American Pomology. Apples

PREFACE

All patriots may realize a sense of pride, when they consider the capabilities of the glorious country in which we are favored to live; and while fostering no sectional feelings, nor pleading any local interests, yet, as Americans and as men, we may be allowed to love our own homes, our own neighborhoods, our States and regions; and we may be permitted to think them the brightest and best portions of the great Republic to which we all belong. Therefore the writer asks to be excused for expressing a preference for his own favored Northwest, and while claiming all praise for this noble expanse, he wishes still to be acknowledged as most devotedly an American Citizen, who feels the deepest interest in the prosperity of the whole country.

His fellow-laborers in the extensive field of Horticulture, who are scattered over the great Northwest, having called upon him for a work on fruits which should be adapted to their wants, the author has for several years devoted himself to the task of collecting materials from which he is preparing a work upon American Pomology, of which this is to be the first volume.

The title has been adopted as the most appropriate, because the book is intended to be truly American in its character, and, though it may be especially adapted to the wants of the Western States, great pains have been taken to make it a useful companion to the orchardists of all portions of our country.

When examining this volume, his friends are asked to look gently upon the many faults they may find, and they are requested also to observe the peculiarities by which this fruit book is characterized. Much to his regret, the author found that it was considered necessary to the completeness of the volume, that the general subject of fruit-growing should be treated in detail, and, therefore, introductory chapters were prepared; whereas, he had set out simply to describe the fruits of our country. To this necessity, as it was considered by his friends, the author yielded reluctantly, because he felt that this labor had already been thoroughly done by his predecessors, whose volumes were to be seen in the houses of all intelligent fruit-growers. From them he did not wish to borrow other men's ideas and language, and therefore undertook to write the whole anew, without any reference to printed books. But, of course, it is impossible to be original in treating such familiar and hackneyed topics as those which are discussed at every meeting of horticulturists all over the country, and which form the subject of the familiar discourse of the green-house and nursery, the potting-shed and the grafting-room, the garden and the orchard.

After the introductory chapters upon the general or leading topics connected with fruit-culture and orcharding, the reader will find that especial attention has been paid to the classification of the fruits under consideration in this volume. Classification is the great need of our pomology, and, indeed, it is almost a new idea to many American readers. The author has fully realized the difficulties attendant upon the undertaking, but its importance, and its growing necessity, were considered sufficient to warrant the attempted innovation. It is hoped that American students of pomology will appreciate the efforts which have been made in their behalf. The formulæ which have been adopted may not prove to be the best, but it is believed that they will render great assistance to those who desire to identify fruits; and that, at least, they may lead to a more perfect classification in the future.

On the contrary, with these simple formulæ, under which the fruits are arranged, the student has only to decide as to which of the sub-divisions his specimen must be referred, and then seek among a limited number for the description that shall correspond to his fruit, and the identification is made out.

In the systematic descriptions of fruits, the alphabetical succession of the names is used in each sub-division. An earnest endeavor has been made to be minute in the details without becoming prolix. A regular order is adopted for considering the several parts, and some new or unusual characters are brought into requisition to aid in the identification. Some of these characters appear to have been strangely overlooked by previous pomologists, though they are believed to be permanent and of considerable value in the diagnosis.

In deciding upon the selection of the names of fruits, the generally received rules of our Pomological Societies have been departed from in a few instances, where good reasons were thought to justify differing from the authorities. Thus, when a given name has been generally adopted over a large extent of country, though different from that used by a previous writer, it has been selected as the title of the fruit in this work.

To avoid incumbering the pages, authorities for the nomenclature have not been cited, except in a few instances, nor have numerous synonyms been introduced. Such only as are in common use have been given, and those of foreign origin have been dropped.

The attention of the reader is particularly directed to the catalogue of fruits near the close of the volume, which also answers as the index to those which are described in detail. This portion of the work has cost an immense amount of labor and time, and, though making little display, will, it is hoped, prove very useful to the orchardist. In it the names of fruits are presented in their alphabetical order, followed by information as to the average size, the origin of the variety, its classification, from which are deduced its shape, flavor and modes of coloring; next is noted its season, and then its quality. This last character is, of course, but the result of private judgment, and the estimate may differ widely from that of others; the quality, too, it should be remembered, is here intended to be the result of a consideration of many properties besides that of mere flavor.

This catalogue will furnish a great deal of information respecting the fruits it embraces. Unfortunately, it is not so full nor so complete as it should be, but it is offered as the result of many years' observations, and is submitted for what it is worth.

Acknowledgments.—It is but an act of common justice for an author to acknowledge his indebtedness to those who have aided him in his labors, especially where, from the nature of the investigations, so much material has to be drawn from extrinsic sources. Upon the present occasion, instead of an extended parade of references to the productions of other writers, which might be looked upon as rather pedantic, it is preferred to make a general acknowledgment of the important assistance derived from many pomological authors of our own country and of Europe. Quotations are credited on the pages where they occur.

