WHAT ARE FLOWERS GOOD FOR?
“I have said and written a great deal to my countrymen about the cultivation of flowers, ornamental gardening, and rural embellishments; and I would read them a homily on the subject every day of every remaining year of my life, if I thought it would induce them to make this a matter of particular attention and care. When a man asks me, what is the use of shrubs and flowers, my first impulse is always, to look under his hat and see the length of his ears. I am heartily sick of measuring everything by a standard of mere utility and profit; and as heartily do I pity the man, who can see no good in life but in the pecuniary gain, or in the mere animal indulgences of eating and drinking.”—Colman’s Agricultural Tour.
We protest against the sauciness of the italicized line. Mr. Colman never feels any such impulse; and if he does, he ought to suspect his own ears. Nothing is more preposterous than interflagellations among men on the matter of likes and dislikes. Every man selects his ruling passion, and scoffs at such as do not grow enthusiastic with him. A market gardener rails at a florist for fol-de-rol trifles; and the florist looks at the length of the fellow’s ears who has nothing but turnips, onions, and cabages; while a big Miami farmer, who puts in his five-hundred-acre corn-patch, by way of summer amusement, regards both as small affairs. We find no fault with those who possess a super-ardent enthusiasm for flowers; but when they throw it in other people’s faces, and call them brutes and asses, for not liking pretty flowers, we think the thing has been carried quite far enough. We love good manners along with pretty flowers.
THE BLIGHT IN THE PEAR-TREE.[18]
ITS CAUSE AND A REMEDY FOR IT.
The year 1844 will long be remembered for the extensive ravages of that disease hitherto denominated fire-blight. Beginning at the Atlantic coast, we have heard of it in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and as far as Tennessee; and it is probable that it has been felt in every fruit-growing State in the Union where the season of 1843 was the same as that west of the Alleghany range, namely, cold in spring, dry throughout the summer, and a wet and warm fall, with early and sudden winter.
In Indiana, and Ohio the blight has prevailed to such an extent as to spread dismay among cultivators; destroying entire collections—taking half the trees in large orchards—affecting both young and old trees, whether grafted or seedings in soils of every kind. Many have seen the labor and fond hope of years cut off, in one season, by an invisible destroyer, against which none could guard; because, in the conflicting opinions, none were certain whether the disease was atmospheric, insect or chemical.
I shall now proceed to describe that blight known in the western States (without pretending to identify it with the blight known in New York and New England), to examine the theories proposed for its causation, and to present what now seems to me the true cause.
I. Description.—Although the signs of it, as will appear in the sequel, may be detected long before the leaves put out in the spring, yet its full effects do not begin to appear until May, or if the spring be backward, until June. On the wood of the last year will be found a point where the
bark is either dead and dry, or else at the same point the bark will be puffed, softened, or sappy with thickened sap—these two appearances indicating only different degrees of the same blight. Wherever the bark is dead and dry, the limb will flourish above it, make new wood, ripen its fruit, but perish the ensuing winter. In the other case, as soon as the circulation of the sap becomes active, the point described shows signs of disease, the leaf turns to a darker brown than is natural to its ordinary decay, being nearly black, and the wood perishes.
The disease, at first, blights the terminal portions of the branch; but the affection spreads gradually downward, and sometimes affects the whole trunk. The time from the first appearance of the blight to that in which any affected part dies, is various; sometimes two or three weeks—sometimes a day only; and sometimes, but rarely, even a few hours consummate the disease.
On dissecting the branch, the wood is of a dirty, brownish, yellow color; the sap thick and unctuous, of a sour disagreeable odor, like that of a fermented watermelon, on the tops of potato vines after they have been frosted. In still, moist days, where the blight is extensive in an orchard, this odor fills the air, and is disagreeably perceptible at some distance from the trees.
Sometimes the bark bursts, the sap exudes, and runs down, turning black; and its acridity will destroy vegetation on which it may drop, and shoots, at a distance from the trunk, upon which the rain washes this ichor, will soon perish. When we come to treat of the cause of this disease, it will be important to remember this malignancy of the fluids.
We are carefully to distinguish these appearances, peculiar to what I suppose ought to be called winter-blight, from another and a summer-blight. In this last, the leaf is affected at first in spots; gradually the whole leaf turns russet color and drops. Along the wood may be seen the hardened
trail as of a slimy insect, of an ash color. The wood suffers very little by this summer-blight, and sometimes none. The winter-blight is found on almost all kinds of trees. This summer it has affected the apple, the pear, the peach, the quince, the English hawthorn, privet, black birch, Spanish chestnut, elder, and calycanthus. I enumerate the most of these kinds on the authority of J. H. James, of Urbana, Ohio, and C. W. Elliott, of Cincinnati, having observed it myself only on fruit-trees.
II. Theories.—A variety of theories exist as to the causes of this disease. Some are mere imaginations; some are only ingenious; and some so near to what I suppose to be the truth, that it is hardly possible to imagine how the discovery was not made.
The injury is done in the fall, but is not seen till spring or summer, or even the next fall. Thus, six months or a year intervene between the cause and the effect—a sufficient reason for the difficulty of detecting the origin of the evil.
1. Some have alleged that the rays of the sun, passing through vapors which arise about the trees, concentrate upon the branches, and destroy them by the literal energy of fire. Were this true, the young and tender shoots would suffer first and most; all pear-trees would suffer alike; moist and hot summers would be affected with blight; herbaceous plants would suffer more than ligneous: all of which results are contrary to facts.
2. Some have supposed the soil to contain deleterious substances, or to be wanting in properties necessary to health. But in either case such a cause of the blight appears untrue, when we consider that trees suffer in all soils, rich or poor; that, in the same soil, one tree is blighted and the next tree escapes; that they will flourish for twenty years and then blight; that a tree partially diseased recovers, and thrives for ten or more years without recurrence of blight.
