54 
House & Garden 
ARBUTUS, BLUEBERRIES, ET AL. 
The Work Which Has Been Accomplished by the Department of Agriculture in Growing the 
Acid Soil Plants under Cultivation—Developing the Blueberry as a Sound Commercial Crop 
F. F. ROCKWELL 
F OR years the wild arbutus has been synonymous 
with the untamable, elusive beauty of old Dame 
Nature's gypsy children through which in this 
little tlower she has mocked the meddling hand of 
man, and opened the season year after year with 
fragrant blossoms. 
But where the florist and the gardener have failed 
in taming this thing of the wild, the scientist has suc¬ 
ceeded. He has succeeded not only in growing it, but 
in getting flowers of larger size and deeper colors, 
and without any sacrifice of that delicate perfume 
which has always been a large part of its singular 
charm for those who know and love it 
And then there is the luscious blueberry—another 
wild one! For years it refused all the efforts made 
to tame it. The blueberries you get in the market 
or buy in cans are still those from wild, uncultivated 
bushes—meagre in size and, for the most part, medi¬ 
ocre in quality. A mouthful of them will average 
quite tempting in taste, but that is because the good 
are mixed with the poor. If you have ever picked 
them in the wild you have probably noticed that the 
fruit from some bushes was rather flat and insipid 
in flavor, while that from others had the true flavor 
that made it well worth your while to scratch your 
wrists and hands in going after them. 
Blueberries as Big as Grapes 
What would you say to blueberries the smallest of 
which, as you stripped them by the handful, were 
often 1" in diameter and with a flavor about as tempt¬ 
ing as the drop of honey in the quill of a wild colum¬ 
bine nodding from a sunlit cranny of the rocks? 
Well, that is the kind of blueberries which a few 
years’ skillful hybridizing and selection on the part of 
a scientific botanist with live imagination have accom¬ 
plished. He has done this work quietly, 
plugging away year after year in one 
of the little greenhouses on the grounds 
of the Department of Agriculture in 
Washington. It is work which, had it 
been accomplished in Santa Rosa, Cal¬ 
ifornia, would have been good for head¬ 
lines in the daily press across the coun¬ 
try. As it is, comparatively few have 
heard of it. The name of this hard and 
careful working botanist—I take pleas¬ 
ure in refraining from calling him a 
“Wizard of Horticulture”—is Frederick 
V. Coville, of the Department of Agri¬ 
culture, Washington, D. C.; and inci¬ 
dentally he is the same man who has 
given a new lease of life to the arbutus, 
threatened with extinction because no 
one knew how to cultivate or propagate 
it, as well as putting the blueberry far 
on its way toward becoming a respected 
and self-respecting member of the large 
family of cultivated fruits. 
Why was it that those who attempted 
to domesticate the blueberry, arbutus, 
and some other similar plants failed? 
It was plain even to the novice that 
these things were susceptible of being 
killed by care and that neglect did not 
produce the same results. 
Professor Coville’s investigation soon 
showed him that both the blueberry and 
the arbutus belong to that class of plants 
known as “acid tolerants.” Further ex¬ 
periments proved that they not only tol¬ 
erate acid soil but would not succeed in 
one that was not acid. Further study 
revealed the fact that these plants had 
about their roots a peculiar fungous 
growth which seemed to be decidedly 
beneficial to them, acting in a way not 
dissimilar to familiar nitrogen gathering 
nodules and beneficial bacteria on the 
roots of legumes, such as peas, beans 
and clover. 
Acting upon this basis. Professor 
Coville attempted the growing of these 
wayward, wild things in conditions cre¬ 
ated artificially to duplicate those in 
which he found them growing. Thus 
with a little experimenting he was able 
to succeed fully. He had the wild things 
literally “feeding out of his hand.” In 
fact, he succeeded with such thoroughness that I 
found on my last visit to the acid soil greenhouse 
at Washington, arbutus, blueberries, and kalmia all 
growing as weeds in a single plat of soil—volunteer 
seedlings which had come up and were in the way 
where an experiment with something else was being 
carried out by Professor Coville. 
How a New Blueberry Is Made 
But getting these plants to grow when brought 
into captivity was only the first step toward what 
was sought. The next was to bring them up to 
cultivated standards. Careful investigation proved 
that there was a very great variety in both size of 
berry and flavor in plants growing in the wild state. 
