PART V

WILD RELATIVES OF OUR ORCHARD TREES

The Apples—The Plums—The Cherries—The Hawthorns—The Service-berries—The Hackberries—The Mulberries—The Figs—The Papaws—The Pond Apples—The Persimmons

THE APPLES

The chance apple tree beside the road, with fruit too gnarly to eat, is common on roadsides throughout New England. Occasionally one of these trees bears edible fruit, but this is not the rule. Perhaps the seed thus planted was from the core of a very delicious apple, nibbled close, and thrown away with regret. But trees thus planted are seedlings and seedling apple trees "revert" to the ancient parent of the race, the wild apple of eastern Asia. Horticulture began long ago to improve these wild trees, and through the centuries improvement and variation have stocked the orchards of all temperate countries with the multitude of varieties we know. A visit in October to Nova Scotia or to the Yakima Valley in Washington, is an eye-opener. Thousands of acres of the choicest varieties of this most satisfying of all fruits show the debt we owe to patient scientists, whose work has so enriched the food supply of the world.

The pear, the quince, and the curious medlar, with its core exposed at the blossom end--all relatives of the apple--trace their lineage to European and Asiatic wild ancestors. The Siberian crab, native of northern Asia, is the parent of our hard-fleshed, slender-stemmed garden crabapples. Japan has given us some wonderful apple trees, with fruit no larger than cherries, cultivated solely for their flowers. The ornamental flora of America has been greatly enriched by these varieties.

Four native apples are found in American woods. Horticulturists have produced new varieties by crossing some of these sturdy natives with cultivated apples, or their seedling offspring.

=The Prairie Crab=

_Malus Ioënsis_, Britt.

The prairie crabapple is the woolly twigged, pink-blossomed wild crab of the woods, from Minnesota and Wisconsin to Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana. It has crossed with the roadside "wilding" trees and produced a hybrid known to horticulture as the Soulard apple, from its discoverer. These wild trees bear fruit that is distinctly an improvement upon that of either parent. It is regarded as a distinctly promising apple for the coldest of the prairie states, and has already become the parent of several improved varieties.

=The Wild Crab=

_M. coronaria_. Mill.

Throughout the wooded regions, from the Great Lakes to Texas and Alabama, the wild crabapple brightens the spring landscape with its rose-colored, spicy-scented blossoms. The little trees huddle together, their flat tops often matted and reaching out sidewise from under the shade of the other forest trees. The twigs are crabbed indeed in winter, but they silver over with the young foliage in April. The coral flower buds sprinkle the new leaves, and through May a great burst of rose-colored bloom overspreads the tree-tops. It is not sweetness merely that these flowers exhale, but an exquisite, spicy, stimulating fragrance, by which one always remembers them.

The pioneers made jellies and preserves out of the little green apples (_see illustrations, pages 150-151_), which lost some of their acrid quality by hanging on until after a good frost. There are those who still gather these fruits as their parents and grandparents did. In their opinion the wild tang and the indescribable piquancy of flavor in jellies made from this fruit are unmatched by those of any other fruit that grows.

THE PLUMS

The genus _prunus_ belongs to the rose family and includes shrubs and trees with stone fruits. Of the over one hundred species, thirty are native to North America; but ten of them assume tree form, and all but one are small trees. Related to them are the garden cherries and plums, native to other countries, and the peach, the apricot, and the almond, found in this country only in horticultural varieties. The wood of _prunus_ is close-grained, solid, and durable, and a few of the species are important timber trees. The simplest way to identify a member of the genus is to break a twig at any season of the year and taste the sap. If it is bitter and astringent with hydrocyanic acid (the flavor we get in fresh peach-pits and bitter almonds), we may be sure we have run the tree down to the genus _prunus_.

=The Wild Red Plum=

_Prunus Americanus_, Marsh.

The wild red or yellow plum forms dense thickets in moist woods and along river banks from New York to Texas and Colorado. Its leafless, gnarled, and thorny twigs are covered in spring with dense clusters of white bloom, honey-sweet in fragrance, a carnival of pleasure and profit to bees and other insects. In hot weather this nectar often ferments and sours before the blossoms fall. The abundant dry pollen is scattered by the wind. The plum crop depends more upon wind than upon insects, for the pollination period is very brief.

