THE ORANGE. 633 



Frost. 



In many semi-tropical regions, where attention is paid to 

 the orange, the arch enemy is frost. And yet it is not so 

 much the degree of cold, as the condition of the tree at the 

 time, which makes a fall of temperature harmful. At rest 

 from growing, with no flow of sap and the bark clinging 

 tightly to the wood, a tough old tree has been known to come 

 out of a brief period, during which ten degrees were indicated 

 by the mercury, with scarcely a scar. In the freeze of 1886 

 in Florida, a temperature of 17'' at sunrise, rising to 32° at 

 noon, and gradually dropping to below 20° by the next morn- 

 ing, and this repeated for four days, was what many old 

 groves passed through with so little harm that eighteen 

 months afterward they were holding larger crops than ever 

 before. But a drop below 30° is more or less hazardous when 

 the sap is flowing, and a few hours' exposure, especially if 

 trees are young and growing freely, may burst the bark and 

 kill them to the ground. Nothing is more sensitive than the 

 tip of a growing shoot. 



At the time of the freeze of February 7th, 1895, which 

 billed down most of the orange-trees in Florida, except those 

 in the extreme southern portion, the conditions were most 

 unfavorable, aside from the severity of the cold, which regis- 

 tered 12° to 15° in many places — three degrees lower than in 

 Boston — and destroyed forest growths considered hardy in 

 ihe Carolinas. A frost of almost equal intensity had occurred 

 six weeks previously, which caused all the foliage to drop, 

 and during the interval between the two the sap had begun 

 to flow, and young leaves and blossom-buds were appearing. 

 In this tender condition, and unsheltered by protecting foli- 

 age, they fell an easy prey. 



The devastation seems to have been greater than during a 

 similar visitation sixty years before. At that time the trunks 

 of some old trees were spared in places where this last frost 

 made a clean sweep. Previous to 1835 there were bearing 

 trees in St. Augustine of great size and capacity, which must 

 have bordered upon one hundred years. Elderly people like 

 to recall those days when the Ancient City was embowered in 

 one vast grove, all yellow with ripening fruit, to an extent 



