PERPETUAL STRAWBERRIES. 
825 
addition to the already pretty long list of the perpetual large 
Strawberries. 
M. Edouard Lefort, the reputed raiser of some good varieties, 
has already entered the lists with ‘Jeanne d’Arc,’ a seedling 
from ‘St. Joseph,’ which, although decidedly different from the 
mother plant in its rounder, greener leaves and brighter scarlet 
fruit, does not show such an advance as to deserve a lengthy 
description. Fresh achievements in perpetual Strawberries are 
to be expected yearly now, and some respite should be given to 
the raisers in order to let them thoroughly test their new pro¬ 
ductions before bringing them forward. Similar kinds which 
follow too soon upon the appearance of a sensational novelty are 
very apt to turn out to be nothing more than misnomers and 
masqueraded duplicates of the original article. So every able 
judge will pronounce the so-called ‘ Rubicunda, la Constante 
feconde ’ to be with regard to ‘ St. Joseph.’ 
It is quite otherwise with ‘ Oregon ’ and another French sort, 
‘ Louis Gautier.’ Both are distinct, and, although far from 
perfect, deserve to be noticed and experimented with. 
‘ Oregon ’ was distributed as far back as 1894 or 1895 by 
Mr. Crawford, of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, as a Perpetual 
Strawberry, and it really deserves the name to a great extent. 
I have seen it recently bearing a fair crop of large, bright scarlet, 
sharply angular berries, and showing fresh trusses of bloom 
which promise another crop of fruit before winter. My opinion 
is that it is heavily handicapped in the contest with ‘ St. Joseph ’ 
by the fact of its being a weak grower and a scanty bearer of 
runners ; but it is after all a fairly perpetual sort. 
‘ Louis Gautier,’ on the other hand, is a vigorous and luxuriant 
grower, with a dark, thick, hairy foliage : the trusses are very 
strong, growing well out of the leaves, with large coxcombed 
fruit as pale as the original Chili Strawberry. It gives, accord¬ 
ing to my experience of it, a heavy crop in spring of ill-coloured, 
large white-fleshed, quite solid, juicy fruit, but bears only few 
and far between summer or autumn trusses of bloom. These, 
when produced at all, mostly spring from the young plants rooted 
in spring from the earlier runners. A fresh flower-stem from 
even a young plant which has already bloomed in spring is, to 
my knowledge, a rarity. 
It is certain that new varieties of perpetual large-fruited 
