138 



THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



fruits with 2,226 varieties domesticated v\athin approximately 

 half a century. DeCandolle named none of them. 



The fruit of the wild plum (Primus inaritinm) and in- 

 habitant of sea beaches and dunes from Xew Brunswick to the 

 Carolinas, is a common article of trade in the region in which 

 it grows, but notwithstanding the fact that it readily breaks 

 into innumerable forms and is a most promising subject under 

 hybridization, practically nothing has been done towards do- 

 mesticating it. Few plants grow under such varied conditions 

 as our wild grapes. Xot all have been brought under subjug'a- 

 tion though nearly all have horticultural possibilities. It is 

 certain that some grape can be grown in every agricultural 

 region in the United States. The blueberry and huckleberry, 

 finest of fruits, and now the most valuable wild .\inerican 

 fruits, the crops bringing" several million dollars annually, are 

 not yet domesticated. Coville has demonstrated that the blue- 

 berry can be cultivated. Some time we should have numerous 

 varieties of the several blueberries and huckleberries to enrich 

 pine plains, mountain tracts, swamps and waste lands that 

 otherwise are all but worthless. There are many varieties of 

 Juneberries widely distributed in the United States and Canada 

 from which several varieties are now cultivated. The elder- 

 berrv is represented by a dozen or more cultivated varieties, 

 one of which, brought to my attention the past season, pro- 

 duced a half hundred enormous clusters, a single cluster being- 

 made up of 2,208 berries, each a third of an inch in diameter. 



These are but a few of our fruits — others which can only 

 be named are : the anonas and their kin in Florida, the native 

 thornapples and crabapples. the wineberry, the buffalo berry, 

 several wild cherries, the cloudberry, prized in Labrador, the 

 crowberry of cold and Arctic America, the high bush cran- 

 berry, native mulberries, opuntias and other cacti of the deserts, 

 the pawpaw and persimmon and the well known and much used 

 salal and salmon berries of the West and North. 



