The plums of New York

by U. P. Hedrick

[200] Lowe, V. H. The Pistol Case-bearer N. Y. Sta. Bul. 122:221-232. 1897.

[201] Riley, C. V. Insect Life 1:133. 1889.

[202] Cornell Sta. Bul. 62:27. 1894.

[203] Tex. Sta. Bul. 32:488. 1894.

[204] Professor Joseph Lancaster Budd was a native of New York, having been born July 3, 1835, at Peekskill, Westchester County. On his father’s side he was of French ancestry, but his mother was of English descent, a member of the Lancaster family, early settlers on the Hudson River. He was educated in the public schools of Monticello, Monticello Academy and at Hiram College, though he did not finish at the last named institution because of financial distress at home. In 1857 the young man moved west and for a year taught in an academy at Rockford, Illinois, and in the Wheaton schools of the same state. In 1858 he moved to Benton County, Iowa, where he established the Benton County Orchards and Nurseries. He soon became identified with horticulture in Iowa, especially through its State Horticultural Society, an organization of which he was secretary from 1873 to 1885 and from 1892 to 1895, serving in all seventeen years. In 1876 he was elected to the chair of Horticulture and Forestry in the Iowa Agricultural College, a position which he held until 1899, when he retired as professor emeritus, having spent twenty-two years in pioneer work in this college. In 1882 Professor Budd visited Russia to study the hardy plants of that country and imported from there many varieties of fruit, as well as other plants, which he thought suited to the climate of the Northwest. After his return his work was largely given up to originating and testing varieties which he thought would prove of value to the States of the Plains. He was preeminent in America for his work with Russian fruits and was one of the first to see the possibilities of our native plums. The frequency with which his name is mentioned in this book as a breeder of hardy fruits indicates his interest in securing plums adapted to the region in which he lived. The horticultural library of Charles Downing, by the wish of the owner, was given to the Iowa Agricultural College with the expectation that Professor Budd would revise Downing’s famous Fruits and Trees of America. Ill health prevented the accomplishment of this task, although as senior author he published, in 1902, the American Horticultural Manual in two volumes. During the greater part of his active life he was a constant correspondent of the horticultural press. Professor Budd was a teacher as well as a pomologist and did much for American pomology in imparting to the men who came in contact with him both knowledge and enthusiasm. He died in Phoenix, Arizona, December 26, 1904.

[205] Samuel D. Willard was born August 24, 1835, near Cayuga, New York. He was educated in the district school, Canandaigua Academy, and Temple Hall, Geneseo, having been graduated at the last named place in 1854. After a successful business career of a decade and a half following his schooling, Mr. Willard engaged in the nursery business in Geneva, New York. He prospered in tree-growing and soon embarked in fruit-growing as well, rapidly attaining distinction as a nurseryman and as a fruit-grower. He early began to specialize in plum culture and soon became one of the leading growers of plums, one of the chief authorities on varieties, and one of the largest importers of new sorts. In 1897, with Dr. L. H. Bailey as co-author, Mr. Willard prepared Bulletin 131, Notes upon Plums, of the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station. In this bulletin Mr. Willard put on record the results of his long experience in growing plums and gave descriptions of seventy varieties, nineteen of which he had imported from Europe. Besides this bulletin he has published but little on plums, but his spoken words regarding them may be found in nearly every report of the two horticultural societies of New York since 1880, as they are also to be found in the reports of horticultural societies in neighboring states and the provinces of Canada. Besides his work in horticultural societies, Mr. Willard was one of the earliest and foremost institute speakers in New York. He was, too, for many years active in the development of the state fair in New York, having charge of the horticultural department, a position which he also held at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901. For nearly a half-century Mr. Willard has been prominent in his profession in the state and nation; he is known by all eastern fruit-growers and his vigorous and enthusiastic utterances in the press, from the platform and in conversation have made him a favorite authority with the fruit-growers of this generation.

