or ten survive, and 

 these in the gardens of amateurs. All the commercial 

 varieties are either chance seedlings, careful hybridiza- 

 tions, or sports, of Rubus strigosus, and their name is 

 legion. It is believed, however, that in several of the 

 best there still lingers a strain of the European rasp- 

 berry which never fails to improve the quality of the 



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