3. It has been attributed to violent and sudden changes
of temperature in the air and of moisture in the earth; to sudden change from sward to high tillage; and the result is stated to be an “overplus” of sap, or a “surfeit.” All these causes occur every year; but the blight does not every year follow them. Changes of temperature, and violent changes in the condition of the soil, may be allied with the true cause. But when only these things exist, no blight follows.
4. Others have attributed the disease to over-stimulation by high manuring, or constant tillage; and it has been said that covering the roots with stones and rubbish, or laying the orchard down to grass, would prevent the evil. Facts warrant no such conclusions. Pear-trees in Gibson County, Indiana, on a clay soil, with blue slaty subsoil, were affected this year more severely than any of which we have heard. Pears in southern parts of this State, on red clay, where the ground had long been neglected, suffered as much as along the rich bottom lands of the Wabash about Vincennes. If there was any difference it was in favor of the richest land. About Mooresville, Morgan County, Indiana, pears have been generally affected, and those in grass lands as much as those in open soils. Aside from these facts, it is well known that pear-trees do not blight in those seasons when they make the rankest growth more than in others. They will thrive rampantly for years, no evil arising from their luxuriance, and then suddenly die of blight.
5. It has been supposed by a few to be the effect of age, the disease beginning on old varieties, and propagated upon new varieties by contagion. Were this the true cause, we should expect it to be most frequently developed in those pear regions where old varieties most abound. But this disease seems to be so little known in England, that Loudon, in his elaborate Encyclopedia of Gardening, does not even mention it. Mr. Manning’s statement will be given further on, to the same purport.
6. Insect theory: The confidence with which eastern cultivators pronounce the cause to be an insect, has in part served to cover up singular discrepancies in the separate statements in respect to the ravages, and even the species of this destroyer. The Genesee Farmer of July, 1843, says, “the cause of the disease was for many years a matter of dispute, and is so still by some persons; but the majority are now fully convinced that it is the work of an insect (scolytus pyri).” T. W. Harris, in his work on insects, speaks of the minuteness and obscure habits of this insect, as “reasons why it has eluded the researches of those persons who disbelieve in its existence as the cause of the blasting of the limbs of the pear-tree.” Dr. Harris evidently supposed, until so late as 1843, that this insect infested only the pear-tree; for he says, “the discovery of the blight-beetle in the limbs of the apple-tree, is a new fact in natural history; but it is easily accounted for, because this tree belongs not only to the same natural group, but also to the same genus as the pear-tree. It is not, therefore, surprising, that both the pear and the apple-tree should occasionally be attacked by the same insect.” [See an article in the Massachusetts Ploughman, summer of 1843, quoted in Genesee Farmer, July, 1843.]
This insect is said to eat through the alburnum, the hard wood, and even a part of the pith, and to destroy the branch by separation of part from part, as a saw would. On these facts, which there is no room to question, we make two remarks.
1st. That the blight thus produced is limited, and probably sectional or local. No account has met my eye which leads me to suppose that any considerable injury has been done by it. Mr. Manning, of Salem, Mass., in the second edition of his “Book of Flowers,” states that he has never “had any trees affected by it”—the blight. Yet his garden and nursery has existed for twenty years, and contained immense numbers of trees.
2d. It is very plain that neither Mr. Lowell, originally, nor Dr. Harris, nor any who describe the blight as caused by the blight-beetle, had any notion of that disease which passes by the same name in the middle and western States. The blight of the scolytus pyri is a mere girdling of the branches—a mechanical separation of parts; and no mention is made of the most striking facts incident to the great blight—the viscid unctuous sap; the bursting of the bark, through which it issues; and its poisonous effects on the young shoots upon which it drops.
We do not doubt the insect-blight; but we are sure that it is not our blight. We feel very confident, also, that this blight, which from its devastations may be called the great blight, has been felt in New England, in connection with the insect-blight, and confounded with it, and the effects of two different causes happening to appear in conjunction, have been attributed to one, and the least influential cause. The writer in Fessenden’s American Gardener (Mr. Lowell?) says of the blight, “it is sometimes so rapid in its progress, that in a few hours from its first appearance the whole tree will appear to be mortally diseased.” This is not insect-blight; for did the blight-beetle eat so suddenly around the whole trunk? Now here is a striking appearance of the great blight, confounded with the minor blight, as we think will appear in the sequel.
This theory has stood in the way of a discovery of the true cause of the great blight; for every cultivator has gone in search of insects; they have been found in great plenty, and in great variety of species, and their harmless presence accused with all the mischief of the season. A writer in the Farmer’s Advocate, Jamestown, N. C., discerned the fire-blight, and traced it to “small, red, pellucid insects, briskly moving from place to place on the branches.” This is not the scolytus pyri of Prof. Peck and Dr. Harris.
Dr. Mosher, of Cincinnati, in a letter published in the Farmer and Gardener for June, 1844, describes a third
insect—“very minute brown-colored aphides, snugly secreted in the axilla of every leaf on several small branches; … most of them were busily engaged with their proboscis inserted through the tender cuticle of this part of the petiole of the leaf, feasting upon the vital juices of the tree. The leaves being thus deprived of the necessary sap for nourishment and elaboration soon perished, … while all that part of the branch and trunk below, dependent upon the elaborated sap of the deadened leaves above, shrunk, turned black, and dried up,” p. 261.
