Fruit early, season short; one and three-quarters inches in diameter, roundish, halves equal; cavity of medium depth and width, abrupt, regular; suture a line; apex roundish; color light or greenish-yellow, more or less blushed with red on one side, becoming red at maturity, mottled, with thin bloom; dots numerous, small, whitish, conspicuous only where the skin is blushed; stem slender, five-eighths inch long, glabrous, detaching easily from the fruit; skin thin, tough, adhering; flesh yellowish, very juicy, fibrous, tender, melting next the skin but firmer at the center, sweet except near the pit; good in quality; stone adhering, three-quarters inch by five-eighths inch in size, roundish-oval, flattened, blunt but with a small, sharp tip, rough; ventral suture narrow and rather conspicuously winged; dorsal suture grooved.
HAMMER
HAMMER
Prunus hortulana mineri × Prunus americana
1. Cornell Sta. Bul. 38:79. 1892. 2. Ia. Hort. Soc. Rpt. 275, 448. 1893. 3. Ibid. 334. 1894. 4. Wis. Sta. Bul. 63:24, 39. 1897. 5. Colo. Sta. Bul. 50:36. 1898. 6. Ia. Sta. Bul. 46:274. 1900. 7. Waugh Plum Cult. 150. 1901. 8. Ont. Fr. Gr. Assoc. 144. 1901. 9. Ga. Sta. Bul. 67:274. 1904. 10. S. Dak. Sta. Bul. 93:18. 1905. 11. Ohio Sta. Bul. 162:254, 255. 1905.
Hammer is one of the best native plums. On the Station grounds the trees of this variety make the best orchard plants of any of the native varieties, being large, vigorous, shapely and hardy, falling short only in being a little uncertain in bearing. The fruits are good in quality, handsome in appearance and keep and ship well, but crack badly in unfavorable weather and, according to some writers, are quite subject to brown-rot. Hammer extends the season of the Americana plums considerably, for though a hybrid, it may best be ranked with the Americanas, and is well worth planting in home orchards in New York, where the native plums are too seldom found; in particular, this variety can be recommended for the colder parts of this State where Domestica and Insititia plums are not hardy.
Hammer is one of H. A. Terry’s numerous productions and was grown from a seed of the Miner evidently fertilized by an Americana. The blood of the latter is shown by its hardiness and its broad, Americana-like foliage. The variety first fruited in 1888 and was sent out in 1892.
Tree very large, vigorous, round-topped, widely spreading, hardy at Geneva, an uncertain bearer; trunk and larger limbs shaggy; branches long, rough, brash, thorny, dark ash-gray, with many, large lenticels; branchlets thick, very long, with long internodes, green changing to dull reddish-brown, glabrous, with raised lenticels of medium number and size; leaf-buds small, short, obtuse, plump, free.
Leaves folded upward, oval or slightly obovate, two and one-eighth inches wide, four inches long, thin; upper surface somewhat rugose; lower surface pale green, very lightly pubescent along the midrib; apex taper-pointed, base obtuse, often unsymmetrical, margin coarsely and doubly serrate, eglandular; petiole three-quarters inch long, sparingly pubescent along one side, tinged red, glandless or with from one to four small, globose, greenish-brown glands on the stalk.