74 
Journal of Agricultural Research 
Vol. XXVIII, No. 1 
discovered. 3 That the plants have not come from seeds scattered by birds 
from some foreign species cultivated in the neighborhood of Lake Miccosukee 
is evidenced by the fact that Grossularia eckinella is very different from any 
of the species of Asia, Europe, or the mountains of northern Africa, the only 
parts of the world besides North America in which Grossularias are native. 
The spininess of the fruit is the most remarkable characteristic of Grossularia 
echinella. Of the six other species of gooseberry native in eastern North America, 
cynosbati, oxyacanthoides, hirtella , rotundifolia , missouriensis , and curvata , only 
one, cynosbati , has spiny fruit, and that species is not closely related to the 
present species, as shown' by their very different flower structure. Even in 
cynosbati the prickles of the fruit are comparatively few, in echinella they occur 
in hundreds. It is only in some of the Pacific coast species, such as menziesii , 
hesperia , and hystrix , that such dense spininess occurs, and the flower structure 
of all such spiny-fruited Pacific coast species shows that none of them is closely 
related to the new one. 
Grossularia echinella is closely related to three other American gooseberries: 
G . curvata , of the southeastern United States; missouriensis , of the middle and 
upper Mississippi Valley region; and nivea , of the plains of eastern Washington 
and Oregon, western Idaho, and northern Nevada, a species which, though now 
stranded far from the others geographically, presents evidence of close genetic 
relationship with them, especially with Grossularia curvata . None of these 
species, however, has spiny fruit. But in curvata the ovaries are densely covered 
with sessile glands, and the elevation of these glands on stalks, a tendency which 
often appears in Grossularia and also in the related genus Ribes, provides a 
reasonable explanation of the evolution of the gland-tipped prickles of the new 
species. 
In its geographic distribution Grossularia echinella is of special interest be¬ 
cause it is the southernmost of our Atlantic seaboard species of this genus, 
growing in Florida, at an elevation of only about 200 feet above sea level, and in 
the principal region of production of the Satsuma orange. It may therefore be 
regarded as an almost subtropical representative of a north temperate genus. 
The cultivation of our present garden gooseberries in the latitude to which they 
are adapted, the Northern States, is now discouraged by forestry experts be¬ 
cause the gooseberries, like the currants, are carriers of a blister rust that threatens 
the destruction of the white-pine forests. The danger is so seriously regarded 
that more than a million dollars has already been expended in the eradication of 
gooseberries and currants in the white-pine region. Should it be judged desir¬ 
able that the agricultural range of the cultivated gooseberries be extended far¬ 
ther south than it is now possible to grow them, and that an attempt be made to 
establish gooseberry culture beyond the range of the white-pine forests, the new 
species offers a southern climatic adaptation which it may be possible to com¬ 
bine with the edible qualities of the garden gooseberries through hybridization. 
The culture of gooseberries in the southern coastal plain would carry no menace 
to the pine forests of that region because the hard pines are immune to the blister 
rust of the white pine, and, furthermore, the gooseberries in that region would 
not even have the disease because there are no white pines from which to con¬ 
tract it. 
8 The prediction of a parent area has come true sooner than was expected. Doctor Kurz visiting Lake 
Miccosukee again on April 27 found that about a mile farther from Dogwood Landing the new species was 
running rampant as the dominant shrub of the forest belt and extending beyond it into the upland along 
the slopes of small streams emptying into the lake. 