The first step, therefore, was selection; the next was 
crossing or hybridizing different wild plants in an 
effort to get an improvement in size and flavor. The 
results were little short of astounding in a very brief 
period—it is only a few years since the preliminary 
work was started. 
I had the very good fortune to strike Professor 
Coville on a hybridizing day. Hybridizing is always 
a rather delicate job. With the blueberry it is par¬ 
ticularly so. While the blueberry is, so far as is 
known, self-sterile—flowers fertilized with pollen 
from other flowers on the same plant will fail to 
develop ripe fruits—nevertheless to be absolutely sure 
of getting a hybrid when you attempt to do so, it 
is necessary to make certain that there is no chance 
of self-pollenization. 
As a glance at the cluster of flowers in the ac¬ 
companying photograph will show, the pistils in the 
blueberry flower are so completely surrounded by the 
corolla that one cannot get at them without cutting 
away the latter. For this purpose, Professor Coville 
uses a little instrument of his own making, consist¬ 
ing of a pair of spring tweezers which have been 
ground down at the point in such a way that they 
form a pair of cutting edges when the blades are 
pressed together, although with a slight side pres¬ 
sure they can be used in the regular way as tweezers. 
The corolla is cut off close to the base all the way 
around, leaving stamens and pistils exposed. This 
has to be done so carefully that the flower is not 
jarred in the slightest; then the stamens are removed 
with equal care. The pollen is obtained from the 
flower of another bush, which must be in just the 
right state to shed its valuable pollen freely when 
rolled gently between the thumb and finger. The 
pollen should be deposited on some dark surface 
where it can be readily discerned, and of such a 
shape that it can be used conveniently in getting at 
the exposed pistils of the flowers to be fertilized. 
A pencil with an extra large lead and the point so 
cut that it is flat on one surface, is a convenient 
instrument for this work. The pollen dust is then 
applied to the stigma to which it adheres readily 
in the usual way. 
After the fruits have matured, the seeds are sown, 
not in an ordinary seed soil but in one composed 
of two parts of kalmia peat and one part of clean 
sand. In sections where a wild laurel thicket is 
available, the former may easily be obtained by taking 
up a bagful or so of the fibrous rotted material of 
decayed leaves and twigs in which the laurel grows. 
This should be rubbed through a screen with a mesh 
as fine as 5 / 2 " or so, and mixed thoroughly with the 
sand. This gives a light spongy material of the 
necessary acidity. A flat of this soil prepared in 
the ordinary way and kept in a shaded, cool situation 
furnishes an ideal place in which to start the seedlings. 
The inside of a greenhouse in Wash¬ 
ington, D. C., is not the coolest place 
imaginable during July and August. 
Professor Coville has just had fitted up 
inside of his greenhouse a very novel 
form of “hotbed”; by the use of an 
electric refrigerating system automatical¬ 
ly controlled he can keep the tempera¬ 
ture as low as is wanted no matter 
what the thermometer may be register¬ 
ing outside. 
Selecting the Plants 
The new hybrid blueberries will prob¬ 
ably be available for commercial distri¬ 
bution within a few years. Great care 
has been taken in keeping outside seed¬ 
lings from getting out, even where they 
have proved satisfactory in size, because 
extra fine quality is the point upon which 
stress is being laid. But if one likes 
blueberries, plants carefully selected 
from those growing in a wild state and 
brought into cultivation will greatly re¬ 
pay the slight work involved. 
The time to select the plants, of 
course, is when they are in fruit. Qual¬ 
ity, size, and productiveness are the 
essential points to keep in mind in 
picking out the bushes you wish to 
domesticate. The plants selected should 
be carefully staked or marked. They 
can be transplanted in the fall after hot 
weather is over, or else very early in the 
following spring. 
The best results have been secured 
when all the top of the bush has been 
cut off, leaving stumps only 1" or 2" 
high. As much of the root system as 
possible should be saved with each plant. 
Large plants can be divided into a dozen 
or more, or even two dozen of smaller 
plants, each of which must have its 
own share of the root system mat. In 
re-bedding these plants, they should be 
covered only slightly deeper than they 
were growing, 1" or so of stump being 
left above the soil. But if each of these 
plants is in a' slight, saucer-like de¬ 
pression after new growth has been 
made, they can be filled in level with 
blueberry soil so that a new root system 
(Continued on page 74) 
