234 



BUDS, BLOSSOMS, FRUITS. 



must be a fair margin of profit, and stock must be sold 

 for fair prices to realize it. Another point is often over- 

 looked by buyers. Nurserymen seldom sell all the stock 

 they grow. When trees are budded and grafted, cuttings 

 made or plants rooted, they cannot tell just what varieties 

 and how many their trade will take, and sometimes a 

 good many unsalable ones may be left to be thrown away 

 or burned. So what are sold must help to make up for 

 those that are not. If everything grown could be 

 certain of a sale, stock could often be sold for less money. 

 Out of justice to the nurserymen it would be well, in 

 making out orders, to add a list of such varieties as might 

 be substituted with the buyer's consent in case those 

 ordered could not be furnished. — Chas. Wright, Del. 



The Ideal Hedge-Plant. — (Page 57.) You say that 

 honey-locust is the best hedge-plant. Permit me to 

 differ from you. In this latitude, at least, the honey-locust 

 develops the bad habit of suckering worse than the 

 Osage orange. When well cared for it doubtless makes 

 a good hedge, better than the Madura, but draws heavily 

 on the surrounding land and will fill it full of suckers. 

 In my opinion no large tree like honey-locust, or maclura 

 either, is a proper plant for a defensive hedge. The ideal 

 hedge-plant, as I have for years insisted, is the Citrus 

 trifoUata. It is hard to make people believe that any 

 of the tree oranges can be hardy in the north, but there 

 are few places where this deciduous orange is not com- 

 pletely hardy. It passed through last winter in Michigan 

 safely. The first plant I had, eleven years ago in the 

 highlands of Northern Maryland, passed without injury 

 through a spell when the mercury at daybreak stood at 

 18^ below zero, and the following day with a bright sun 

 and no snow stood 4° below. Not an inch of wood was 

 hurt. Its compact dwarf habit makes this plant easy to 

 keep in good shape without hard pruning. Its com- 

 plete armament of the strongest and sharpest spines 

 pointing in every direction make it a better defence than 

 even the honey-locust. It makes no suckers, and its roots 

 spread but a short distance and are not exhaustive of a 

 broad strip of soil as the other plants used for farm hedges 

 are. It bears a great profusion of the sweetest of orange- 

 flowers, and loads itself with little sour, seedy oranges, 

 like limes, which ripen in October. P. J. Berckmans, of 

 Georgia, who first grew the plant in this country, has a 

 half-mile hedge of it now growing. He says that the 

 only difficulty so far has been to grow enough of it to 



supply the demand, owing to scarcity of seed. But 

 it is now getting into fruit so plentifully that nursery- 

 men will no longer have this difficulty. The trees I 

 planted in Maryland, in 1880, have for years been bear- 

 ing heavy crops, and the seeds are plentiful now in 

 Florida. When people fully realize the entire hardiness 

 of this plant, the question of the "best hedge-plant" 

 will, I think, be finally settled. The plants are now so 

 cheap in the southern nurseries that it will be easy for 

 the experiment stations and individuals in the extreme 

 north to test their hardiness. I have no plants nor seeds 

 for sale, so don't write to me about them. They are 

 now in most catalogues. Some growers class them as 

 Limonium trifoliatum. — W. F. Massey, North Caro- 

 lina Experiment Station. 



Our Grape Crop. — (Page 732.) Your view of certain 

 grapes differs considerably from mine. I do not see, for 

 example, how Dracut Amber can be recommended for 

 home use, as it is one of the most "foxy" grapes we 

 raise. Certainly it is no better than the Perkins, which 

 is also "meaty"; but neither, as grown here, is con- 

 sidered quite good enough for market, which means 

 that even their good points of comparative freedom from 

 rot, of productiveness and showiness of fruit and the 

 fact that some like the musky flavor, can overbalance the 

 general opinion as to poor quality. Quality is the main 

 point with grapes for home use. Moore's Diamond here 

 has a large bunch, and the quality is best or at Jeast very 

 good. Triumph with us is a splendid grape, but occasion- 

 ally the season is too short, which is probably the reason 

 you rate it as " sour fruit." I am among the number of 

 those who can admit a little refreshing rich acid with the 

 sugar in a grape without considering the quality spoiled 

 thereby. You do not object to it in an apple. Noah 

 and Missouri Riesling are rather insipid in taste as grown 

 by me. Montefiore is among the best of its class in 

 quality, its worst fault being the small size of bunch and 

 berry. I can fully agree with you that the El Dorado 

 leads in quality, but as for fruit here it hugs the zero 

 mark closely. It seems pretty certain, now that rot may 

 be controlled by spraying, that for home use the Rogers 

 varieties should and will be planted more freely than 

 heretofore ; for notwithstanding the many recent intro- 

 ductions they remain a remarkable lot of grapes, supply- 

 ing flavors unattained in other sorts. — Benjamin Buck- 

 man, Illinois. 