Lindley, in his work on Horticulture, p. 42-46, has detailed experiments illustrating vegetable perspiration, from which we may form an idea of the amount of fluid which these “very-minute brown-colored aphides” would have to drink. A sunflower, three and a half feet high, perspired in a very warm day thirty ounces—nearly two pounds; on another day, twenty ounces. Taking the old rule, “a pint a pound,” nearly a quart of fluid was exhaled by a sunflower in twelve hours; and the vessels were still inflated with a fresh supply drawn from the roots. Admitting that the leaves of a fruit-tree have a less current of sap than a sunflower or a grape-vine, yet in the months of May and June, the amount of sap to be exhausted by these very minute brown aphides, would be so great, that if they drank it so suddenly as to cause a tree to die in a day, they would surely augment in bulk enough to be discovered without a lens. If some one had accounted for the low water in the Mississippi, in the summer of 1843, by saying that buffaloes had drank up all the upper Missouri, and cut off the supply, we should be at a loss which most to pity, the faith of the narrator, or the probable condition of the buffaloes after their feat of imbibition.
But the most curious results follow these feats of suction. The limbs and trunk below shrink and turn black, for want of that elaborated sap extracted by the aphides. And yet every year we perform artificially this very operation in
ringing or decortication of branches, for the purpose of accelerating maturation or improving the fruit. Every year the saw takes off a third, a half, and sometimes more, of a living tree; and the effect is to produce new shoots, not death. Is an operation which can be safely performed by man, deadly when performed by an insect? Dr. Masher did not detect the insects without extreme search, and then only in colonies, on healthy branches. Do whole trees wither in a day by the mere suction of such insects? Had they been supposed to poison the fluids, the theory would be less exceptionable, since poisons in minute quantities may be very malignant.
While we admit a limited mischief of insects, they can never be the cause of the prevalent blight of the middle and western States—such a blight as prevailed in and around Cincinnati in the summer of 1844—nor of that blight which prevailed in 1832. The blight-beetle, after most careful search and dissection, has not been found, nor any trace or passage of it. Dr. Mosher’s insect may be set aside without further remark.
I think that further observation will confirm the following conclusions:
1. Insects are frequently found feeding in various ways upon blighted trees, or on trees which afterward become so.
2. Trees are fatally blighted on which no insects are discerned feeding—neither aphides nor scolytus pyri.
3. Multitudes of trees have such insects on them as are in other cases supposed to cause the blight, without a sign of blight following. This has been the case in our own garden.
III. Cause of the Blight.—The Indiana Horticultural Society, early in the summer of 1844, appointed a committee to collect and investigate facts on the Fire-Blight. While serving on this committee, and inquiring in all the pear-growing regions, we learned that Reuben Reagan, of Putnam County, Ind., was in possession of much information, and
supposed himself to have discovered the cause of this evil; and to him we are indebted for a first suggestion of the cause. Mr. Reagan has for more than twelve years past suspected that this disease originated in the fall previous to the summer on which it declares itself. During the last winter Mr. Reagan predicted the blight, and in his pear-orchards he marked the trees that would suffer, and pointed to the spot which would be the seat of the disease; and his prognostications were strictly verified. After gathering from him all the information which a limited time would allow, we obtained from Aaron Alldredge, of Indianapolis, a nurseryman of great skill, and possessed of careful, cautious habits of observation, much corroborative information; and particularly a tabular account of the blight for nine years past in his nursery and orchard.
The spring of 1843 opened early, but cold and wet, until the last of May. The summer was both dry and cool, and trees made very little growth of new wood. Toward autumn, however, the drought ceased, copious rains saturated the ground, and warm weather started all trees into vigorous, though late, growth. At this time, while we hoped for a long fall and a late winter, on the contrary we were surprised by an early and sudden winter, and with unusual severity at the very beginning. In the West, much corn was ruined and more damaged; and hundreds of bushels of apples were caught on the trees and spoiled—one cultivator alone losing five hundred bushels. Caught in this early winter, what was the condition of fruit-trees? They were making rapid growth, every part in a state of excitement, the wood unripe, the passages of ascent and descent impleted with sap. In this condition, the fluids were suddenly frozen—the growth instantly checked; and the whole tree, from a state of great excitability, was, by one shock, rudely forced into a state of rest. Warm suns, for a time, followed severe nights. What would be the effect of this freezing and sudden thawing upon the fluids and
their vessels? We have been able to find so little written upon vegetable morbid anatomy (probably from the want of access to books), that we can give but an imperfect account of the derangement produced upon the circulating fluids by congelation. We cannot state the specific changes produced by cold upon the ascending sap, or on the cambium, nor upon the elaborated descending current. There is reason to suppose that the two latter only suffer, and probably only the last. That freezing and thawing decompose the coloring matter of plants is known; but what other decomposition, if any, is effected, we know not. The effect of congelation upon the descending sap of pear and apple-trees, is to turn it to a viscid, unctuous state. It assumes a reddish brown color; becomes black by exposure to the air; is poisonous to vegetables even when applied upon the leaf. Whether in some measure this follows all degrees of congelation, or only under certain conditions, we have no means of knowing.
The effect of freezing and thawing upon the tissues and sap-vessels is better known. Congelation is accompanied with expansion; the tender vessels are either burst or lacerated; the excitability of the parts is impaired or destroyed; the air is expelled from the aëriferous cavities, and forced into the passages for fluids; and lastly, the tubes for the conveyance of fluids are obstructing by a thickening of their sides.[19] The fruit-trees, in the fall of 1843, were then brought into a morbid state—the sap thickened and diseased; the passages lacerated, obstructed, and probably, in many instances burst. The sap elaborated, and now passing down in an injured state, would descend slowly, by reason of its inspissation, the torpidity of the parts, and the injured condition of the vessels. The grosser parts, naturally the most sluggish, would tend to lodge and gradually collect at the junction of fruit-spurs, the forks of branches,
or wherever the condition of the sap-vessels favored a lodgment. In some cases the passages are wholly obstructed; in others, only in part.
