138 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
We have numerous cases of trees and 
sometimes groves that were neglected fif¬ 
teen or even twenty years and then re¬ 
habilitated and rebudded, and a good, 
marketable product produced. 
I am mentioning that to show how very 
different the citrus root is from a peach 
root, for instance, the apple root and the 
other fruit crops of the United States. 
Mr. Gillett has already spoken about the 
long life of citrus trees in Europe. We 
have not grown citrus long enough in 
America to state just how old a citrus tree 
must be before it becomes too old to be 
productive. 
Mr. Chairman, I believe I have pointed 
out the matters I wished to bring before 
the Board. I want to assure them that 
when a citrus grove has been, as we 
generally say, “frozen to the ground,” 
that does not mean frozen to the ground 
at all. In Gainesville, really beyond the 
northern limits of citrus growing, a few 
days after the freeze, people said the trees 
were frozen to the ground, even the roots 
were dead. Yet you can go there and 
find leaves twelve feet up in the trees. 
Somehow people like to go around and 
magnify disasters, and they do not tell 
the truth in a calm and dispassionate way. 
The trouble is in our minds and not in the 
citrus tree. 
We can rebuild these citrus roots in a 
very short time, or, rather, rebuild the 
citrus grove. Five years is ample time in 
which to rebuild a grove to a condition in 
which the grove will again produce a pay¬ 
ing crop, not only a paying crop but a crop 
that will pay an interest on the invest¬ 
ment. There are many groves that have 
done that in three years, but five years has 
been shown to be ample time, taking the 
state as a whole, and basing that statement 
in view of the great freeze in ’94-95. 
Mr. Smith: If a man had a ten-acre 
grove, and we should loan him, say, 
$4,000 on that grove, and it takes four or 
five years after a freeze to have it begin to 
bear again, how could he utilize that 
grove in the meantime, or would he have 
to live on that $4,000 we loaned him? 
Mr. Rolfs: He would have to have 
some means of livelihood besides that 
grove, and you want to know how he 
could get that livelihood. 
Our people had that experience; you 
remember that freeze was a clean sweep. 
It wasn't like this year's freeze. Well, the 
first thing the people did—and they had 
no farm loan to fall back upon; they had 
to fall back upon their own local insti¬ 
tutions—the first thing done was that of 
producing crops so they could live at 
home, and in the five years following that 
disaster, our people by living at home and 
finding out that the Florida climate in the 
summer time was thoroughly delightful, 
produced vegetables, corn and other ma¬ 
terials not to be used at home. In the 
five years following the freeze, the length 
of good roads in the state more than 
doubled; there were four times the num¬ 
ber of school houses built and painted and 
more churches built and painted than there 
were in the five years preceding that. (Ap¬ 
plause.) 
That was the renaissance of education, 
road building and church building. Re¬ 
markable as it may seem, with $70,000,- 
000 of property wiped out in one night, 
you see the farmers starting in to raise 
