The grape shares leading rank with the apple among the world fruits. Chief products: raisins, currants and wine of great commercial importance. Raisin production largest in Spain, but important in southwestern Asia, Australia and California. Currants are small, seedless raisins, mostly grown in Greece (name derived from Corinth). Wine is made throughout the world, total production estimated at four billion gallons, France, Italy and Spain contributing about three-fourths of this enormous amount. The European grape products of California—wine, raisins and table grapes,—amount in value to two-fifths of all grape products of the United States.
Remotely ancient in Egypt. Used by Lake Dwellers of the Bronze Age in Italy. Cultivated by the Phoenicians, Hebrews, Greeks and Romans. Introduced into China 120 B. C.
Huckleberry. The popular name of the genus Gaylussacia, of which there are several species. The Dwarf huckleberry, the Blue huckleberry and the Black huckleberry are common throughout the United States, the latter being the huckleberry of the Northern States. In New England the name is commonly restricted to the black berry species in distinction from the blue berry. The shrubs range in height from about three feet to twelve feet high. In New England canning huckleberries is an extensive if not exceedingly profitable industry. The crop is first picked by hand and afterwards with a “blueberry rake.” The Indians long ago gathered the fruit and dried it for use during wintertime.
Pepper Plant (Piper nigrum) is found all over the Torrid Zone. Its berries stand to the number of twenty to thirty on one spike; at first they are green, then they turn red, and finally black. The black pepper is prepared from the unripe fruit, the white from the ripe fruit, which loses its black shell by being put into salt water (sea water). Pepper is now the most commonly and widely used spice. It is extensively cultivated in East and West Indies, Siam and Malay Peninsula, whence millions of pounds are exported.
Cayenne pepper, or chili is much grown in tropical Africa and America, but less generally used than black pepper.
Pistacia is a small tree, about twenty feet high, and native to Persia and Syria, but now cultivated in all parts of southern Europe and northern Africa. Flowers in racemes, fruit ovate and about the size of an olive. Pistachio nuts are much esteemed; but readily become rancid. Oil is expressed from them for culinary and other uses.
A PINE-APPLE PLANTATION IN FLORIDA
Pine-apple (Ananassa sativa) is highly esteemed and much cultivated for its fruit. It has a number of long, serrated or smooth-edged, sharp-pointed, rigid leaves, springing from the root, in the midst of which a short flower-stem is thrown up, bearing a single spike of flowers, and therefore a single fruit. From the summit of the fruit springs a crown or tuft of small leaves; capable of becoming a new plant; the pine-apple, in cultivation, being propagated entirely by crowns and suckers, as, in a state of high cultivation, perfect seed is almost never produced. The pine-apple is a native of tropical America, and is found wild in sandy maritime districts in certain parts of South America, but has been very much changed by cultivation. It is extensively grown in Florida, and in the West Indies for shipment to northern markets and to Europe. Increasing outdoor plantations have also been developed in the Azores, the Hawaiian Islands, northern Africa, Queensland, and the Bahamas. Florida supports upward of fourteen million plants. Great care is requisite in the cultivation of the pine-apple, which without it is generally fibrous and coarse, with little sweetness or flavor, and with it one of the most delicate and richly flavored of fruits.