THE BLOOMLESS APPLE. 



7 



cited by Mr. Fuller in the August number of this 

 journal. This is a record of the Farmers' Club 

 of the American Institute, in i86S. 



" L. Barrett, of Smiksburg, Penn., communi- 

 cated to the club that he had found a coreless and 

 seedless apple the year previous, in West Virginia. 

 He said that the fruit ' was solid and of good 

 flavor,' and stated further, ' they do not blossom 

 like other fruit, but put forth stems and buds like a 

 clove.'" In 1870, the club again 

 had the same or a similar fruit from 

 H. L. Reade, which came from 

 Jesse S. Eby, of Norwich, Conn. 

 These specimens "came originally 

 from his [Eby's] father's farm, in 

 Litchfield county, and from a tree 

 that has had no perceptible blos- 

 som, and yet has borne for over 50 

 years." 



In Tilton's Journal of Horticul- 

 ture for 1869, page 333, Robert 

 Manning describes the "No-core" : 

 "We remember seeing, some years 



bracts in their place. * * * The fruit was of a yel- 

 low color, with dull reddish-brown cheek, pearmain- 

 shaped, tapering, with quite concave lines, and 

 showing the fine carpels very plainly in prominent 

 knobs at the apex. [These knobs were probably 

 the thickened petals.] It was sweet and rather 

 dry, and of little value except as a curiosity." Mr. 

 Manning writes me that "specimens of such an 

 apple were exhibited before the Massachusetts Hor- 



FiG. 3. The Fig-Apple, " Bloomless, " of 1768. 



ago, at an exhibition of the Massachusetts Horti- 

 cultural Society an apple called ' No-core ' which, 

 singularly enough, had two cores. We had also 

 another apple, received from Messrs. Baumann, the 

 French nurserymen, the ' Hillars Grande.' which 

 showed the same extraordinary formation. * -x- * 

 The flower of the Hillars Grande was destitute of 

 petals, or showed only what were supposed to be 



Fig. 2. Seciidn ok lii.ooMLESs Apple. 



ticultural. Society on the 13th of October last 

 under the name of ' No-blow.' " 



The Botanical Gazette for June, 1887, records 

 the following: "Professor W. W. Bailey 

 [Providence, R. I.] writes that a lady pupil 

 had brought him a spray of an apple tree with 

 peculiar monstrous flowers. The petals were 

 aborted and green, and there were no stamens. 

 The carpels, v^ith style and stigma, were fairly 

 well developed. The tree is reported to bear 

 fruit from these curious flowers." 



The first reference to this form of variation 

 which ^I have been able to find in European 

 literature is in Duhamel's Arbes Fruitiers, 1768. 

 The Latin characterization records the fact that 

 the flowers had no petals and that the cells were 

 in two series: "Mains apetala, fructu oblongo, 

 loculos seminum duplici serie digestos foventi^ 

 calice prolifero coronato." The "New Duhamel," 

 published in 1807 by Poiteau and Turpin, contains 

 a full description and a colored plate of this apple,, 

 which is called Pome-Figu, or "Fig-apple." The 

 fruits are long, with concave sides, and greenish- 

 yellow. A cross section of a fruit is reproduced in 

 figure 3. The figures of the flowers are almost ex- 

 actly those of my former article in American Gar- 