At length the spring approaches. In early pruning, the cultivator will find, in those trees which will ere long develop blight, that the knife is followed by an unctuous sap, and that the liber is of a greenish yellow color. These will be the first signs, and the practised eye may detect them long before a leaf is put forth.
When the season is advanced sufficiently to excite the tree to action, the sap will, as usual, ascend by the alburnum, which has probably been but little injured; the leaf puts out, and no outward sign of disease appears; nor will it appear until the leaf prepares the downward current. May, June and July, are the months when the growth is most rapid, and when the tree requires the most elaborate sap; and in these months the blight is fully developed. When the descending fluid reaches the point where, in the previous fall, a total obstruction had taken place, it is as effectually stopped as if the branch were girdled. For the sap which had lodged there would, by the winds and sun, be entirely dried. This would not be the case if the sap was good and the vitality of the wood unimpaired; but where the sap and vessels are both diseased, the sun affects the branch on the tree just as it would if severed and lying on the ground. There will, therefore, be found on the tree, branches with spots where the bark is dead and shrunk away below the level of the surrounding bark; and at these points the current downward is wholly stopped. Only the outward part, however, is dead, while the alburnum, or sap-wood, is but partially injured. Through the alburnum, then, the sap from the roots passes up, enters the leaf, and men are astonished to see a branch, seemingly dead in the middle, growing thriftily at its extremity. No insect-theory can account for this case; yet it is perfectly plain and simple when we consider that there are two currents
of sap, one of which may be destroyed, and the other for a limited time go on. The blight, under this aspect, is nothing but ringing or decortication, effected by diseased sap, destroying the parts in which it lodges, and then itself drying up. The branch will grow, fruit will set, and frequently become larger and finer flavored than usual.
But in a second class of cases, the downward current comes to a point where the diseased sap had effected only a partial lodgment. The vitality of the neighboring parts was preserved, and the diseased fluids have been undried by wind or sun, and remain more or less inspissated. The descending current meets and takes up more or less of this diseased matter, according to the particular condition of the sap. Wherever the elaborated sap passes, after touching this diseased region, it will carry its poison along with it down the trunk, and, by the lateral vessels, in toward the pith. We may suppose that a violence which would destroy the health of the outer parts, would, to some degree, rupture the inner sap-vessels. By this, or by some unknown way, the diseased sap is taken into the inner,[20] upward current, and goes into the general circulation. If it be in a diluted state, or in small quantities, languor and decline will be the result; if in large quantities, and concentrated, the branch will die suddenly, and the odor of it will be that of frost-bitten vegetation. All the different degrees of mortality result from the quantity and quality of the diseased sap which is taken into circulation. In conclusion, then, where, in one class of cases, the feculent matter was, in the fall, so virulent as to destroy the parts where it lodged, and was then dried by exposure to wind and sun, the branch above will live, even through the summer, but perish the next winter; and the spring afterward, standing bare amid green branches, the cultivator may suppose the branch to
have blighted that spring, although the cause of death was seated eighteen months before. When, in the other class of cases, the diseased sap is less virulent in the fall, but probably growing worse through the spring, a worse blight ensues, and a more sudden mortality.
We will mention some proofs of the truth of this explanation.
1. The two great blight years throughout the region of Indianapolis, 1832 and 1844, were preceded by a summer and fall such as we have described. In the autumns of both 1831 and 1843, the orchards were overtaken by a sudden freeze while in a fresh-growing state; and in both cases the consequence was excessive destruction the ensuing spring and summer.
2. In consequence of this diagnosis, it has been found practicable to predict the blight six months before its development. The statement of this fact, on paper, may seem a small measure of proof; but it would weigh much with any candid man to be told, by an experienced nurseryman, this is such a fall as will make blight; to be taken, during the winter into the orchard, and told, this tree has been struck at the junction of these branches; that tree is not at all affected; this tree will die entirely the next season; this tree will go first on this side, etc., and to find, afterward, the prediction verified.
3. This leads us to state separately, the fact, that, after such a fall, blighted-trees may be ascertained during the process of late winter or early spring pruning.
In priming before the sap begins to rise freely, no sap should follow the knife in a healthy tree. But in trees which have been affected with blight, a sticky, viscid sap exudes from the wound.
4. Trees which ripen their wood and leaves early, are seldom affected. This ought to elicit careful observation; for, if found true, it will be an important element in determining the value of varieties of the pear in the middle and
western States, where the late and warm autumns render orchards more liable to winter blight than New England orchards. An Orange Bergamot, grafted upon an apple stock, had about run out; it made a small and feeble growth, and cast its leaves in the summer of 1843, long before frost. It escaped the blight entirely; while young trees, and of the same kind (we believe), standing about it, and growing vigorously till the freeze, perished the next season. I have before me a list of more than fifty varieties, growing in the orchard of Aaron Alldredge, of Indianapolis, and their history since 1836; and so far as it can be ascertained, late-growing varieties are the ones, in every case, subject to blight; and of those which have always escaped, the most part are known to ripen leaf and wood early.
