1. Gara. Mon. 24:82. 1882. 2. Ibid, 29:45, 302. 1887. 3. Cornell Sta. Bul. 38:77. 1892.
Blackman is supposed to be a hybrid between the Wild Goose plum and a peach. According to Bailey, a Mrs. Charity Clark secured plum pits from an orchard of Wild Goose and Washington plums in Rutherford County, Tennessee, about 1865 and gave them to Dr. Blackman of Nashville of that State. One of the seedlings appeared promising and was disseminated by a local nurseryman under the name Blackman. A rival nurseryman in attempting to procure cions of this variety inadvertently cut them from an adjacent tree, a barren seedling from the same lot of seed. Unfortunately the spurious Blackman received a wide distribution while the true variety remained practically unknown. Afterwards in order to avoid confusion the original Blackman was rechristened Charity Clark under which name it is now known. The tree of the second Blackman is strong and vigorous but rarely produces its plum-like fruit. The foliage is about midway in character between the plum and peach; the fruit-buds are formed abundantly but seldom open. From a horticultural standpoint, the variety is of course worthless but the hybrid, one of the first of its kind, is interesting and worth recording.
BLEEKER
Prunus domestica
1. Prince Pom. Man. 25. 1828. 2. Kenrick Am. Orch. 255. 1832. 3. Manning Book of Fruits 104. 1838. 4. Downing Fr. Trees Am. 273. 1845. 5. Am. Pom. Soc. Cat. 54. 1852. 6. Thompson Gard. Ass’t 515. 1859. 7. Downing Fr. Trees Am. 899. 1869. 8. Mas Le Verger 6:21. 1866-1873. 9. Hogg Fruit Man. 686. 1884. 10. Mathieu Nom. Pom. 423. 1889. 11. Guide Prat. 158, 364. 1895. 12. Waugh Plum Cult. 96. 1901.
Bleecker’s 11. Bleecker’s German Gage 1. Bleecker’s German Gage 2. Bleecker’s Gage 2, 4, 5, 6, 7. Bleecker’s Gage 9, 10, 11, 12. Bleeker’s Gage 3. Blucher’s Gage 6. Bleecker’s Yellow 7. Bleeker’s 10. Bleecker’s Yellow Gage 7, 8, 11. Bleecker’s Gage 8. Bleeker’s Yellow 9. Bleeker’s Gelbe Zwetsche 11. Bleeker’s Gelbe Zwetsche 10. Bleeker’s Yellow Gage 9, 10. Bleeker’s Gelbe Reine-Claude 10. Bleeker’s Gelbe Renklode 11. Bleeker’s Yellow 10. German Gage 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11. Jaune de Bleeker 10, 11. Reine-Claude de Bleeker 10. Reine-Claude de Bleecker 8, 11.
Just why this old and one time popular plum is now so seldom grown cannot be said. It is a delicious dessert plum of the Reine Claude group, much like Yellow Gage but distinguished from it by a longer and stouter stalk. Its tree-characters in New York are good and the fruit in all the qualities that make plums desirable is as good as that of most of its class. The variety originated with a Mrs. Bleeker of Albany, New York, about 1810 from a pit given her by Rev. Mr. Dull of Kingston, New York. This stone had come from Germany and was thought to have been that of a German prune but this is probably an error as the seedlings of that variety come true or nearly so. Bleeker was listed in the catalogs of the American Pomological Society from 1852 to 1897.
Tree large, vigorous, upright-spreading, open-topped, productive; trunk and branches thick and covered with rough bark; branches slightly pubescent; leaves two and one-quarter inches wide, four inches long, oval, stiff; upper surface somewhat rugose; margin serrate; petiole five-eighths inch long, thick, tinged red, with from two to three glands usually on the stalk.
Fruit early; nearly one and one-half inches in diameter, roundish-oval, greenish-yellow, striped and splashed with green becoming golden-yellow at full maturity, overspread with thin bloom; flesh golden-yellow, dry, coarse, firm, sweet, mild; of good quality; stone semi-clinging, one inch by five-eighths inch in size, obovate, acute at the apex, medium turgid, with pitted surfaces.