Titles, rank, antiquity, pedigree and other merciful means of compensating a want of personal merit, may do for men but not for apples. A very glorious pomological reformation broke out in the London Horticultural Society’s gardens at Chiswick, and that Luther of the orchard, Mr. Thompson, has abolished an astonishing number of sinecures, and reformed, if not worthless rotten boroughs, very worthless apples and pears. The Society’s first catalogue issued in 1826. Its third catalogue was published in December of 1842. The experience of the intervening sixteen years led to the total rejection from their list, on the ground of inferiority, or as synonyms, of 600 varieties of apples; 139 of cherries; 200 of gooseberries; 82 of grapes,
80 of strawberries; 150 of peaches; 200 of pears; and 150 of plums. Only twenty-eight peaches are allowed to stand; and only twenty-six strawberries out of the hundreds that were proved. We have no similar society in the United States whose authority would be generally acknowledged. Our only resource is the diffusion of the very best fruits that every neighborhood may have a standard of comparison by the reduction of experience to the form of rules. Although it is difficult to lay down general rules on this subject, there are three which may be mentioned.
1. No fruit should be admitted to the list and none retained upon it, which is decidedly poor.—One would suppose this truism to be superfluous as a rule. But it is only necessary to go out into seedling orchards in any neighborhood to find small, tough, and flavorless apples, which hold their place alongside of orchards filled with choice grafted fruit.
2. No seedling fruit should be added to the list, which is in no respect better than those of the same period of ripening already cultivated.—It is not enough that an apple is nearly or quite as good as another favorite apple. It must be as good in flavor, and better in some of its habits.
3. In testing the merits of fruit, an estimate should be the result of a consideration of all the habits, jointly, of the tree and of the fruit.—It is in the application of this rule that great experience and judgment are required. This will be plain, if one considers how many essential particulars enter into a first-rate fruit beside mere flavor.
Of two fruits equal in flavor, one may surpass the other in tenderness of flesh, in juiciness, in delicacy of skin, and in size. It is rare that any single fruit combines all these excellences, and therefore it is that we retain several varieties, among which such properties are distributed.
There are many fruits which, having good substance and flavor, derive their value from some single peculiarity.
Thus a fruit may be no better than many others, but the tree, blooming very late in spring, is seldom overtaken by prowling and irregular frosts. Some of our best fruits have stingy bearing-trees, or trees of very tender and delicate habit; and we are obliged to tolerate more hardy and prolific trees with fruit somewhat inferior.
A few fruits are retained on the list because they have the singular property of being uninjured by frosts, and others because, though not remarkable for flavor, they are endless keepers, of both which properties the Rawle’s Jennetting is an example.
In fruits designed for market, beauty and abundance must be allowed to supersede mere excellence of flavor. Some very rich fruits are borne in such a parsimonious way that none but amateurs can afford tree-room.