But the writer is also under great obligations to a host of co-laborers for the assistance they have kindly rendered him in the collecting, and in the examination and identification of fruits. Such friends he has happily found wherever he has turned in the pursuit of these investigations, and there are others whom it has never been his good fortune to meet face to face. To name them all would be impossible. The contemplation of their favors sadly recalls memories of the departed, but it also revives pleasant associations of the bright spirits that are still usefully engaged in the numerous pomological and horticultural associations of our country, which have become important agencies in the diffusion of valuable information in this branch of study.

To all of his kind friends the author returns his sincere thanks.

With a feeling of hesitation in coming before the public, but satisfied that he has made a contribution to the fund of human knowledge, this volume is presented to the Horticulturists of our country, for whom it was prepared by their friend and fellow-laborer,

INTRODUCTION

IMPORTANCE OF ORCHARD PRODUCTS—GOVERNMENT STATISTICS—GREAT VALUE OF ORCHARD AND GARDEN PRODUCTS—DELIGHTS OF FRUIT CULTURE—TEMPERATE REGIONS THE PROPER FIELD FOR FRUIT CULTURE, AS FOR MENTAL DEVELOPMENT—PLANTS OF CULTURE, PLANTS OF NATURE—NOMADIC CONDITION UNFAVORABLE FOR TERRA-CULTURE—NECESSITIES OF AN INCREASING POPULATION A SPUR—HIGH CIVILIZATION DEMANDS HIGH CULTURE—HORTICULTURE A FINE ART, THE POETRY OF THE FARMER'S LIFE—MORAL INFLUENCES OF FRUIT-CULTURE—SINGULAR LEGISLATION RESPECTING PROPERTY IN FRUIT—INFLUENCE UPON HEALTH—APPLES IN BREAD-MAKING; AS FOOD FOR STOCK—SOURCES AND ROUTES OF INTRODUCTION—AGENCY OF NURSERYMEN—INDIAN ORCHARDS—FRENCH SETTLERS—JOHNNY APPLE-SEED—VARIETIES OF FRUITS, LIKE MAN, FOLLOW PARALLELS OF LATITUDE—LOCAL VARIETIES OF MERIT TO BE CHERISHED—OHIO PURCHASE—SILAS WHARTON—THE PUTNAM LIST.

Few persons have any idea of the great value and importance of the products of our orchards and fruit-gardens. These are generally considered the small things of agriculture, and are overlooked by all but the statist, whose business it is to deal with these minutiæ, to hunt them up, to collocate them, and when he combines these various details and produces the sum total, we are all astonished at the result.

Our government wisely provides for the gathering of statistics at intervals of ten years, and some of the States also take an account of stock and production at intermediate periods, some of them, like Ohio, have a permanent statistician who reports annually to the Governor of the State.

Our Boards of Trade publish the amounts of the leading articles that arrive at and depart from the principal cities, and thus they furnish us much additional information of value. Besides this, the county assessors are sometimes directed to collect statistics upon certain points of interest, and now that we all contribute toward the extinction of the national debt, the United States Assessors in the several districts are put in possession of data, which should be very correct, in regard to certain productions that are specified by act of Congress as liable to taxation. By these several means we may have an opportunity of learning from time to time what are the productions of the country, and their aggregate amounts are surprising to most of us. When they relate to our special interests, they are often very encouraging. This is particularly the case with those persons who have yielded to the popular prejudice that cotton was the main agricultural production of the United States; to such it will be satisfactory to learn that the crop of corn, as reported in the last census, is of nearly equal value, at the usual market prices of each article. Fruit-growers will be encouraged to find that the value of orchard products, according to the same returns, was nearly twenty millions, that of Ohio being nearly one million; of New York, nearly three and three-quarters millions; that the wine crop of the United States, an interest that is still in its infancy, amounted to nearly three and one-quarter millions; and that the valuation of market garden products sums up to more than sixteen millions of dollars' worth. It is to be regretted that for our present purpose, the data are not sufficiently distinct to enable us to ascertain the relative value of the productions of our orchards of apples, pears, peaches, quinces, and the amount and value of the small fruits, as they are termed, since these are variously grouped in the returns of the census takers, and cannot now be separated. Of their great value, however, we may draw our conclusions from separate records that have been kept and reported by individuals, who assert the products of vineyards in some cases to have been as high as three thousand dollars per acre; of strawberries, at one thousand dollars; of pears, at one hundred dollars per tree, which would be four thousand dollars per acre; of apples, at twenty-five bushels per tree, or one thousand bushels per acre, which, at fifty cents per bushel, would produce five hundred dollars.