[206] Prosper Julius A. Berckmans was one of the noted horticulturists and pomologists of the generation just passing. He was born at Aerschat, near Antwerp, Belgium, October 13, 1830, his father being Dr. Louis Edouard Berckmans, author of the splendid pomological work, Album de Pomologie, and as noted in Europe as was the son in America, in horticulture and pomology. The younger Berckmans was educated in Tours, Belgium and Paris, attaining distinction as a student in botany. In 1850 father and son came to America and the following year settled at Plainfield, New Jersey. Six years later the son moved to Augusta, Georgia, and established near that place a horticultural plantation, which he called “Fruitlands,” the nursery of which has become famous throughout the world. Soon after locating in Georgia, Mr. Berckmans became interested in horticultural organizations and later his activities were extended to the promotion of horticulture in the Nation. In 1859 he became a member of the first horticultural society in Georgia. In 1876 he helped to organize and was the first president of the Georgia State Horticultural Society, a position which he held until his death. In 1860 he became a member of the American Pomological Society and was at once intrusted with important committee work in that organization. His work here was done so well that in 1887 he was elected president of the society and later was four times re-elected. Mr. Berckmans was a member of a number of state and national horticultural and scientific organizations other than those named and was an honorary member of many similar societies in Europe. In 1893 he was chosen to make the opening address of the Horticultural Congress held at the World’s Fair in Chicago that year. Mr. Berckmans was eminent in entomology as well as in botany and horticulture and was interested in all the sciences. Through much reading, study and travel he became versed in literature and art as well as science. Mr. Berckmans’ fellow-workers in horticulture, his business associates and the patrons of his nursery, justly esteemed him for his amiability, integrity and public spiritedness. At his death, November 8, 1910, a well spent life was ended.

[207] Luther Burbank, known the world over for his work in bringing into being new plant forms, was born in Lancaster, Massachusetts, March 7, 1849. He was educated in the common schools and in the local academy, his school-training being supplemented by much reading in the well-stocked library of which every New England town boasts. After leaving school, some time was spent in a factory in Worcester, Massachusetts, but, following a strong natural inclination to work with plants, he left the factory to grow vegetables and seeds. It was while so engaged that he grew the Burbank potato, most widely known and most valuable, if gauged by the monetary value of the crops produced, of all of his new plants. In 1875 Mr. Burbank went to California and a few years later began in a small way the plant-breeding nursery at Santa Rosa in which most of his work has since been done. The years preceding this beginning and several following it constitute a time of hard labor, sickness and of financial distress through which only a man of remarkable strength of character could have lived and kept the desire to continue his work. Following a decade, more or less, of difficulties after the start at Santa Rosa, Mr. Burbank’s career as a world-wide figure in plant-breeding may be said to have begun. One cannot briefly catalog the new forms of plants that have gone forth from his private place in California; they must number well into the hundreds; his biographer, in 1905, said that Mr. Burbank has worked with over two thousand five hundred distinct species (Harwood, W. S., New Creations in Plant Life 1. 1905). Among these have been practically all of the species of plums now under cultivation, from which have been obtained, according to Mr. Burbank, hundreds of thousands of plum-seedlings of which the breeder has selected a score or more of very distinct sorts, all interesting and a few of them very valuable. The many other fruits, flowers and forage plants which Mr. Burbank has sent out, each involving the handling of countless seedlings, cannot be mentioned here. Nor can his methods and results be discussed, except to say that in them he is a unique figure in plant-breeding and that they have been such that he has exercised a powerful influence toward the improvement of plants. The practical results of Mr. Burbank’s work have been as great or greater than those secured by any other person in plant-breeding, yet they have been magnified out of all bounds in the popular press and his work has been caricatured by calling the man a wizard and ascribing to him occult knowledge. Of the plants introduced by Mr. Burbank the proportion of really valuable commercial ones seems now to be small, but what he has done cannot be measured by money values; he has awakened universal interest in plant-breeding; has demonstrated that things unheard of before his time can be done with plants; and, all in all, his contributions in new forms of plants to horticulture and agriculture, in their intrinsic and educational value, make him the master worker of the times in improving plants.

[208] Statement in a letter from Mr. Burbank.

[209] Mr. Kerr in a letter written in 1909 says: “Wassu, as I have it, is radically different from descriptions of both Waugh and Bailey. The tree is as slovenly in habit as is that of the Burbank—there all resemblance ceases.”