Pride 7. Shipper Pride 4. Shippers’ Pride 7. Shipper’s Pride 1, 2, 3, 5, 8.
This plum has never become an important commercial variety in New York yet it is offered for sale by a surprisingly large number of nurserymen. The variety has too many faults to succeed in competition with the many good plums of its color and season. The flesh is dry and the plums often shrivel on the tree, characters which fit it for shipping, but which when taken with poor quality and small size make it of little value after it reaches the market. Moreover it fruits sparingly under many conditions, though productive here, and the plums ripen somewhat unevenly and are susceptible to brown-rot. Some pomologists give a rather better estimate of the variety than that expressed here, but from all data at hand the value of the plum is not underestimated in the above statements. There are a great many better plums for New York than Shipper.
This variety was introduced by Mr. H. S. Wiley of Cayuga, New York. The plum was found by Mr. Wiley in a private garden at Port Byron, New York, about 1877. The man upon whose place it grew thought that it came from a stone of one of the several varieties in his garden but Mr. Wiley is not sure of this origin and suggests that it may have sprouted from a root.
Tree large, vigorous, round-topped, hardy, productive; branches thick, ash-gray, smooth except for the raised lenticels; branchlets of medium thickness and length, with long internodes, green changing to brownish-drab and with a red tinge, dull, covered with thick pubescence throughout the season, with inconspicuous lenticels of medium number and size; leaf-buds small, short, conical, appressed.
Leaves many, flattened or folded upward, obovate or oval, one and three-quarters inches wide, three and one-half inches long, thick, leathery; upper surface dark green, hairy, with a grooved midrib; lower surface silvery-green, thick, pubescent; apex abruptly pointed or acute, base acute, margin serrate or crenate, eglandular or with small dark glands; petiole one-half inch long, thick, pubescent, with a red tinge, glandless or with one or two globose, yellowish-green glands usually at the base of the leaf.
Season of bloom intermediate in time and length; flowers appearing with the leaves, nearly one and one-quarter inches across, white; borne on lateral buds and spurs, singly or in pairs; pedicels three-quarters inch long, pubescent, greenish; calyx-tube green, campanulate, pubescent; calyx-lobes obtuse, lightly pubescent on both surfaces, glandular-serrate and with marginal hairs, reflexed; petals broadly oval or obovate, slightly crenate or occasionally notched, with short, broad claws; anthers yellow; filaments five-sixteenths inch long; pistil glabrous, shorter than the stamens.
Fruit late, intermediate in length of ripening season; one and one-half inches by one and three-eighths inches in size, ovate, swollen on the suture side, compressed, halves equal; cavity shallow, abrupt; suture shallow; apex bluntly pointed; color purplish-black, overspread with thick bloom; dots small, russet, somewhat conspicuous; stem seven-eighths inch long, pubescent, adhering well to the fruit; skin thin, tender, separating readily; flesh greenish-yellow, rather tart, firm, sweet, mild in flavor; inferior in quality; stone semi-clinging, often with red tinge near the edge, seven-eighths inch by three-quarters inch in size, irregular roundish-ovate, turgid, rough, blunt at the base and apex; ventral suture wide, ridged, distinctly winged; dorsal suture wide, deep.
SHIRO
SHIRO