But, leaving this matter of dollars and cents, who will portray for us the delights incident to fruit-culture? They are of a quiet nature, though solid and enduring. They carry us back to the early days of the history of our race, when "the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden … and out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food … and the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it." We are left to infer that this dressing and keeping of the garden was but a light and pleasant occupation, unattended with toil and trouble, and that in their natural condition the trees and plants, unaided by culture, yielded food for man. Those were paradisean times, the days of early innocence, when man, created in the image of his Maker, was still obedient to the divine commands; but, after the great transgression, everything was altered, the very ground was cursed, "thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat of the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread."–From that day to the present hour it has been the lot of man to struggle with difficulties in the cultivation of the soil, and he has been driven to the necessity of constant watchfulness and care to preserve and to improve the various fruits of the earth upon which he subsists. In the tropics, it is true, there are many vegetable productions which are adapted for human food, even in a state of nature, and there we find less necessity for the effort of ingenuity and the application of thought and labor to produce a subsistence. Amid these productive plants of nature, the natives of such regions lead an idle life, and seldom rise above a low scale of advancement; but in the temperate regions of the globe, where the unceasing effort of the inhabitants is required to procure their daily food, we find the greatest development of human energies and ingenuity—there man thinks, and works; there, indeed, he is forced to improve the natural productions of the earth—and there we shall find him progressing. As with everything else, so it is with fruits, some of which were naturally indifferent or even inedible, until subjected to the meliorating influences of high culture, of selection, and of improvement. Here we find our plants of culture, which so well repay the labor and skill bestowed upon them.

In the early periods of the history of our race, while men were nomadic and wandered from place to place, little attention was paid to any department of agricultural improvement, and still less care was bestowed upon horticulture. Indeed, it can scarcely be supposed that, under such conditions, either branch of the art could have existed, any more than they are now found among the wandering hordes of Tartars on the steppes of Asia. So soon, however, as men began to take possession of the soil by a more permanent tenure, agriculture and horticulture also, attracted their chief attention, and were soon developed into arts of life. With advancing civilization, this has been successively more and more the case; the producing art being obliged to keep pace with the increased number of consumers, greater ingenuity was required and was applied to the production of food for the teeming millions of human beings that covered the earth, and, as we find, in China, at the present time, the greatest pains were taken to make the earth yield her increase.

High civilization demands high culture of the soil, and agriculture becomes an honored pursuit, with every department of art and science coming to its assistance. At the same time, and impelled by the same necessities, supported and aided by the same co-adjutors, horticulture also advances in a similar ratio, and, from its very nature, assumes the rank of a fine art, being less essential than pure agriculture, and in some of its branches being rather an ornamental than simply a useful art. It is not admitted, however, that any department of horticulture is to be considered useless, and many of its applications are eminently practical, and result in the production of vast quantities of human food of the most valuable kind. This pursuit always marks the advancement of a community.—As our western pioneers progress in their improvements from the primitive log cabins to the more elegant and substantial dwelling houses, we ever find the garden and the orchard, the vine-arbor and the berry-patch taking their places beside the other evidences of progress. These constitute to them the poetry of common life, of the farmer's life.

The culture of fruits, and gardens also, contributes in no small degree to the improvement of a people by the excellent moral influence it exercises upon them. Everything that makes home attractive must contribute to this desirable end. Beyond the sacred confines of the happy hearthstone, with its dear familiar circle, there can be no more pleasant associations than those of the garden, where, in our tender years, we have aided loved parents, from them taking the first lessons in plant-culture, gathering the luscious fruits of their planting or of our own; nor of the rustic arbor, in whose refreshing shade we have reclined to rest and meditate amid its sheltering canopy of verdure, and where we have gathered the purple berries of the noble vine at a later period of the rolling year; nor of the orchard, with its bounteous supplies of golden and ruddy apples, blushing peaches, and melting pears. With such attractions about our homes, with such ties to be sundered, it is wonderful, and scarcely credible, that youth should ever be induced to wander from them, and to stray into paths of evil. Such happy influences must have a good moral effect upon the young. If it be argued that such luxuries will tend to degrade our morals by making us effeminate and sybaritic, or that such enjoyments may become causes of envy and consequent crime on the part of those who are less highly favored, it may be safely asserted that there is no better cure for fruit-stealing, than to give presents of fruit, and especially of fruit-trees, to your neighbors, particularly to the boys—encourage each to plant and to cherish his own tree, and he will soon learn the meaning of meum and tuum, and will appreciate the beauties of the moral code, which he will be all the more likely to respect in every other particular.

