138 RICHARD FROTSCHER’S ALMANAC AND GARDEN MANUAL 
any time after the nuts ripen until growth 
starts in the spring. When two years old the 
seedlings may be easily and safely transplanted 
to the orchard. 
In my opinion the transplanting of the trees 
while young is advantageous, inasmuch as it 
causes them to make a more spreading head, 
and to come earlier into bearing. 
In adopting for propagation the three kinds 
which, on our joint investigation, we con- 
eluded to be the best, I have named them the 
‘‘Frotscher,” ‘‘Rome” and ‘‘Centennial.” As 
you know, they are phenomenal in size, thin 
shell, of rich, sweet quality and finest flavor. ’ 
That you have made a long step toward im- 
provement by selecting only such nuts as these 
for seed, can not be disputed; but as they do 
not always come true from seed, perpetuating 
the good kinds can best be done by budding 
or grafting. This you know better than my- 
self. 
The good interest you take in introducing 
important kinds of seeds, trees, etc., the 
trouble and expense you have been at in this 
case, searching for the very best pecans, de- 
serves a greater reward than the mere money 
profit it may bring you, and will, I know, 
easily excuse the length of this communica- 
tion. 
Yours very respectfully, 
WM. NELSON. 
Grafted trees of the above three varieties 
can be had from me at $2.00 each. No differ- 
ence in price by the quantity. 
As our Orange trees in Louisiana, when 
either on their own roots or grafted upon the 
sour stock, frequently during cold winters 
get killed down or suffer to such an extent 
that it takes several years for them to recover 
from the effects, it is essential for us to use 
for grafting or budding upon a stock which is 
sufficiently hardy enough to stand our most 
severe winters. Such a stock we find in the 
wild native Orange of Japan, the Citrus trifo- 
lata. 
With kind permission of Dr. G. Devron, of 
this city, 1 copy the following article published 
by him in the Southern Horticultural Journal: 
CITRUS TRIFOLIATA. 
The ‘Citrus trifoliata” first described by 
Dr. E. Kempfer, in 1712, is the wild native 
Orange of, Japan, and is the hardiest of the 
citrus family; it has stood the winters for 
several years, uninjured, of Washington City, 
D. C., without any protection, and also those 
of New York City, by being merely sheltered 
from the north wind. 
This pretty little tree has long been used in 
Japan as a stock to bud or graft upon other 
and more tender varieties of the orange family; 
it is also used there extensively to construct 
impenetrable hedges. 
About the year 1831, Desfontaines, a French 
botanist, introduced that citrus, which he 
named ‘‘Citrus triptera,” in France, and having 
found it perfectly hardy anywhere south of 
the city of Paris, he advised its propagation 
and use for hedges in Southern France. For 
the last few years this new citrus has been 
found in the catalogues of our nurserymen, 
but has not been tried as much as it should 
have been The Citrus trifoliata, when better 
known and oftener used as a hardy stock for 
the more valuable and more tender varieties 
of the orange, will extend the now limited belt 
of successful and profitable orange culture. 
Having been one of the first to cultivate the 
Citrus trifoliata in the open ground in the 
United States, and perhaps the first to see it 
bloom and produce fruit in this country, I 
must say that I know of no variety of the 
citrus family that can be more neglected, more 
exposed to extremes of temperature, or to ex- 
cesses of moisture and dryness, with so much 
impunity. In seventeen years that I have had 
that citrus under observation, I never found 
an injurious insect on the tree, or its leaves, 
flowers or fruit. 
The Citrus trifoliata used as a stock offers 
another advantage; the portions above the bud 
when removed are not lost; when treated as 
cuttings they readily strike roots and furnish 
new stock for the following year. 
The Citrus trifoliata, ‘‘Karataz-Banna,” or 
“Gees,” its Japanese name, was called by 
Koempfer, when he first saw it, in 1698, 
‘‘Aurantia trifolia sylvestris, fruetu tetrico;”’ 
the fruit has an unpalatable pulp, but the 
rind or skin of the same is used as a component 
of a celebrated and popular remedy known in 
Japan as the Kikoku. The tree in Louisiana 
erows to the height of 10 to 12 feet, with 
numerous straight stout and very sharp 
thorns (a good substitute for our barbed 
wire), the leaves are trifoliate, the flowers are 
very large and have no odor, or if any, a very 
faint one, and its flowers appear a week or 
two before the new leaves, about the 17th to 
the 19th of March, say on St. Patrick’s day. 
This peculiar date and the trifoliate form of 
its leaves entitles that tree to the popular 
name of the ‘‘SShamrock Orange” which I 
have given it. 
I have been told that this tree is an ever- 
ereen in Japan, but in my garden in this city 
itis always a deciduous tree, except-seedlings 
of less than two years, which. retain their 
leaves the first winter. The impalatable but 
very pretty fruit is of the size of a mandarin 
| orange, and contains some thirty seeds. which, 
on being immediately planted, reproduce the 
original plant, thus proving this tree to be a 
wild plant and neither a hybrid nor a sport 
from some other citrus. When the first 
blossoms of March do not produce much fruit, 
a second and third bloom occur in May or 
June, and yet all the fruits mature at the end 
of October. In November the leaves turn 
yellow and drop gradually, so that at the end 
of December none remain. 
£5 ep aniiamerempnt nse 
