ROSE FAMILY 
Pistil.Of five carpels inserted in the bottom of the calyx tube 
and united into an inferior ovary; styles five; stigma capitate; 
ovules two in each cell. 
Fruit.—Pome or apple ripening in October. Depressed-globular, 
an inch to an inch and a half in diameter, crowned with calyx lobes 
and remnant of filaments; yellow green, delightfully fragrant, sur- 
face sometimes waxy. Flesh white, delicate and charged with ma- 
lic acid. Seeds two or, by abortion, one in each cell, chestnut 
brown. shining ; cotyledons fleshy. 
As tle apple tree among the trees of the wood, 
So is my beloved among the sons. 
—SONG oF SOLOMON, 
Kalm, who was one of the twelve men whom Linnzeus called his apostles and 
sent forth to explore the vegetable world, writes thus from America: 
‘“Crab-trees are a species of wild apple-trees, which grow in the woods and 
glades, but especially on little hillocks, near rivers. In New Jersey the tree is 
rather scarce ; but in Pennsylvania it is plentiful. Some people had planted a 
single tree of this kind near their houses on account of the fine smells which its 
flowers afford. It had begun to open some of its flowers about a day or two 
ago ; however, most of them were not yet open. They are exactly like the blos- 
soms of the common apple-trees except that the color is a little more reddish in 
the Crab-trees ; though some kinds of the cultivated trees have flowers which 
are very near as red; but the smell distinguishes them plainly; for the wild 
trees have a very pleasant smell, somewhat like the raspberry. 
‘The apples, or crabs, are small, sour and unfit for anything but to make vine- 
gar of. They lic under the trees all winter and acquire a yellow color. They 
seldom begin to rot before spring comes on.” 
When man emerges into history he has the apple in his 
hand and the dog by his side. We have no reason to believe 
that the European or Asiatic forbear from which the apple 
of civilization is descended was any less harsh in taste or any 
larger in size than our own crab. Indeed, were all the apples 
of civilization swept out of existence they could doubtless be 
regained by the cultivation of our native tree. As it is, it 
stands in all its wild and untrained beauty, its greatest charm 
lying, as Kalm clearly apprehended, in its rose-colored blos- 
soms, exquisite in tint and delicious in fragrance. Its flow- 
ering time is ten days to two weeks later than that of the 
domestic apple, and its fragrant fruit clings to the branches 
on clustered stems long after the leaves have fallen. 
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