Some of the legislation of our country is a very curious relic of barbarism. According to common law, that which is attached to the soil, may be removed without a breach of propriety, by one who is not an owner of the fee simple; thus, such removal of a vegetable product does not constitute theft or larceny, but simply amounts to a trespass: whereas the taking of fruit from the ground beneath the tree, even though it be defective or decaying, is considered a theft. An unwelcome intruder, or an unbidden guest, may enter our orchard, garden, or vineyard, and help himself at his pleasure to any of our fruits, which we have been most carefully watching and nursing tor months upon trees, for the fruitage of which we may have been laboring and waiting for years, and, forsooth, our only recourse is to sue him at the law, and our only satisfaction, after all the attendant annoyance and expense, is a paltry fine for trespass upon our freehold, which, of course, is not commensurate with our estimate of the value of the articles taken: fruits often possess, in the eyes of the devoted orchardist, a real value much beyond their market price.

Were I asked to describe the location of the fabled fountain of Hygeia, I should decide that it was certainly situated in an orchard; it must have come bubbling from earth that sustained the roots of tree and vine; it must have been shaded by the umbrageous branches of the wide-spreading apple and pear, and it was doubtless approached by alleys that were lined by peach trees laden with their downy fruit, and over-arched by vines bearing rich clusters of the luscious grape, and they were garnished at their sides by the crimson strawberry. Such at least would have been an appropriate setting for so valued a jewel as the fountain of health, and it is certain that the pursuit of fruit-growing is itself conducive to the possession of that priceless blessing. The physical as well as the moral qualities of our nature are wonderfully promoted by these cares. The vigorous exercise they afford us in the open air, the pleasant excitement, the expectation of the results of the first fruits of our plants, tending, training and cultivating them the while, are all so many elements conducive to the highest enjoyment of full health.

The very character of the food furnished by our orchards should be taken into the account, in making up our estimate of their contributions to the health of a community. From them we procure aliment of the most refined character, and it has been urged that the elements of which they are composed are perfected or refined to the highest degree of organization that is possible to occur in vegetable tissues. Such pabulum is not only gratefully refreshing, but it is satisfying—without being gross, it is nutritious. The antiscorbutic effects of ripe fruits, especially those that are acid, are proverbial, and every fever patient has appreciated the relief derived from those that are acidulous. Then as a preventive of the febrile affections peculiar to a miasmatic region, the free use of acid fruits, or even of good sound vinegar made from grapes or apples, is an established fact in medical practice—of which, by the by, prevention is always the better part.

Apples were esteemed an important and valuable article of food in the days of the Romans, for all school boys have read in the ore rotundo of his own flowing measures, what Virgil has said, so much better than his tame translator:

But in more modern times, beside their wonted use as dessert fruit, or evening feast, or cooked in various modes, a French economist "has invented and practiced with great success a method of making bread with common apples, which is said to be very far superior to potato-bread. After having boiled one-third part of peeled apples, he bruised them while quite warm into two-thirds parts of flour, including the proper quantity of yeast, and kneaded the whole without water, the juice of the fruit being quite sufficient; he put the mass into a vessel in which he allowed it to rise for about twelve hours. By this process he obtained a very excellent bread, full of eyes, and extremely light and palatable."1

Nor is this class of food desirable for man alone. Fruits of all kinds, but particularly what may be called the large fruits, such as are grown in our orchards, may be profitably cultivated for feeding our domestic animals. Sweet apples have been especially recommended for fattening swine, and when fed to cows they increase the flow of milk, or produce fat according to the condition of these animals. Think of the luxury of eating apple-fed pork! Why, even the strict Rabbi might overcome his prejudices against such swine flesh! And then dream of enjoying the luxury of fresh rich milk, yellow cream, and golden butter, from your winter dairy, instead of the sky-blue fluid, and the pallid, or an anotto-tinted, but insipid butter, resulting from the meager supplies of nutriment contained in dry hay and fibrous, woody cornstalks. Now this is not unreasonable nor ridiculous. Orchards have been planted with a succession of sweet apples that will sustain swine in a state of most perfect health, growing and fattening simultaneously from June to November; and the later varieties may be cheaply preserved for feeding stock of all kinds during the winter, when they will be best prepared by steaming, and may be fed with the greatest advantage. Our farmers do not appreciate the benefits of having green food for their animals during the winter season. Being blessed with that royal grain, the Indian corn, they do not realize the importance of the provision of roots which is so great a feature in British husbandry; but they have yet to learn, and they will learn, that for us, and under our conditions of labor and climate, they can do still better, and produce still greater results with a combination of hay or straw, corn meal and apples, all properly prepared by means of steam or hot water. Besides, such orchards may be advantageously planted in many places where the soil is not adapted to the production of grain.—The reader is referred to the chapter on select lists in another part of this volume, in which an attempt will be made to present the reader with the opinions of the best pomologists of various parts of the country.