After the frost in early autumn, the pioneers of the prairie used always to make a holiday in the woods and bring home by wagon-loads the spicy, acid plums which crowded the branches and fairly lit up the thicket with the orange and red color of their puckery, thick skins. In a land where fruit orchards were newly planted, "plum butter" made from the fruit of nature's orchards was gratefully acceptable through the long winters. Even when home-grown sorghum molasses was the only available sweetening, the healthy appetites of prairie boys and girls accepted this "spread" on the bread and butter of noon-day school lunches, as a matter of course.

=The Canada Plum=

_P. nigra._, Ait.

The Canada plum (_see illustration, page 151_) whose range dips down into the northern tier of states, is so near like the previous species as to be called by Waugh a mere variety. Its leaves are broad and large, and the flowers and fruit larger. A peculiarity of blossoming time is that the petals turn pink before they fall. This tree furnished the settler with a relish for his hard fare, and the horticulturist a hardy stock on which to graft scions of tenderer and better varieties of plums. It is a tree well worth bringing in from the woods to set in a bare fence-corner that will be beautified by the blossoms in spring, and in late summer by the bright orange-colored fruit against the ruddy foliage.

Exotic plums have greatly enriched our horticulture, giving us fruits that vie with the peach in size and lusciousness. In New-England gardens, the damsons, green gages and big red plums are imported varieties of the woolly twigged, thick-leaved European, _P. domestica_, which refused utterly to feel at home on its own roots in the great middle prairies of the country. These European plums have found a congenial home in the mild climate of the West Coast.

Japan has furnished to the Middle West and South a hardy, prolific species, _P. triflora_, generally immune to the black knot, a fungous disease which attacks native plums. Crosses between the Japanese and American native plums promise well. California now ranks first in prune raising as an industry, with France a close second. Prunes are the dried fruit of certain sweet, fleshy kinds of plums. Many cultivated varieties of Japanese plums have enriched the horticulture of our West Coast.

The almond, now grown commercially in California, is the one member of the genus prunus whose flesh is dry and woody, and whose pit is a commercial nut.

THE CHERRIES

Small-fruited members of the genus prunus, wild and cultivated, are grouped under the popular name, cherries, by common consent. The pie cherry of New-England gardens is _prunus cerasus_, Linn. It often runs wild from gardens, forming roadside thickets, with small sour red fruits, as nearly worthless as at home in the wilds of Europe and Asia. This tree has, through cultivation, given rise to two groups of sour cherries cultivated in America. The early, light-red varieties, with uncolored juice, of which the Early Richmond is a familiar type, and the late, dark-red varieties, with colored juice, of which the English Morello is the type.

The sweet cherry of Europe (_P. Avium_, Linn.) has given us our cultivated sweet cherries, whose fruit is more or less heart-shaped.

Japan celebrates each spring the festival of cherry blossom time, a great national fête, when the gardens burst suddenly into the marvelous bloom of _Sakura_, the cherry tree, symbol of happiness, in which people of all classes delight. The native species (_P. pseudo-Cerasus_), has been cultivated by Japanese artist-gardeners in the one direction of beauty for centuries. Not in flowers alone, but in leaf, in branching habit, and even in bark, beauty has been the ideal toward which patience and skill have striven successfully. "Spring is the season of the eye," says the Japanese poet. Of all their national flower holidays, cherry blossom time, in the third month, is the climax.

=The Wild Cherry=

_Prunus Pennsylvanica_, Linn.

The wild red, bird, or pin cherry grows in rocky woods, forming thickets and valuable nurse trees to hardwoods, from Newfoundland to Georgia, and west to the Rocky Mountains. The birds enjoy the ruddy little fruits and hold high carnival in June among the shining leaves. Many an ugly ravine is clothed with verdure and whitened with nectar-laden flowers by this comparatively worthless, short-lived tree; and in many burnt-over districts, the bird-sown pits strike root, and the young trees render a distinct service to forestry by this young growth, which is gone by the time the pines and hardwoods it has nursed require the ground for their spreading roots.