5. Wherever artificial causes have either produced or prevented a growth so late as to be overtaken by a freeze, blight has, respectively, been felt or avoided. Out of 200 pear-trees, only four escaped in 1832, in the orchard of Mr. Reagan. These four had, the previous spring, been transplanted, and had made little or no growth during summer or fall. If, however, they had recovered themselves, during the summer, so as to grow in the autumn, transplanting would have had just the other effect; as was the case in a row of pear-trees, transplanted by Mr. Alldredge in 1843. They stood still through the summer and made growth in the fall—were frozen—and in 1844 manifested severe blight. Mr. Alldredge’s orchard affords another instructive fact. Having a row of the St. Michael pear (of which any cultivator might have been proud), standing close by his stable, he was accustomed, in the summer of 1843, to throw out, now and then, manure about them, to force their growth. Under this stimulus they were making excessive growth when winter-struck. Of all his orchard, they suffered, the ensuing summer, the most severely. Of twenty-two trees twelve were affected by the blight, and eight entirely killed. Of seventeen trees of the Bell pear,
eleven suffered, but none were killed. All in this region know the vigorous habit of this tree. Of eight Crassane Bergamot (a late grower), five were affected and two killed. In an orchard of 325 trees of 79 varieties, one in seven blighted, 25 were totally destroyed. Although a minute observation was not made on each tree, yet, as a general fact, those which suffered were trees of a full habit and of a late growth.
6. Mr. White, a nurseryman near Mooresville, Morgan County, Indiana, in an orchard of from 150 to 200 trees, had not a single case of the blight in the year 1844, though all around him its ravages were felt. What were the facts in this case? His orchard is planted on a mound-like piece of ground; is high, of a sandy, gravelly soil: earlier by a week than nursery soils in this county; and in the summer of 1843 his trees grew through the summer; wound up and shed their leaves early in the fall, and during the warm spell made no second growth. The orchard, then, that escaped, was one on such a soil as insured an early growth, so that the winter fell upon ripened wood.
7. It may be objected, that if the blight began in the new and growing wood, it would appear there; whereas the seat of the evil, i. e. the place where the bark is diseased or dead, is lower down and on old wood. Certainly, it should be; for the returning sap falls some ways down before it effects a lodgment.
8. It might be said that spring-frosts might produce this disease. But in the spring of 1834, in the last of May, after the forest-trees were in full leaf; there came frost so severe as to cut every leaf; and to this day the dead tops of the beech attest the power of the frost. But no blight occurred that year in orchard, garden or nursery.
9. It may be asked why forest-trees do not suffer. To some extent they do. But usually the dense shade preserves the moisture of the soil, and favors an equal growth during the spring and summer; so that the excitability of
the tree is spent before autumn, and it is going to rest when frost strikes it.
10. It may be inquired why fall-growing shrubs are not always blighted, since many kinds are invariably caught by the frost in a growing state.
We reply, first, that we are not to say that every tree or shrub suffers from cold in the same manner. We assert it of fruit-trees because it has been observed; it must be asserted of other trees only when ascertained.
We reply more particularly, that a mere frost is not supposed to do the injury. The conditions under which blight is supposed to originate are, a growing state of the tree, a sudden freeze, and sudden thawing.
We would here add, that many things are yet to be ascertained before this theory can be considered as settled; as the actual state of the sap after congelation, ascertained by experiment; the condition of sap-vessels, as ascertained by dissection; whether the congelation, or the thawing, or both, produce the mischief; whether the character of the season following the fall-injury may not materially modify the malignancy of the disease; seasons that are hot, moist and cloudy, propagating the evil; and others dry, and cool, restraining growth and the dsease. It is to be hoped that these points will be carefully investigated, not by conjecture, but by scientific processes.
11. We have heard it objected, that trees grafted in the spring blight in the graft during the summer. If the stock had been affected in the fall, blight would arise from it; if the scion had, in common with the tree from which it was cut, been injured, blight must arise from it.
Blight is frequently caused in the nursery; and the cultivator, who has brought trees from a distance, and with much expense, has scarcely planted them before they show blight and die.
12. It is objected, that while only a single branch is at first affected, the evil is imparted to the whole tree; not
only to the wood of the last year, but to the old branches. We reply, that if a single branch only should be affected by fall-frost, and be so severely affected as to become a repository of much malignant fluid, it might gradually enter the system of the whole tree, through the circulation. This fact shows, why cutting is a partial remedy; every diseased branch removed, removes so much poison; it shows also why cutting from below the seat of the disease (as if to fall below the haunt of a supposed insect), is beneficial. The farther the cut is made from that point where the sap has clogged the passages, the less of it will remain to enter the circulation.
13. Trees of great vigor of constitution, in whose system but little poison exists, may succeed after a while in rejecting the evil, and recover. Where much enters the system, the tree must die; and with a suddenness proportioned to the amount of poison circulated.
14. A rich and dry soil would be likely to promote early growth, and the tree would finish its work in time; but a rich and moist soil, by forcing the growth, would prepare the tree for blight; so that rich soils may prevent or prepare for the blight, and the difference will be the difference of the respective soils in producing an early instead of a late growth.
IV. Remedy.—So long as the blight was believed to be of insect origin, it appeared totally irremediable. If the foregoing reasoning be found correct, it will be plain that the scourge can only be occasional; that it may be in a degree prevented; and to some extent remedied where it exists.
1. We should begin by selecting for pear orchards a warm, light, rich, dry and early soil. This will secure an early growth and ripe wood before winter sets in.
2. So soon as observation has determined what kinds are naturally early growers and early ripeners of wood, such should be selected; as they will be least likely to come under those conditions in which blight occurs.
3. Wherever orchards are already planted; or where a choice in soils cannot be had, the cultivator may know by the last of August or September, whether a fall-growth is to be expected. To prevent it, we suggest immediate root-pruning. This will benefit the tree at any rate, and will probably, by immediately restraining growth, prevent blight.
4. Whenever blight has occurred, we know of no remedy but free and early cutting. In some cases it will remove all diseased matter; in some it will alleviate only; but in bad blight, there is neither in this, nor in anything else that we are aware of, any remedy.
There are two additional subjects, with which we shall close this paper.
