FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
93 
so that I have been back to this country 
almost every month since that time. All 
of the seedlings have produced heavy 
crops during the years. There is one 
large tree on the Sewell place that bore a 
crop of over seventeen hundred fruits, 
and the indications are that it will have a 
good crop this year. 
I have discovered only one or two Avo¬ 
cado trees of the Guatemalan type in the 
Glades and they are only three or four 
years of age. These have produced the 
same amount of growth that the seedlings 
and West Indian varieties have. The 
Winslow variety bore a fair crop in 1920. 
The custard apple soil seems to have 
all of the ingredients necessary for the 
raising of Avocados and producing good 
crops of fruit and all interested in the 
Avocado industry will watch this section 
closely, for as soon as transportation is 
improved, a heavy production of Avo¬ 
cados is bound to come from the south 
shore of Lake Okeechobee. 
W. J. Krome: This concludes the pro¬ 
gram to be offered by the Committee on 
Avocados and Sub-tropical Fruits, and if 
there are any questions anyone would 
like to ask in regard to any of the papers 
that have been presented along the lines 
of Avocados or sub-tropical horticulture, 
the members of the committee will be 
glad to answer them before we adjourn. 
Mrs.-: I would like to ask what 
to do for the Avocados and Mangos drop¬ 
ping the small fruit. 
W. J. Krome: We have had that trou¬ 
ble at various times in our groves and it 
may result from several causes. A very 
heavy rain during the time that the bloom 
is open seems to result almost certainly in 
the dropping of fruit. The presence of 
either thrips or an infection of the an- 
thracnose fungus will have a similar re¬ 
sult. The thrip injury will quite fre¬ 
quently take place, throw off the bloom 
and in most cases the fruit will not actu¬ 
ally set. The dropping from the anthrac- 
nose fungus usually takes place about the 
time the fruit is the size of a bird’s egg 
and seems to be due to a weakening of the 
union between the stem and the branch 
upon which it is located. I think that 
there are several other reasons but those 
have come under my own observations. 
Possibly some member of the committee 
can more fully answer that question. 
H. H. Hume: I might say in behalf 
of the Society that we appreciate very 
much the program on Avocados which 
these gentlemen have given us this after¬ 
noon. There is no question about the 
importance of this branch of horticulture 
in Florida. It is one of the coming 
things; it has been a long time coming 
because there have been a lot of difficul¬ 
ties and a lot of unknown things to be 
worked out but we are gradually getting 
around to it and I think before very many 
years we will have an Avocado industry 
in Florida that will be of first great im¬ 
portance in the horticulture of the State, 
and these men who are on this platform 
today are the men who are making it, are 
doing the work and Florida owes much 
to that type of pioneers in an actually 
new field so far as we are concerned. 
