FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
127 
thus allowed to become thoroughly ripe 
on the trees, which is so essential to the 
high quality of the acid varieties. 
In the Wellhouse orchard in Kansas, 
which came into bearing in 1883, and in 
1890 produced 79,000 bushels, the trees 
are headed low and pryamidal, and five- 
sixths of the apples can be picked by 
men standing on the ground. In the 
burning summer winds and winter bliz¬ 
zards of Kansas this low-headed form, 
branching from the ground, is neces¬ 
sary. 
ORANGES IN JAPAN. 
In Japan the Oonshiu, which we call 
the Satsuma, is grafted or budded on the 
citrus trifoliata, indigenous to Japan, 
which gives it hardiness. It has a very 
different growth from our trees, being 
really a large bush. It does not often 
grow over ten feet in height, the highest 
about twelve, but it covers a great area. 
H. E. Amoore, the Japanese traveler and 
importer, speaks of measuring one which 
was seventy feet around the branches, 
which rested on the ground. They are 
not pruned on the stem, but the young 
shoots are cut off from the upper part 
of the tree to keep it down. The 
branches starting from the ground are 
very irregular and completely hide the 
trunk. They are planted on the sides 
of the hills, on ledges or terraces, thirty 
to fifty feet, generally only about ten 
feet apart, the branches interweaving so 
close together that passage is impossible 
except by crawling under. In the val¬ 
leys they are not planted regularly, but 
dotted about with rice and vegetables. 
These dwarf trees are very prolific; 
the branches are literally laden with fruit. 
Amoore states that the oranges general¬ 
ly attain a diameter of three and a half 
inches. It is the universal opinion 
throughout Japan that this variety is the 
best orange grown in that country. If 
the Satsuma on trifoliate stock is the 
best orange in Japan, we see no reason 
why it should not be a good orange in 
Florida. This opinion, if coming from 
the Japanese alone, would be open to 
suspicion, for they often eat both or¬ 
anges and persimmons when they are 
green and of a vile flavor; but Ameri¬ 
cans in Japan all say that when the Sat¬ 
suma is allowed to ripen it is delicious. 
The trees bear very young. Trees 
imported into California only eighteen 
inches high have arrived in San Fran¬ 
cisco with fiften or twenty oranges still 
hanging to their branches after the long 
voyage. 
DWARF ORANGES ON OTAHEITE STOCK. 
In 1875 Dr. C. J. Kenworthy settled 
in Jacksonville, and having been pre¬ 
viously interested in growing the dwarf 
apple on Paradise stock and the dwarf 
pear on quince stock, he turned his at¬ 
tention to the subject of dwarfing the 
orange on the Otaheite stock. He sent 
to Long Island and obtained one plant 
of this stock from which he propagated 
others. In a letter to the writer he said: 
“One of my bushes, less than three 
feet high, and within thirty months from 
the time the Otaheite branch was lay¬ 
ered and budded, produced thirty-three 
large Homosassa oranges. All my 
bushes produced full crops of fruit with¬ 
in three years from the time the 
branches of the stock were layered and 
budded. The next winter a blizzard de¬ 
stroyed both my standard trees and 
dwarfs. 
