FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
113 
once in three or four years give us a lim¬ 
ited supply of fruit. All the other fruits 
are gone although for years we nursed 
and coddled them. 
I am speaking now of our own place 
which is situated on the Pinealas Penin¬ 
sula. There are some favored spots in 
this modern Garden of Eden that are pro¬ 
tected by a body of salt water between 
them and the break in the frost line, but 
these are much in the minority. 
Of course I am speaking of natural 
conditions, what may be accomplished 
with a little protection is wonderful, and 
if we make up our minds that we want all 
the good things our soil will produce we 
can have them just the same. After all 
it only means that we have to give up a 
warm bed and: turn out for one or two 
nights and burn up a little wood. Per¬ 
haps we will get the frost line mended 
sometime and get back to conditions as 
they were twenty years ago. 
TROPICAL FRUITS—HOW AND WHERE GROWN. 
By E. V. Blackman. 
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : 
When I received 'notice it'hat I (had 
been appointed to write and read a pa¬ 
per before the State Horticultural Soci¬ 
ety on Tropical Fruits, I felt that the 
task was too great and that there are 
many members of the Society who are 
more conversant with this branch of hor¬ 
ticulture and have had many years more 
experience along these lines than I. This 
I felt was especially true in the case of 
M,r. Reasoner, the honored chairman of 
this committee. A few days since I receiv¬ 
ed a letter from Mr. Reasoner, asking 
that I prepare such a paper, I concluded 
to make an effort along the line and do 
the -best I could. 
In a paper which necessarily must have 
for its first essential briefness, it would 
be impossible to treat the almost number¬ 
less kind of tropical fruits, their value, 
commercially, and the methods of culti¬ 
vation, hence we shall speak of only a 
few of the most desirable sorts. 
First, let it be understood that w’e 
shall treat the growing of these desirable 
fruits in portions of the State where 
frosts and winter blizzards do 1 not come 
with sufficient force to destroy the trees. 
A large majority of the purely tropical 
fruit trees, are very susceptible to kill¬ 
ing frosts, indeed many of them are so 
tender that a frost that would seriously 
kill tomato vines would damage the trees 
to a greater or less degree, yet there are 
some that have great vitality and when 
cut down by cold, sprout from the roots 
and soon come into bearing again. In sec¬ 
tions where this condition is likely to oc¬ 
cur, I would not advise planting tropical 
fruit trees commercially; but if I lived in 
a part of Florida where these frosts occur 
8 
