ELTON

Prunus avium

Elton has been freely recommended and widely cultivated in Europe and America for the past century and probably no cherry has given more general satisfaction. The variety is distinguished by the form, color, flesh and flavor of its fruit. The cherries are oblong-heart-shaped—possibly too much drawn out for best appearance and often too oblique; the color, very well shown in the color-plate, is most attractive and makes up for any defect in shape—a dark red mottled with amber, very bright, clear and glossy; the flesh, a little too soft to ship well, is delicate and most pleasing to the palate; the flavor is peculiarly rich and luscious being hardly surpassed by that of any other cherry. The trees may be as readily told as the fruit, by the unusually dark red color of the petioles of the leaves. The branches are stout and bear the crop thickly placed close to the wood and in prodigious quantities. Unfortunately it has a fault which in America, at least, makes it almost unfit for a commercial plantation. Brown-rot, the scourge of the Sweet Cherry, attacks this variety more aggressively than almost any other sort and for this reason, while its merits can hardly be too highly spoken of, Elton must remain for most part a variety for the home orchard. The tree, perfect in most respects, is a little tender to cold. Leroy, the French pomologist, thinks it does better on Mahaleb than on the Mazzard stock.

This is another cherry from Thomas Andrew Knight, the great English pomologist. Knight fruited it first about 1806, the tree coming from a pit of Yellow Spanish, the paternal parent being White Heart. From the first it took a high place in English and continental pomology as it did also in America upon being brought here in 1823. The variety is everywhere known and grown in America and is for sale by many nurserymen. Elton was one of the fruits to receive attention at the first meeting of the American Pomological Society in 1848, and in 1852 was put on the list of recommended fruits where it still remains.

ELTON

Tree large, vigorous, upright-spreading, open-topped, very productive; trunk thick, smooth; branches smooth, reddish-brown covered with ash-gray, with small lenticels; branchlets long, brown partly covered with ash-gray, smooth, with inconspicuous, raised lenticels, intermediate in number and size.

Leaves numerous, five and one-half inches long, two and one-half inches wide, folded upward, long-obovate to elliptical, thin; upper surface dark green, rugose; lower surface light green, thinly pubescent; apex acute, base abrupt; margin doubly serrate, with small, dark glands; petiole two inches long, heavily tinged with red, with a few scattering hairs along the upper surface, with from two to four reniform or globose, reddish-brown glands on the stalk.

Buds large, long, pointed, plump, free, arranged singly as lateral buds and on very short spurs variable in size; leaf-scars prominent; mid-season in blooming; flowers one and one-half inches across, white; borne in twos and threes; pedicels one inch long, slender, glabrous, greenish; calyx-tube green, campanulate, glabrous; calyx-lobes tinged with red, long, broad, acute, serrate, glabrous within and without, reflexed; petals roundish, entire, nearly sessile, with a shallow notch at the apex; filaments about one-half inch long; pistil glabrous, shorter than the stamens.

Fruit matures early; about one inch long, three-fourths inch wide, cordate to conical, somewhat compressed and oblique; cavity rather abrupt, regular; suture indistinct; apex distinctly pointed; color dark red with an amber tinge, faintly mottled; dots numerous, small, light yellow, obscure; stem slender, one and three-fourths inches long; skin thin, tender, separating from the pulp; flesh white with a tinge of yellow, with colorless juice, slightly stringy, tender, very mild, sweet; of good quality; stone free except along the ventral suture, one-half inch long, long-ovate, slightly flattened, with smooth surfaces; somewhat ridged along the ventral suture.