16 BULLETIN 179, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGEICULTUEE. 



Mr. Barber does not state where his father-m-law hved, while 

 Mr. Downer's account places the original tree in the neighborhood 

 of Columbia, Tenn., and states that at about 1850, the time when 

 James Harvey, of Columbia, gave him an account of the origin of the 

 plum, there were no conflicting statements in regard to it. The 

 attempt was made to propagate this plum from seed as well as by 

 budding, and this resulted in considerable diversity in the variety 

 gi'own as Wild Goose and differences of opinion concerning it. Some 

 of these seedlings received local names, as the Nolan, Hog, Goose Egg, 

 Tennessee, and King of Plums. The Wild Goose was introduced into 

 Iowa before 1871 by H. A. Terry, who obtained it from W. S. Rainey, of 

 Columbia, Tenn. It was also offered in 1871 by WiUiam Parry, of 

 Cinnaminson, N. J., and this date evidently marks the beginning of 

 its wide dissemination. 



Another event of particular importance in the development of 

 fruits for the northern Mississippi Valley and the eastern Plains 

 region was the introduction of the De Soto plum, this bemg apparently 

 the first variety of Prunus americana to be extensively propagated 

 and to attract attention to the horticultural development of this species. 

 The history of this variety is given by C. G. Patten (59, p. 237), 

 of Charles City, Iowa. The first settler on the land where this plum 

 was found at De Soto, Wis., was an American by the name of Tupper, 

 who located there in 1853 or 1854. The original settler sold the farm 

 in 1855 to the Trayer brothers, who were Frenchmen. There were 

 at this time three or four groves of wild plums on the farm, and these 

 the new owners destroyed, with the exception of the one later known 

 as Trayer De Soto and De Soto, which produced such superior fruit 

 that it was preserved. The next possessor of the farm was a ]Mr. 

 Steven Heal. At some time a smaU orchard must have been planted 

 on the place with trees from this original wild grove, for such an 

 orchard was described as consisting in 1881 of 60 trees, the largest 

 having a trunk diameter of about 10 inches. The variety began to 

 be propagated and disseminated about 1864 by a ]\Ir. Hale, who lived 

 at Lansuag, Iowa, only a few miles from De Soto. 



The Bixby (72, p. 434), another americana plum, may be even older 

 than the De Soto, but it seems to have been less widely grown. This 

 variety was named for "Father Bixby," who settled in Clayton County, 

 Iowa, in 1847, and on whose place the plum was then growing. 

 Forty years later the trees were still thriving. These varieties were 

 the beginning, the fhst developments, in a species that before the 

 close of the century was to furnish more varieties than any other 

 native. 



While the first name for a native plum that may be termed varietal 

 in the pomological sense seems to have been published in 1867, there 

 have now been applied, either to varieties of the native species or to 



