When grown on strong soils and in some climates, Columbia is possibly a plum of value and sometimes of superiority, but in New York in the average plantation it falls far short of other fruits of its type—that of the Reine Claude. The trees are productive and the fruit large and handsome but not of highest quality and moreover drops badly and is very susceptible to the brown-rot. Columbia originated early in the second quarter of the Nineteenth Century with L. V. Lawrence of Hudson, New York, from seed of Reine Claude.
Tree large, medium in vigor, upright-spreading, open-topped, productive; trunk stocky, rough; branches thick; branchlets pubescent; leaves folded upward, one and seven-eighths inches wide, four and one-quarter inches long, oval, thick, leathery; upper surface rugose; margin serrate or crenate, with small, dark glands; petiole thick, tinged red, pubescent, with from one to three globose glands.
Fruit mid-season; when well grown nearly one and one-half inches in diameter, roundish-oval, the smaller specimens rather ovate, dark purplish-red, overspread with thick bloom; stem surrounded by a fleshy ring at the cavity; skin tender, sour; flesh golden-yellow, dry, firm, sweet, mild; of good quality; stone semi-free or free, seven-eighths inch by three-quarters inch in size, roundish-oval, flattened; ventral suture prominent; dorsal suture widely and deeply grooved.
COMPASS
Prunus besseyi × Prunus hortulana mineri
1. Northwestern Agr. 348. 1895. 2. Vt. Sta. Bul. 67:10. 1898. 3. Ia. Sta. Bul. 46:266. 1900. 4. Budd-Hansen Am. Hort. Man. 294. 1903. 5. S. Dak. Sta. Bul. 93:13. 1905.
Compass Cherry 2. Heideman Sand Cherry.
In 1891 H. Knudson of Springfield, Minnesota, pollinated the Sand Cherry with pollen from the Danish Morello cherry and the Miner plum. The seed of the resulting cross, beyond question that of the Sand Cherry and the plum, was planted on August seventh of the same year and, in 1894 produced fruit for the first time. In 1893 C. W. H. Heideman of New Ulm, Minnesota, secured a cion from this tree and another the following year. In 1895 Heideman introduced as his own, under the name of Heideman Sand Cherry, a hybrid between the Sand Cherry and a plum. In the controversy which followed it developed that the two hybrids were identical and that Knudson was the real originator. Subsequently C. W. Sampson of Eureka, Minnesota, introduced Knudson’s plum under the name Compass. The variety is of interest to plant-breeders and may have some commercial value in the Northwest but is worthless for its fruit in New York.