1. This blight is not to be confounded with winter-killing. In the winter of either 1837 or 1838, in March a deep snow fell (in the region of Indianapolis) and was immediately followed by brilliant sun. Thousands of nursery-trees perished in consequence, but without putting out leaves, or lingering. It is a familiar fact to orchardists, that severe cold, followed by warm suns, produce a bursting of the bark along the trunk; but usually at the surface of the ground.
2. We call the attention of cultivators to the disease of the peach-tree, called “The Yellows.” We have not spoken of it as the same disease as the blight in the pear and the apple, only because we did not wish to embarrass this subject by too many issues. We will only say, that it is the opinion of the most intelligent cultivators among us, that the yellows are nothing but the development of the blight according to the peculiar habits of the peach-tree. We mention it, that observation may be directed to the facts.
[18] Read before the Indiana Horticultural Society, and communicated by Mr. Beecher to Hovey’s Magazine of Horticulture, December, 1844.
[19] Lindley’s Horticulture, p. 81-82.
[20] See Lindley, p. 32.
PROGRESS OF HORTICULTURE IN INDIANA.[21]
I am induced to send you some remarks upon Horticultural matters, from observing your disposition to make your magazine not merely a record of specific processes, and a register of plants and fruits, but also a chronicle of the yearly progress and condition of the Horticultural art. I should be glad if I could in any degree thus repay the pleasure which others have given me through your numbers, by reciprocal efforts.
The Indiana Horticultural State fair is held annually, on the 4th and 5th of October. Experience has shown that it should be earlier; for, although a better assortment of late fruits, in which, hitherto, we have chiefly excelled, is secured, it is at the expense of small fruits and flowers. The floral exhibition was meagre—the frost having already visited and despoiled our gardens. The chief attraction, as, in an agricultural community, it must long continue to be, was the exhibition of fruit. My recollection of New England fruits, after an absence of more than ten years, is not distinct; but my impression is, that so fine a collection of fruits could scarcely be shown there. The luxuriance of the peach, the plum, the pear and the apple, is such, in this region, as to afford the most perfect possible specimens. The vigor of fruit-trees, in such a soil and under a heaven so congenial, produces fruits which are very large without being coarse-fleshed; the flavor concentrated, and the color very high. It is the constant remark of emigrants from the East, that our apples surpass those to which they have been accustomed. Many fruits which I remember in Connecticut as light-colored, appear with us almost refulgent. All summer and early fall apples were gone before our exhibition; but between seventy and a hundred varieties of winter apples
were exhibited. We never expect to see finer. Our most popular winter apples are: Yellow Bellflower; White Bellflower (called Detroit by the gentlemen of Cincinnati Horticultural Society—but for reasons which are not satisfactory to my mind. What has become of the White Bellflower of Coxe, if this is not it?) Newtown Spitzenberg, exceedingly fine with us; Canfield, Jennetting or Neverfail, escaping spring frosts by late blossoming, very hardy, a great bearer every year; the fruit comes into eating in February, is tender, juicy, mild and sprightly, and preferred with us to the Green Newtown pippin—keeping full as well, bearing better, the pulp much more manageable in the mouth, and the apple has the peculiar property of bearing frosts, and even freezing, without material injury; Green Newtown pippin; Michael Henry pippin (very fine); Pryor’s Red, in flavor resembling the New England Seek-no-further; Golden Russet, the prince of small apples, and resembling a fine butter-pear more nearly than any apple in our orchards—an enormous bearer; some limbs exhibited were clustered with fruit, more like bunches of grapes than apples; Milam, favorite early winter; Rambo, the same. But the apple most universally cultivated is the Vandervere pippin, only a second or third-rate table apple, but having other qualities which quite ravish the hearts of our farmers. The tree is remarkably vigorous and healthy; it almost never fails in a crop; when all others miss, the Vandervere pippin hits; the fruit, which is very large and comely, is a late winter fruit—yet swells so quickly as to be the first and best summer cooking apple. If its flesh (which is coarse) were fine, and its (too sharp) flavor equalled that of the Golden Russet, it would stand without a rival, or near neighbor, at the very head of the list of winter apples. As it is, it is a first-rate tree, bearing a second-rate apple. A hybrid between it and the Golden Russet, or Newtown Spitzenberg, appropriating the virtues of both, would leave little more to be hoped for or wished. The Baldwin has never come up to
its eastern reputation with us; the Rhode Island Greening is eaten for the sake of “auld lang syne;” the Roxbury russet is not yet in bearing—instead of it several false varieties have been presented at our exhibitions. All the classic apples of your orchards are planted here, but are yet on probation.
Nothing can exhibit better the folly of trusting to seedling orchards for fruit, for a main supply, than our experience in this matter. The early settlers could not bring trees from Kentucky, Virginia or Pennsylvania—and, as the next resort, brought and planted seeds of popular apples. A later population found no nurseries to supply the awakening demand for fruit-trees, and resorted also to planting seed. That which, at first, sprang from necessity, has been continued from habit, and from an erroneous opinion that seedling fruit was better than grafted. An immense number of seedling trees are found in our State. Since the Indiana Horticultural Society began to collect specimens of these, more than one hundred and fifty varieties have been sent up for inspection. Our rule is to reject every apple which, the habits of the tree and the quality of its fruit being considered, has a superior or equal already in cultivation. Of all the number presented, not six have vindicated their claims to a name or a place—and not more than three will probably be known ten years hence. While, then, we encourage cultivators to raise seedlings experimentally, it is the clearest folly to reject the established varieties and trust to inferior seedling orchards. From facts which I have collected there has been planted, during the past year, in this State, at least one hundred thousand apple-trees. Every year the demand increases. It is supposed that the next year will surpass this by at least twenty-five thousand.
