The Apple-Tree Part 4

It is customary to speak of two cla.s.ses or races of dwarf apple-trees, the Paradise and the Doucin. The former kinds are the smaller, the trees on their own roots sometimes reaching not more than four feet in height at full bearing maturity. On the Paradise stocks, the grafted apple-tree is very small; it is a true dwarf. The Doucin trees are by nature larger, and apples grafted on them make semi-dwarf trees, midway in stature between the real dwarfs and the common standard or "free" apple-trees.

The case is not so simple, however, as this brief statement would make it appear. There are many kinds of Paradise stock, as also of Doucin.

If one were to bring together living plants of all the kinds of natural dwarfs and semi-dwarfs that could be found in nurseries and growing collections, one would undoubtedly find a nearly complete series, so far as stature of tree is concerned, from the very dwarf to the full-sized standard tree. To say that a person is growing grafted dwarf apple-trees does not signify how large the trees may be expected to grow, for one may not know the particular kind of stocks on which the variety is grafted. In fact, it is considered even in Europe, where dwarf apples are chiefly grown, that the proper identification of dwarf stocks is still a subject for careful investigation.

When the Paradise dwarfs first came into existence is undetermined.

They appear to have been known in the Middle Ages. The many races, as the Dutch, French, Metz, Nonsuch, Broad-leaved, indicate an ancient origin. We cannot be too certain what apple-trees were meant in the early references to the Paradise apple. The fruits of the present natural Paradise apple-trees are not sufficiently attractive to justify us in considering them the "Tree of Paradise" or apple of the Garden of Eden, which circ.u.mstance is supposed by some to account for the name. "Paradise" was originally a park or pleasure ground, applied also to the Garden of Eden, and later to horticultural gardens. John Parkinson wrote his great treatise on horticulture, 1629, under the t.i.tle, "Paradisi in Sole Paradisus terrestris; or, a Choice Garden of all Sorts of Rarest Flowers, etc." Now we use the word for gardens of bliss.

The word Doucin, from the Italian, is supposed originally to have designated apples of sweet flavor, but it now applies technically to a cla.s.s or race of semi-dwarf apple-trees.

For the purpose of this little book, however, the interest in the dwarf apple centers not so much in the origin of the stock as in the natural-history of the tree itself and the good skill of hand and heart that one may expend in the growing of it. If one would come close to a plant, knowing it intimately in every season, causing it to respond to sympathetic treatment through a series of years, then a garden collection of dwarf apples may satisfy the desire. It is too bad that we do not have time to cultivate the dwarfs often in the yards and gardens of North America. We are more familiar with the raising of dwarf pears (which are grafted on quince stocks since there is no similar race of natural dwarf pear-tree), but we do not give them the thumb-and-finger care that is demanded for the choicest results. The abundance of apples in the market should only stimulate the desire of the connoisseur to have trees and fruits that are wholly personal. The market produce can never gratify the affections.

X

WHENCE COMES THE APPLE-TREE?

If the dwarf apple-tree goes back to the Middle Ages and perhaps farther, then whence comes the apple originally? No one can surely answer. Carbonized apples are found in the remains of the prehistoric lake dwellings of Switzerland. When recorded history begins, apples were well known and widely distributed. The apple-tree is wild in many parts of Europe, but it is difficult to determine whether, in a given region, it is indigenous or has run wild from cultivation. Wild apple-trees are common in North America, but no one supposes that the orchard apple is native here.

Expert opinion generally considers that the apple is native in the region of the Caspian Sea and probably in southeastern Europe. Perhaps it had spread westward before the Aryan migrations. It had also probably spread eastward, but it is not a cultivated fruit in China and j.a.pan except apparently as introduced in recent time. The apple is essentially a fruit of central and northern Europe, and of European migration and settlement.

