114 TREATISE ON FRUIT TREES. 



Its skin is reddish yellow, transparent, quite speckled with brown spots, covered 

 with bloom and peels off easily from the flesh. 



Its flesh is coarse and light yellow except at the groove where it's green. 



The juice is quite tasteless when the fruit is fully ripe. 



The pit is almost smooth; it terminates in a very sharp point and clings strongly to 

 the flesh. It's nine lignes long, four lignes wide, and three lignes thick. 



The first crop of fruit matures about the beginning of August; the second one is 

 extremely late. Both of them are pretty wretched. 



CULTIVA TION. 



1°. Few trees are likely to vary as much from seed planting as are the plum trees. 

 Consequently plum pits are planted only to obtain a new type or variety or to procure 

 stocks for grafting those that are normally cultivated & arc worth doing so. For the latter 

 purpose one should not plan to plant seeds of the choice kinds of plums, because 

 nurserymen claim that the stocks that grow from them accept grafts with difficulty & 

 nourish them poorly. But it's better to raise the Saint- Julien, Cerisette and the large & 

 small black damsons, on which all types of plum trees are successfully grafted, from 

 seeds rather than from shoots & rooted suckers. The first of the above is preferable to the 

 others. The small black damson is a little too weak for some of the vigorous kinds of 

 grafts; the graft covers it with a large swelling, an indication of unequal strength on either 

 side. 



Excellent kinds of plums, the Dauphine, the Perdrigon, &c. also are grafted on 

 apricot & even on young peach trees raised from seeds. This especially applies to those 

 that are intended to be grown on espalier 