In connection with apple orchards, our farmers are increasingly zealous in pear cultivation. We are fortunate in having secured to our nurseries not only the most approved old varieties, but the choicest new pears of British,
Continental or American origin. A few years ago to each one hundred apple-trees, our nurseries sold, perhaps, two pear-trees; now they sell at least twenty to a hundred. Very large pear orchards are established, and in some instances are now beginning to bear. I purchased Williams’s Bon Chrétien in our market last fall for seventy-five cents the bushel. This pear, with the St. Michael’s, Beurré Diel, Beurré d’Aremberg, Passe Colmar, Duchess d’Angoulême, Seckel, and Marie Louise, are the most widely diffused, and all of them regularly at our exhibitions. Every year enables us to test other varieties. The Passe Colmar and Beurré d’Aremberg have done exceedingly well—a branch of the latter, about eighteen inches in length, was exhibited at our Fair, bearing over twenty pears, none of which were smaller than a turkey’s egg. The demand for pear-trees, this year, has been such that our nurseries have not been able to answer it—and they are swept almost entirely clean. I may as well mention here that, beside many more neighborhood nurseries, there are in this State eighteen which are large and skillfully conducted.
The extraordinary cheapness of trees favors their general cultivation. Apple-trees, not under ten feet high, and finely grown, sell at ten, and pears at twenty cents; and in some nurseries, apples may be had at six cents. This price, it should be recollected, is in a community where corn brings from twelve to twenty cents only, a bushel; wheat sells from forty-five to fifty; hay at five dollars the ton. During the season of 1843-’44, apples of the finest sorts (Jennetting, green Newtown pippin, etc.), sold at my door, as late as April, for twenty-five cents a bushel—and dull at that. This winter they command thirty-seven cents. Attention is increasingly turned to the cultivation of apples for exportation. Our inland orchards will soon find an outlet, both to the Ohio River by railroad, and the Lakes by canal. The effects of such a deluge of fruit is worthy of some speculation. It will diminish the price but increase the profit of
fruit. An analogous case is seen in the penny-postage system of England. Fruit will become more generally and largely an article, not of luxury, but of daily and ordinary diet. It will find its way down to the poorest table—and the quantity consumed will make up in profit to the dealer, what is lost in lessening its price. A few years and the apple crop will be a matter of reckoning by farmers and speculators, just as is now, the potato crop, the wheat crop, the pork, etc. Nor will it create a home market alone. By care it may be exported with such facility, that the world will receive it as a part of its diet. It will, in this respect, follow the history of grains and edible roots, and from a local and limited use, the apple and the pear will become articles of universal demand. The reasons of such an opinion are few and simple. It is a fruit always palatable—and as such, will be welcome to mankind whatever their tastes, if it can be brought within their reach. The western States will, before many years, be forested with orchards. The fruit bears exportation kindly. Thus there will be a supply; a possibility of distributing it by commerce, to meet a taste already existing. These views may seem fanciful—may prove so; but they are analogical. Nor, if I inherit my three score years and ten, do I expect to die, until the apple crop of the United States shall surpass the potato crop in value, both for man and beast. It has the double quality of palatableness, raw or cooked—it is a permanent crop, not requiring annual planting—and it produces more bushels to the acre than corn, wheat, or, on an average, than potatoes. The calculations may be made, allowing an average of fifteen bushels to a tree. The same reasoning is true of the pear; it and the apple, are to hold a place yet, as universal eatables—a fruit-grain, not known in their past history. If not another tree should be set in this county (Marion County), in ten years the annual crop of apples will be 200,000 bushels. But Wayne County has double our number of trees; suppose, however, the ninety
counties of Indiana to have only 25 trees to a quarter section of land, i. e. to each 160 acres, the crop, of fifteen bushels a tree, would be nearly two millions.
The past year has greatly increased the cultivation of small fruits in the State. Strawberries are found in almost every garden, and of select sorts. None among them all is more popular—or more deservedly so—than Hovey’s Seedling. We have a native white strawberry, removed from our meadows to our gardens, which produces fruit of superior fragrance and flavor. The crop is not large—but continues gradually ripening for many weeks. The blackberry is introduced to the garden among us. The fruit sells at our market for from three to five cents—profit is not therefore the motive for cultivating it, but improvement. I have a white variety. “What color is a black-berry when it is green?” We used to say red, but now we have ripe black-berries which are white, and green black-berries which are red. Assorted gooseberries and the new raspberries, Franconia and Fastolff are finding their way into our gardens. The Antwerps we have long had in abundance. If next spring I can produce rhubarb weighing two pounds to the stalk, shall I have surpassed you? I have a seedling which last year, without good cultivation, produced petioles weighing from eighteen to twenty ounces. My wrist is not very delicate, and yet it is much smaller in girth than they were.
In no department is there more decided advance among our citizens than in floriculture. In all our rising towns, yards and gardens are to be found choicely stocked. All hardy bulbs are now sought after. Ornamental shrubs are taken from our forests, or imported from abroad, in great variety. Altheas, rose acacia, jasmin, calycanthus, snowberry, snowball, sumach, syringas, spicewood, shepherdia, dogwood, redwood, and other hardy shrubs abound. The rose is an especial favorite. The Bengal, Tea and Noisettes bear our winters in the open garden with but slight protection. The Bourbon and Remontantes will, however, drive
out all old and ordinary varieties. The gardens of this town would afford about sixty varieties of roses, which would be reckoned first rate in Boston or Philadelphia.