It is a fertile retrospect to conceive of the apple as an attendant of the course of Western civilization. Without voice and leaving no record, it has nevertheless followed man in his wanderings, encouraged his attainment of permanent habitations, succored him in his emergencies. What the apple has contributed to sustenance can never be known, but we are aware that it yields its fruit abundantly, that it thrives in widely unlike regions and conditions, that the tree has the ruggedness to endure severe climates and to provide food that can be stored and transported. In the ages it must have stood guard at many a rude camp and fireside. It would be fascinating to know what the apple-tree has witnessed.

These early apples must have been very crude fruits measured by the produce of the present day. But other food was crude and man was crude. The North American Indians found the apple to be worth their effort; remains of some of the so-called Indian orchards of the Five Nations in New York persisted until the present generation. These were seedling apple-trees, grown from the stocks introduced by the white man. The French missionaries are said to have carried the apple far into the interior, and early settlers took seeds with them. The legends and records of Johnny Appleseed, sowing the seeds as he went, are still familiar. My father, like other pioneers, took seeds from the old New England trees into the wilderness of the West; the resulting trees were top-grafted, some of them as late as my time; I can remember the apples some of these seedling trees bore, the like of which I have never seen again, probably poor apples if we had them in this day but to a boy at the edge of the forest the very essence of goodness. As early as 1639, apples had been picked from trees planted on Governor's Island in Boston harbor. Governor John Endicott of Ma.s.sachusetts Colony had an apple-tree nursery in the early day; in 1644 he says that five hundred of his trees were destroyed by fire.

So the apple came early to be a standby on the new continent.

The apples of the colonists were not all for eating, but for drinking.

The b.u.t.ts and barrels of cider put in cellars in the early times seem to us most surprising. Herein are suggestions of old social customs that might lead us into interesting historical excursions. The oldest book I possess on the apple is "Vinetum Britannic.u.m: or, a Treatise of Cider," published in London in 1676; it treats also of other beverages made from fruits and of "the newly-invented ingenio or mill, for the more expeditious and better making of cider." The gradual change in customs, whereby the eating of the apple (rather than the drinking of it) has come to be paramount, is a significant development; the use of apple-juice may now proceed on another basis, on the principle of preservation and pasteurization rather than of fermentation.

It is the custom to call the apple _Pyrus Malus_. This is the name given by the great Linnaeus, with whom the modern accurate naming of plants and animals begins. The nomenclature of plants starts with his "Species Plantarum," 1753. Pyrus is the genus or group comprising the pears and apples, and Linnaeus included the quince; Malus is Latin for the apple-tree. Together the names represent genus and species,--the malus Pyrus.

These statements are easy enough to make, but it is impossible to demonstrate whether the common pomological apples are derived from one original species or from two or more. Many technical botanical names have been given in the group, but we need not pause with them here. It is enough for our purpose to know that the natural-history of the apple, as of anything else that runs to time immemorial, pa.s.ses at the end into obscurity. We seem never to reach the ultimate origins or to find an end to our quests.

There are other apples than the common pomological orchard types.

There are the crabs. In general usage, the word "crab" designates an apple that is small, sour and crabbed. Such apples are wildings or seedlings. They are merely depreciated forms of _Pyrus Malus_, and probably much like the first apples known to man. What are known to horticulturists as crab-apples, however, are other species of Pyrus, of different character and origin. We need not pause with the discussion of them, except to say that the commonest kinds are the little long-stemmed fruits of _Pyrus baccata_ (berry Pyrus), native in eastern Europe and Siberia. These are the "Siberian crabs." The leaves and twigs are smooth, and the calyx falls away from the fruit, leaving a bare blossom end. These little hard handsome fruits are used in the making of conserves. Certain larger crab-apples, in which the blossom end is not clean or bare, as the Transcendent and Hyslop, are probably hybrids between the true crabs and the common apple; this cla.s.s provides the main crab-apples of the markets.

