CALIFORNIA ADVANCE

Prunus avium

California Advance is a Sweet Cherry, one of the "Hearts" of common parlance, distinguished and worth growing only because it is extra early, though when fully ripe it is of very good quality. It is usually described as a cherry of "large size" but on the grounds of this Station the cherries run small, as they are occasionally reported elsewhere to do, suggesting that the variety requires good care and a choice cherry soil for a finely finished product. On these grounds the variety seems to be preeminently free from fungus diseases but the robin and other birds take greater toll from it than from almost any other cherry, beginning their harvest long before the fruit is fit for human fare. California Advance might well be planted in a small way for a local market in New York, or a tree or two for home use, but it has no place in large numbers in this State.

California Advance came from a seed of Early Purple sown by W. H. Chapman of Napa, California, the seedling being saved because the cherries were larger and ripened earlier than those of its parent. It has sometimes been confused with the Chapman cherry, of somewhat similar characteristics, which also originated in Napa, but the two are quite distinct.

Tree large, vigorous, upright-spreading, dense, productive; trunk and branches stout, smooth; branchlets of medium thickness, brownish-bronze partly covered with ash-gray, glabrous; leaves numerous, five and one-half inches long, two and one-half inches wide, long-obovate to elliptical, thin, medium green, slightly rugose; margin serrate, glandular; petiole nearly two inches long, slender, tinged with red, pubescent along the upper side and with a shallow groove, with from two to four large, reniform, reddish glands, usually on the stalk; buds large, obtuse or pointed, plump, arranged singly as lateral buds or in clusters of variable size on numerous short spurs; leaf-scars prominent; season of bloom early; flowers one and one-eighth inches across; pistil equal to the stamens in length.

Fruit ripens very early, season averaging eleven days; about three-fourths inch in diameter, roundish-cordate, compressed; color purplish-black; stem of medium thickness, often one and one-half inches long, adherent to the fruit; skin thin, tender, separates from the pulp; flesh reddish, with dark red juice, meaty, tender, mild, sweet; of very good quality; stone semi-clinging, three-eighths inch by eleven-thirty-seconds inch in size, roundish-oval, compressed, oblique, with smooth surfaces.