CHAPI ER 20¥ (1. 
THE APRICOT. 
California has peculiar adaptations for the growth of the 
apricot. It has often been pointed out that such adaptations are 
exceptional, and that nowhere else does the fruit attain such 
perfection nor possess such commercial importance. Although 
the apricot has been grown here from the earliest days of the 
American occupation, and though since the opening of the 
export trade in canned and dried fruits, the planting of apricot 
orchards has proceeded with great rapidity, present indications 
are that our distant patrons are only just beginning to recognize 
the desirability of the fruit, and that their demands will make it 
well-nigh impossible for us to extend our production beyond 
profitable limits. 
Though the apricot has some pests and diseases to contend 
with, they have thus far proved slight evils, and the tree is gen- 
erally regarded as one of our healthiest and most vigorous, as it 
certainly is one of our most beautiful orchard trees. It is long- 
lived and attains great size. On the old Routier place, on the 
banks of the American River, near Sacramento, are some apricot 
trees that were set out in the early fifties. They have a height 
all of fifty feet; the main trunks like forest oaks, and the first 
branches or limbs twelve and fifteen inches through. The 
smaller limbs and foliage were at least fifty feet across; a half 
dozen of them shaded an acre of ground and their average an- 
nual crop per tree has reached a ton of choice fruit. On the 
ranch of F. Hubert, near Burson, in Calaveras County, a seed- 
ling apricot tree planted March 10, 1857, has a trunk seven and 
one-half feet in circumference, and has yielded one thousand 
five hundred pounds of fruit of good quality in a season. At 
Haywards, Alameda County, on the orchard of the late Judge 
Blackwood, are apricots worked on peach stock in 1857, which 
are still in good bearing.’ His observation was that the apricot 
gives longevity to the peach root, for the peach trees of the same 
age not worked with apricot have disappeared. But forty years 
of life and vigor is only a part of the career of the apricot in Cali- 
fornia, if it is fair to judge by the vigor of trees in New Mexico, 
which were found growing there by the early trappers and front- 
iersmen, and were, apparently, old trees fifty years ago; and in 
Europe trees said to be two hundred years old are still bearing, 
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