FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
41 
ishment from the tree all through the 
season. It is not a natural drop, but 
something is the matter with the tree. 
No insect work as far as can be seen, 
but a sap disease apparently. 
Mr. Waite—In speaking of this 
dropping. Last year, I think we had 
as normal conditions as we ever had 
in Florida; a warm winter, plenty of 
rain, and one of the heaviest blooms I 
have ever seen. The trees were white, 
we had a good crop of fruit set, but 
about the first of May we had for about 
ten days a cold wind from the east. 
The nights were very cold. Immedi¬ 
ately after, we found that our trees 
were shedding their fruit and the same 
conditions existed as mentioned by the • 
gentleman. The stems were green and 
kept green during the entire season. I 
was speaking to one of the oldest 
growers in that section, and he stated 
that in 1898 the same conditions ex¬ 
isted. Our crops were heavily dam¬ 
aged by the fruit shedding after that 
cold east wind. I find in some seclud¬ 
ed places in our groves (where they 
had protection) we had a good crop 
of fruit, while where the wind had a 
good sweep the trees had only about 
one-third of a crop. Where we expect¬ 
ed 75,000 boxes we had only 25,000. 
Mr. Willis—I am not old in the or¬ 
ange industry; only about four years. 
We put in a twenty-horse power en¬ 
gine and ran pipes all over the grove. 
We irrigate about every ten days. The 
trees are in fine condition and holding 
their crop very well. We began ir¬ 
rigating early in March, and our trees 
look as good as they would if condi¬ 
tions had been favorable, and growing 
all the time. 
Mr. Skinner—I would like to hear 
from Mr. Hume and Mr. Rolfs about 
that calyx dropping. I don‘t believe 
that the east wind does it. I am losing 
thousands of dollars right now. 
Prof. Rolfs—So far as I have worked 
upon it, I find that there is an irritat¬ 
ing agent there that gets in between 
the orange and the calyx. Under cli¬ 
matic conditions, such as drought, cold, 
etc., it would shed off below the pedun¬ 
cle so that there would be no calyx left 
on the tree. My scientific work has been 
limited to the small fruit, not larger 
than a hazel-nut and at that time I 
could not get the fungi that caused the 
fruit to drop to infect the fruit. After 
the fruit arrives at about the size of a 
hazel-nut, from this time until the fruit 
is colored, there seems to be a period 
of immunity. It is possible that this 
east wind or other cold wind has a de¬ 
pressing effect upon the plant and al¬ 
lows these fungi to infect and knock 
them off. 
Mr. Hart—I would like to air my 
views on these subjects, too. Accord¬ 
ing to my little experience, I think that 
the distance between the trees in a 
grove has a great deal to do in decid¬ 
ing whether it needs irrigation in a 
dry time, or not. My trees are mostly 
set twenty feet apart, some of them 
thirty. One of the groves has the trees 
set eighteen feet apart; that is on a 
piece of ground that has some oyster 
shells in it. At times, a few of these 
trees have the dieback, and I think 
for the past two years, to correct this, 
I have hardly put a cultivator in it. 
We had a dry spell as you all know 
coyering six months, and it was not 
broken until lately. On that grove, 
some of the oranges got soft, so that 
they began to drop from the trees in 