When the settlers came to the country west and south of New England, they found another kind of crab-apples in the woods, truly native. The fruits were hard and sour, but they could be buried to ripen. The trees are much like a thorn-apple,--low, spreading, twiggy, th.o.r.n.y; but the pink-white large fragrant flowers are very different. The wild crab-apple was called _Pyrus coronaria_ by Linnaeus, the "garland Pyrus." On the prairies is another species, _Pyrus ioensis_; it yields a charming double-flowered form, "Bechtel's crab." In the South are other species. In fact, _P. coronaria_ itself may not be a single species. These wild crabs run into many forms. In the northern Mississippi and prairie country are native apples good enough to be introduced into cultivation under varietal names. These are _Pyrus Soulardii_, a species bearing the name of J. G. Soulard, Illinois horticulturist. These crab-apples are probably natural hybrids between _Pyrus Malus_ and the prairie crab, _P. ioensis_. Had there been no European apple to be introduced by colonists, it is probable that improved forms would have been evolved from the native species. In that event, North American pomology would have had a very different character.

There remains a very different cla.s.s of apple-trees, grown only for ornament and usually known as "flowering apples." They are mostly native in China and j.a.pan. They are small trees, or even almost bushes, with profuse handsome flowers and some of them with very ornamental little fruits. They have come to this country largely from j.a.pan where they are grown for decoration, as the cherries of j.a.pan are grown not for fruit but for their flowers, being of very different species from the cherries of Europe and America. The common apple itself yields varieties grown only for ornament, as one with variegated leaves, one with double flowers, and one with drooping branches. These are known mostly in Europe; but these forms do not compare in interest with the handsome species of the Far East.

All these differing species of the apple-tree multiply the interest and hold the attention in many countries. They make the apple-tree group one of the most widespread and adaptable of temperate-region trees. It will be seen that there are three families of them,--the Eurasian family, from which come the pomological apples; the North American family, which has yielded little cultivated material; the East-Asian family, abundant in highly ornamental kinds. There are no apple-trees native in the southern hemisphere.

The apple-tree, taken in its general sense, has a broad meaning. What may be accomplished by breeding and hybridizing is beyond imagination.

XI

THE VARIETIES OF APPLE

Every seedling of the pomological apples is a new variety. Some of these seedlings are so good that they are named and introduced into cultivation. They are grafted on other stocks, and become part of the great inheritance of desirable apples.

It is to be expected that in the long processes of time in many countries the number of varieties will acc.u.mulate to high numbers. No one knows all the kinds that have been named and propagated, but they run into many thousands. No one book contains them all, although some of the manuals are voluminous. Varieties drop out of existence, being no longer propagated; new varieties come in.

So the lists of varieties gradually change. A list of one hundred years ago would contain many names strange to us. Thus, of the sixty apples in "A Select List of Fruit-Trees" by Bernard M'Mahon, published in "The American Gardener's Calendar," in 1806, not more than six or eight would be understandable to a planter of the present day.

With the standardizing of practices in the commercial growing of fruits, the tendency is to reduce the number of varieties to small proportions; it is these varieties that the nurserymen propagate.

Here and there over the country are still trees of the extra-quality but uncommercial varieties known to a former generation. If the amateur now wants to grow these varieties, he must find cions as best he can by patient correspondence, and graft them on his own trees.

When I planted an orchard twenty-five years ago, I found cions of Jefferis here, of Dyer there, of Mother, Swaar and Chenango in other places.

In the enlarged edition of Downing's "Fruits and Fruit-Trees of America," 1872, are descriptions of 1856 varieties, of which 1099 are American in origin, 585 foreign, 172 of origin unknown. The lists are not only much smaller in these days, but the foreign element tends to pa.s.s out. With the introduction of the Russian apples for the cold North in the latter part of the past century, the importation of foreign varieties practically ceased, as it ceased also for the pears at an earlier date with the introductions of Manning, Wilder and others. The epoch of the "testing" of varieties pa.s.sed away, and with it has gone an appreciative att.i.tude toward fruits and even toward life that const.i.tutes a sad lack in our day.

About thirty years ago (1892) I compiled an inventory of all the varieties of apple-trees sold in North America, as listed in the ninety-five nurserymen's catalogues that came to my hand. The inventory contains 878 varieties. In the present year, however, perhaps not more than 100 varieties are handled by nurserymen in Eastern United States.

