Plum (Prunus domestica), a small fruit-tree, native to Asia Minor and the Caucasus, and naturalized in most temperate parts of the world. The Damson or Damascus variety was grown by the Romans from very early times. Large quantities of many varieties, both home and foreign are grown, which are eaten raw, in tarts, and in preserves, or, when dried as prunes. Extensive cultivation is carried on throughout temperate regions. Third most important orchard fruit in the United States, exceeding eight million bushels, California growing two-thirds. All prunes produced in the United States grown in the Pacific States; first prune orchard planted at San Jose, California, in 1870.
Pomegranate (Punica Granatum), long valued in hot countries for the refreshing pulp of its fruit. It is a tree, fifteen to twenty-five feet in height, native to West Asia and North Africa. It has opposite, simple, entire leaves, and the flower has five scarlet or white petals. The fruit has a tough, leathery gold-colored, but partly reddened, exterior and numerous seeds each surrounded by a reddish pulp. This varies in flavor in the numerous cultivated varieties. The rind is rich in tannin, and is employed in tanning Morocco leather.
Walnut (Juglans regia), or Common Walnut is a native of Persia and the Himalayas, but has long been cultivated in all parts of the south of Europe. It is a tree of sixty to ninety feet, with large spreading branches. The leaves have two to four pairs of leaflets, and a terminal one. The ripe fruit is one of the best of nuts. It yields a bland fixed oil, which, under the names of walnut oil and nut oil, is much used by painters as a drying oil. The timber of the walnut is of great value, and is much used by cabinet-makers. The wood of the roots is beautifully veined. Both the root and the husks of the walnut yield a dye, which is used for staining light-colored woods brown. Very similar to the common walnut, but more valuable, is the Black Walnut of North America, found in most parts of the United States, except the most northern. See also [Butternut].
IV. FRUIT-BEARING SHRUBS AND PLANTS
The trees previously mentioned are woody plants with only one stem, which begin to form branches at some distance from the ground. The shrubs, on the contrary, are woody plants in which the stem forms branches close to the ground, or even underground.
Banana (Musa sapientium), a handsome plant, long cultivated in tropical and sub-tropical countries for its fruit. The sheathing bases of the large, oblong leaves form a false stem twenty to thirty feet high. The spikes of irregular flowers are succeeded by a branch of one hundred to two hundred fruits, weighing together from fifty to eighty pounds. The long, berry-like fruits, as they ripen, convert nearly all their starch into sugar and pectose, and form a valuable [143] article of food, the staple food in many tropical countries, producing forty-four times the weight of food per acre yielded by the potato. It is produced in enormous quantities in the West Indies and Brazil, and shipped in constantly increasing volume to the United States and Europe. Beginning with a few hundred bunches in 1870, consumption in the United States has increased to upwards of five million dollars worth annually. Banana flour is becoming a staple article of food.
Its cultivation antedates historical records in India. Pliny mentions that the Greeks under Alexander the Great saw it in India.
The banana plant is the most wonderfully productive fruit in the world. It is a native of Asia, but most of our bananas come from the New World. Here the plant is full grown and the bananas ripe. From the time the suckers are planted to the gathering of the fruit is less than a year, so rapidly does the plant come to maturity.
Blueberry. See [Huckleberry].