HAWKEYE
HAWKEYE
Prunus americana
1. Ia. Hort. Soc. Rpt. 287. 1887. 2. U. S. D. A. Rpt. 441. 1889. 3. Ia. Hort. Soc. Rpt. 55, 85. 1890. 4. Cornell Sta. Bul. 38:38, 86. 1892. 5. Wis. Sta. Bul. 63:40, 41. 1897. 6. Am. Pom. Soc. Cat. 24. 1897. 7. Colo. Sta. Bul. 50:37. 1898. 8. Ia. Sta. Bul. 46:274. 1900. 9. Waugh Plum Cult. 151. 1901. 10. Ont. Fr. Gr. Assoc. 144. 1901. 11. Wis. Sta. Bul. 87:13. 1901. 12. S. Dak. Sta. Bul. 93:19. 1905. 13. Ohio Sta. Bul. 162:254, 255. 1905.
This variety is a very satisfactory and widely planted Americana. It is typical of its species; and its foliage, fruit and pit in the color-plate herewith presented all represent Prunus americana very well. The fruit of Hawkeye is more satisfactory than the tree, being both attractive in appearance and pleasant to eat either out of hand or cooked; the chief fault of the fruit is that it seems to be easily infected with brown-rot. The trees are crooked in body and quite too straggling and at the same time too dense in growth to make good orchard plants. It requires very careful pruning and training to keep the trees at all manageable. In some of the references given above it is stated that Hawkeye on its own roots is a better tree than otherwise propagated. This variety belongs in the middle west but it might be grown for home use in northern New York where it is too cold for the European plums.
Hawkeye is a seedling of Quaker grown by H. A. Terry,[217] Crescent, Iowa. It first fruited in 1882 and the following year was introduced by the originator. In the Iowa Horticultural Society Report for 1887, Mr. Terry stated that the original tree had borne five crops in succession and he believed it to be the most valuable variety in cultivation for the West and Northwest. The American Pomological Society placed this plum on its fruit catalog list in 1897.
Tree large, vigorous, rather upright at first, becoming spreading, low-headed, hardy, usually productive, but variable in some locations, susceptible to attacks of shot-hole fungus; branches numerous, dark brown, rough, thorny, with numerous, large lenticels; branchlets long, willowy, with internodes of medium length, green, changing to dull reddish-brown, shining, glabrous, with numerous large, raised lenticels; leaf-buds small, short, pointed, appressed.
Leaves tinged red late in the season, nearly flat, oval or slightly obovate, two inches wide, four inches long, rather thin; upper surface dark green, smooth, glabrous, with midrib and larger veins deeply grooved; lower surface light green, lightly pubescent along the midrib and larger veins; apex taper-pointed, base very abrupt, margin coarsely and doubly serrate, the serrations often becoming spiny, eglandular; petiole rather slender, nine-sixteenths inch in length, tinged with pink, sparingly pubescent along one side, glandless or with one or two globose, greenish-brown glands.