Probably the dealer and grower would consider even this small number much too great. The highly developed standardized business of the present day, aiming at quant.i.ty-production, naturally reduces the variety of products, whether in manufacturing or horticulture, and aims at uniformity. Under the influence of this leadership, we are losing many of the old products, varieties of apples among the rest.

Why do we need so many kinds of apples? Because there are so many folks. A person has a right to gratify his legitimate tastes. If he wants twenty or forty kinds of apples for his personal use, running from Early Harvest to Roxbury Russet, he should be accorded the privilege. Some place should be provided where he may obtain trees or cions. There is merit in variety itself. It provides more points of contact with life, and leads away from uniformity and monotony.

The leading varieties of apples, that have become dominant over wide regions, have been great benefactors to man. The original tree should be carefully preserved till the last, by historical or other societies; and then a monument should be placed at the spot. Monuments have been erected to the Baldwin, Northern Spy, McIntosh and other apples. We should never lose our touch with the origins of men, events, notable achievements, outstanding products of nature.

I fear it is now a habit with many fruit-growers to minimize the interest in varieties, placing the emphasis on tillage, spraying and management of plantations. Yet, the only reason why we expend all the labor is that we may grow a given kind of apple; the variety is the final purpose.

In this little book we cannot discuss varieties at length. There are special books on this fascinating subject. But we may have before us a compiled list by way of interesting suggestion. The list is sorted from the Catalogue of Fruits of the American Pomological Society, 1901, the last year in which the catalogue was published with quality rated on a scale of 10. On such a scale, Ben Davis ranks 4-5; Baldwin, 5-6; Wealthy and York Imperial, 6-7; Rhode Island Greening, 7-8; Northern Spy, 8-9; Yellow Newtown (Albermarle Pippin) 9-10. There is no apple in the entire catalogue of 324 kinds (not including crab-apples) rated wholly lower than 4 in quality except one alone and this is grown for cider only, although several varieties of minor importance bear the marks 3-4. Only two varieties are rated exclusively 10, the Garden Royal, a Ma.s.sachusetts summer-fall apple, little known to planters, and the familiar Esopus Spitzenberg. Of course judgments differ widely in these matters, as there are no inflexible criteria for the scoring of quality; yet this extensive list is probably our soundest approach to the subject.

The varieties in the catalogue of the American Pomological Society are starred if "known to succeed in a given district" and double-starred "if highly successful." North America is thrown into nineteen districts for the purposes of this catalogue (which comprises other fruits besides apples). For our purposes we may combine them into six more or less indefinite great regions: n. e., the northeastern part of the country, Delaware and Pennsylvania to eastern Canada; s. e., the parts south of this area and mostly east of the Mississippi; n. c., north central, from Kansas and Missouri north; s. w., Texas to Arizona; mt., the mountain states of the Rockies west to the Sierras, including of course much high plains country; pac., the Pacific slope, Washington to southern California.

Of the varieties starred and double-starred in these various geographical regions there are 107; these are listed herewith. Of course the intervening twenty years might change the rating of some of these apples, other varieties have come to the front, and certain ones of these older worthies are receding still further into the background; but the exhibit is suggestive none the less.

Arkansas--n.e., s.e., n.c., s.w., mt.

Bailey (Sweet)--n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.

Baker--n.e.

Baldwin--n.e., s.e., n.c., mt., s.w., pac.

Beach--s.e.

Belle Bonne--n.e.

Ben Davis--n.e., s.e., n.c., s.w., mt., pac.

Bietigheimer--n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.

Bledsoe--s.e.

Blenheim--n.e., n.c.

Blue Pearmain--n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.

Bough, Sweet--n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.

Bryan--s.e., mt.

Buckingham--n.e., s.e., n.c.

Canada Reinette--n.e., n.c., mt.

Clayton--n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.

Clyde--n.e., n.c.