FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
57 
ents and better adapted to Florida condi¬ 
tions than either. Several Guatemalan 
seedlings of Florida origin have borne 
fruit during the past season and in each 
case this fruit has been neither straight 
Guatemalan nor West Indian but has 
shown unmistakable evidence of being a 
cross of the two types, having some qual¬ 
ities superior to that of either parent. 
This winter and spring, for the first 
time, Guatemalan Avocados have been 
placed on the northern markets in quan¬ 
tities sufficient to permit some idea being 
formed as to the reception which the 
consumer is going to give this fruit. At 
any rate enough have been shipped to 
make it evident that all markets do not 
value the Avocado alike. When Avo¬ 
cados sell in one city for $42.00 per crate 
and ii another only a few hundred miles 
away at $10.00 per crate, for practically 
the same grade of fruit, as has been the 
case this season, it is apparent that neither 
market is giving the product its proper 
rating. However, while prices varied 
greatly, the fact that all offerings met 
with a ready sale, has been very encour¬ 
aging to the producers. 
Ranking next to the Avocado in im¬ 
portance, at the present time, we may 
safely place the Mango. That this deli¬ 
cious fruit has not been more heavily 
planted and has not reached a position 
commercially more prominent, has been 
due almost wholly to the indifferent bear¬ 
ing qualities of the finer varieties. Such 
fruit as is produced by trees of the Mul- 
goba, Haden, Amini, Paheri and several 
other of the East Indian type of Mangos, 
would have brought about the planting of 
thousands of acres and would have firm¬ 
ly established the fruit as one of the most 
sought-after of all of our Florida prod¬ 
ucts, were it not for the unreliable fruit¬ 
ing character of these trees, which so far 
has kept commercial Mango culture on 
about the same basis as lottery playing. 
The Bureau of Plant Industry of the 
United States Department of Agriculture 
has been working on this problem for a 
number of years and some of the results 
most recently obtained have been very 
encouraging. One of the papers to be 
presented at this session will give some 
interesting information along this line. 
It has been heretofore accepted as a 
fact that Date culture on a commercial 
basis was limited in the United States to 
a few comparatively small, arid sections 
of California, Arizona and possibly Tex¬ 
as. That Dates could be successfully 
grown in Florida was not considered a 
possibility on account of climatic condi¬ 
tions, vet there now seems to be a fair 
chance that these conclusions have been 
in error and that this very profitable in¬ 
dustry may be established on a commer¬ 
cial footing in at least one section of our 
State. 
Dates have been produced on Key 
West Island and some of the adjacent 
keys for many years, but during the past 
decade the number of bearing palms has 
greatly increased and at the proper sea¬ 
son ripe Dates are to be found on most of 
the fruit stands in the Island City. These 
facts have been brought to the attention 
of the officials of the Bureau of Plant In¬ 
dustry and some preliminary investiga¬ 
tions have been made which, while not at 
all conculsive, are very interesting and 
encouraging. 
