BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN 
LEAFLETS 
THE BROOKLYN INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 
Series IV Brooklyn, N.Y., September 27, 1916. No. 11 
THE ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF OUR MORE 
COMMON CULTIVATED FRUITS 
Ages before he secured his living by following the chase, 
primitive man doubtless eked out his existence on the roots, buds, 
seeds and wild fruits that grew in such profusion about him. But 
it was a long, long time before he learned to tame these wild pro- 
ductions and to pick out the best wild types — those which tasted 
best, furnished the largest amount of food and cost the least 
amount of labor. Many of our most common market fruits, such 
as the grapefruit, have been added to our larders only in compara- 
tively recent times, and in fact, most of the best tropical fruits are 
still gathered from unselected seedlings — a fact which goes a long 
way toward accounting for the great difference of opinion con- 
cerning their quality and merits. 
When one groups the cultivated fruits of the world according 
to their distinctive flavors, colors and forms, one finds there are 
about 100 distinct kinds, about one-half ot which reach our New 
York City markets. Many of these are worth trying out, but the 
quantities in which they come are generally so small and the price 
so high that only the curiosity of the fruit-epicure is tempted. 
When fruits are grouped according to their ancestral leanings, 
a curiously striking fact comes to light, causing us to wonder how 
we could have been happy without the rose family. For the apple, 
pear, medlar, quince, shadberry, haw, loquat, peach, nectarine, 
plum, cherry, apricot, raspberry, blackberry and strawberry are 
all second-cousins of the garden rose. These rosaceous fruits are, 
with very few exceptions, natives of the northern hemisphere. 
Since we ourselves are supposed to have evolved in this region, it 
appears that we have been constantly associated with them for a 
long time, which may partly account for the esteem in which we 
hold this group of fruits. Our acquaintance began with most of 
them during the prehistoric centuries when our race lived in Asia 
and during their later countless migrations into different parts of 
that great continent and its European appendage. So it should 
occasion no surprise that most of these rosaceous fruits find their 