While New England suffered under a season of drought, on this side of the mountains the season was uncommonly fine—scarcely a week elapsed without copious showers, and gardens remained moist the whole season. Fruits ripened from two to three weeks earlier than usual. In consequence of this, winter fruits are rapidly decaying. To-day is Christmas, the weather is spring-like—no snow—the thermometer this morning, forty degrees. My Noisettes retain their terminal leaves green; and in the southward-looking dells of the woods, grasses and herbs are yet of a vivid green. Birds are still here—three this morning were singing on the trees in my yard. There are some curious facts in the early history of horticulture in this region, which I meant to have included in this communication; but insensibly I have, already, prolonged it beyond, I fear, a convenient space for your magazine. I yield it to you for cutting, carving, suppressing, or whatever other operation will fit it for your purpose.
[21] A letter published in Hovey’s Magazine of Horticulture, February, 1845.
BROWNE’S AMERICAN POULTRY YARD.[22]
Let no man turn up his contemptuous nose at this Treatise until he has traced the manifold relations of eggs and capons to cake, company, and civilization. Banish the barnyard, and the universal aldermanhood would shrink and grow lean; cup-cakes and sponge-cakes, omelets, whips and legionary confections, would become mere dreams of remembrance.
Every friend of the trencher, every notable housewife,
complacently glorious amidst stacks of praised and devoured cake, has an interest in this book. There is, therefore, a certain interest which every civilized community should take in the progress of the great art of fowl-breeding.
There are striking analogies, also, which should be noticed by every comparative psychologist. The doctrine of transmigration has some of its strongest proofs in the Kingdom of Poultry. The glowing comb, the haughty carriage, the resplendent tail-feathers, and ostentatious crowing of the lord of the barn-yard creation, reveals to the sagacious reasoner either the origin or destination of many other “lords of creation.”
Nor can one mistake the resemblances traceable in the gentler sex of hens. Some there are industrious only in scratching and cackling, but nervous, gadding, restless; never content at home, never so happy as when at work in a new-made garden, and sagacious always of the very spots which are most precious in the owner’s eyes. Are these the types of human busybodies, or are these resemblances only accidental? Others are discreet, domestic, prolific, useful and happy hens, human and feathered. Many there are neglectful. Some fowls are laborious egg-layers, but poor setters; others disdain the pains of laying, but are quite willing of a leisure summer’s month to set awhile upon other eggs.
In the management, too, of their families, can any candid man resist the evidence of resemblances and affiliations between hens and humanity? Here a hen walks forth from her nest with but a single chick; the whole farm is too small for her anxious spirit. On this one precious pledge she bestows more clucking, more research and scratching, than a discreet old matron of many broods would upon five annual generations! And after all, what is the little brat good for—lazy and worked for, but never taught to work, it lives a few months petted and spoiled—dies of neglect, or is anatomized by some science-loving
weasel! Other, and unnatural hens there are, to whom the vast brood of peeping, chirping chicks is but a burden. They seem to have thoughts of their own, and are perplexed and interrupted by the cares needful for their household. Could we pry into the secrets of this race, doubtless there would be found to be literary mothers, too busy for the general good to have much time for special duties. We cannot stop now to draw out these analogies, so well worthy the study of mental philosophers; else we should exhibit the distinctions of rank, race, and culture, in this interesting kingdom. There are nice questions of pedigree, there are points in relation to feathers and top-knots, combs and spurs, tail-feathers and wing-feathers, neck-hackles and toes, which are worthy the attention of any Calhoun of the barn-yard. The more savory but homely considerations of fattening, slaying, dressing, selling, stuffing, cooking, carving, distributing, eating and digestion, must be left to our readers’ own reflections. Meanwhile, any man that owns a hen, or has a coop in prospect, may buy this book, certain of his money’s worth. Book-farming and book-fowling are better than nothing.
[22] Published by A. O. Moore & Co., New York. Price $1 00.
REFLECTIONS ON THE CLOSE OF THE YEAR.[23]
The labor of another year has passed beyond our reach. We can alter nothing, and the past is of no use to us except as a lesson for the future. The soil that the plow ripped up, in the spring, has yielded its harvest, its work is closed, its fruits garnered. The tree whose boughs grew green when the singing of birds proclaimed that spring was come, has ripened its fruit, perfected its growth, its store is gathered, and its leaves are lying beneath it, and slowly
returning to the earth from which they sprang. Only here and there, on a bright morning, do we see one of those birds which, a few months ago, builded their nest, watched their young, or taught the nestlings how to fly—young and old, with their grace of motion and sweet notes, are gone to a fairer clime. These changes one cannot help noticing; and no meditative mind can avoid many thoughts which flow out of them. Where are the harvests garnered which grew in the soil of the human heart? What thoughts and generous purposes have been ripened and stored up like fruit, and what ones have fallen and perished like leaves? Our vernal orchards never stood, within our remembrance, in such a glory of bloom; yet when the fruit should have set, most of the blossoms proved vain. And how many good purposes and fair resolutions have so perished within us! Have we, like the trees which we love and care for, made growth, of root and branch? Everything in nature has gradually assumed a preparation for winter. Those frosts and that ice which would have sent such mischief upon the leaves of summer, now lie, without harm, upon orchard and garden. Are we ripe and ready, too, for such a winter as adversity brings upon men?
[23] A.D. 1845.
THE END.
Transcriber’s Note:
This book contains many words that use alternate spellings, are misspelled, made-up, or obsolete. All were retained as printed.
Footnotes were numbered in sequence and moved to the end of the section in which the anchor occurs.
Obvious printing errors were corrected, such as duplicate words, words in the wrong order, upside down, backwards, partially printed or unprinted letters and punctuation. Inconsistent punctuation (such as commas contained inside close parentheses) was corrected.
Inconsistencies noted, but not changed:
Use of capitals and lower case letters for botanical names
Use of italics for “i. e.”
[Feb. 29th, 1845], for date of letter from A. J. Downing
Period not used to separate dollars from cents in footnote [22]
Denominator missing in fraction: [“rain 6-1/ , inches;”]