Our Plant Immigrants 



197 



popular. If one could patent them and 

 control the supply, men would take these 

 new things up and push them, just as 

 they have new breakfast foods, of which 

 they can control the processes. But a 

 new vegetable, what man of moderate 

 means wants to spend all the time and 

 money necessary to advertise it, only to 

 find that his neighbor has waited for a 

 market, and when such has been created 

 has gone into the culture of the new 

 vegetable on a big scale and is under- 

 selling him? 



The chayote is one of many such 

 neglected opportunities. It is a cucum- 

 ber-like vegetable, borne on a vine which 

 can be trained over a trellis just like a 

 grapevine. It bears large crops of fruit, 

 as many as 500 to the vine. It is a peren- 

 nial and does not have to be planted every 

 year, as the cucumber does, but goes on 

 for years producing larger and larger 

 crops. The fruit keeps excellently, and 

 as late as March can be sent to the 

 northern markets. Its roots are edible, its 

 young stems as tender as asparagus, 

 while its fruits can be prepared in twenty 

 ways or more. The plant adapts itself 

 to culture under glass and bears fruits 

 there, even in the north, though its 

 natural home is in the West Indies, and 

 it will not be a profitable outdoor culture 

 north of the Carolinas. 



With all these points in its favor, 

 which were first called to the attention of 

 the American public by Mr O. F. Cook 

 in a bulletin of the Department, and with 

 the further fact that it has been for years 

 a favorite vegetable among the Creoles 

 of New Orleans, there are today none 

 of these vegetables to be had on our 

 northern markets. 



To bring its good points to the at- 

 tention of those who are looking for new 

 things, the writer introduced it to Man- 

 agers Hilliard and Macormick, of the 

 Waldorf-Astoria, and the Bellevue-Strat- 

 ford hotels. These men, whose business 

 it is to cater to the jaded appetites of the 

 rich, have pronounced it an excellent 

 thing, have invented new recipes for 

 cooking it, and have put it for the first 

 time on their menus. 



If a small demand is once created in 

 our great cities for this new vegetable, 

 that tastes like a combination of a deli- 

 cate cucumber and a squash, with more 

 firmness than either, there will be created 

 a new industry for the South that will 

 grow as the tomato industry has grown 

 and support people by its yearly earn- 

 ings. 



PLANT PROBLEMS NOW IN PROCESS OF 

 SOLUTION 



The work of Plant Introduction is 

 not theoretical, but practical in charac- 

 ter. Its operations are carried on in 

 those places where it is needed, and the 

 problems are suggested by practical 

 men. Some of the problems which the 

 department is now working on are : 

 the finding of paying crops for the 

 abandoned rice farms of the Carolinas ; 

 the securing of some profitable plant 

 culture for the unemployed hilly re- 

 gions of North Carolina and Georgia ; 

 the improvement of the brewing bar- 

 leys of the country ; the fitting in of 

 new crops into the arctic agriculture of 

 Alaska ; the starting of new industries in 

 our tropical possessions ; the increasing 

 of the fertility of the California or- 

 chard soils ; the introducing of hardy 

 fruits into the Northwest ; the substi- 

 tuting of a valuable for a worthless 

 cane in the cane brakes of the South, 

 and the exploiting of a drouth-resistant 

 nut plant for California. 



The planters of the Carolinas must 

 have a new crop to grow on the rich 

 rice lands that are no longer profitable 

 for rice culture since the great Louis- 

 iana and Texas rice fields have been 

 opened up. The Office of Plant Intro- 

 duction has suggested the trial of the 

 Japanese matting rush as one likely to 

 be a profitable one on these areas, and 

 is planting thousands of seedlings of 

 the plant, and watching them carefully 

 to see how expensive their cultivation 

 will be. It is also experimenting with 

 a new root crop on the cheap sandy 

 lands of the region as a possible substi- 

 tute for the Irish potato, which will not 

 grow on that soil. 