=The Wild Black Cherry=

_P. serotina_, Ehrh.

The wild black cherry or rum cherry (_see illustration, page 166_), is the substantial lumber tree of the genus, whose ponderous trunk furnishes cherry wood, vying with mahogany and rosewood in the esteem of the cabinet-maker, who uses cherry for veneer oftener than for solid furniture.

The drug trade depends upon this tree for a tonic derived from its bark, roots, and fruit. Cherry brandies, cordials, and cherry bounce, that good old-fashioned homebrewed beverage, are made from the heavy-clustered fruits that hang until late summer, turning black and losing their astringency when dead ripe.

From Ontario to Dakota, and south to Florida and Texas, this tree is found, reaching its best estate in moist, rich soil, but climbing mountain canyons at elevations of from five to seven thousand feet. A worthy shade and park tree, the black cherry is charmingly unconventional, carrying its mass of drooping foliage with the grace of a willow, its satiny brown bark curling at the edges of irregular plates like that of the cherry birch.

=The Choke Cherry=

_P. Virginiana_, Linn.

The choke cherry is a miniature tree no higher than a thrifty lilac bush, from the Eastern states to the Mississippi, but between Nebraska and northern Texas it reaches thirty-five feet in height. The trunk is always short, often crooked or leaning, and never exceeds one foot in diameter. Its shiny bark, long racemed flowers and fruit, and the pungent odor of its leaves and bark might lead one to confuse it with a black cherry sapling. But there is a marked difference between the two species. The choke cherry's odor is not only pungent, but rank and disagreeable besides. The leaf of the choke cherry is a wide and abruptly pointed oval. The fruit until dead ripe is red or yellow, and so puckery, harsh, and bitter that children, who eat the black cherries eagerly, cannot be persuaded to taste choke cherries a second time.

Birds are not so fastidious; they often strip the trees before the berries darken. It is probably by these unconscious agents of seed distribution that choke-cherry pits are scattered. From the Arctic Circle to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains this worthless little choke cherry is found in all wooded regions.

THE HAWTHORNS

In the same rose family with apples, plums, cherries, and service-berries is listed the genus _Crataegus_, a shrubby race of trees, undersized as a rule, with stiff, zigzag branches set with thorns. Over one hundred species have been described by Charles Sargent in his "Manual of Trees of North America," published in 1905.

The centre of distribution for the hawthorn is undoubtedly the eastern United States. From Newfoundland the woods are full of them. A few species belong to the Rocky Mountain region, a few to the states farther west. Europe and Asia each has a few native hawthorns.

=The English Hawthorn=

_Crataegus oxyacantha_, Linn.

The English hawthorn is the best-known species in the world. When it first came into cultivation, no man knows. Englishmen will tell you it has always formed the hedge-rows of the countryside. This is the "blossoming May." The sweetness of its flowers, snowy white, or pink, or rose-colored, turns rural England into a garden, while linnets and skylarks fill the green lanes with music.

American "forests primeval" were swept with the woodman's axe before the hawthorns had their chance to assert themselves sufficiently to attract the attention of botanists and horticulturists. The showy flowers and fruits, the vivid coloring of autumn foliage, and the striking picturesqueness of the bare tree, with its rigid branches armed with menacing thorns, give most of these little trees attractiveness at any season. They grow in any soil and in any situation, and show the most remarkable improvement when cultivated. Their roots thrive in heavy clay. When young the little trees may be easily transplanted from the wild. They come readily from seed, though in most species the seed takes two years to germinate.

With few exceptions, the flowers of our hawthorns are pure white, perfect, their parts in multiples of five--a family trait. Each flower is a miniature white rose. Rounded corymbs of these flowers on short side twigs cover the tree with a robe of white after the leaves appear. In autumn little fleshy fruits that look like apples, cluster on the twigs. Inside the thick skin, the flesh is mealy and sweetish around a few hard nutlets that contain the seed. As a rule, the fruits are red. In a few species they are orange; in still fewer, yellow, blue, or black.

It is not practicable to describe the many varieties of our native hawthorns in a volume of the scope of this one. A few of the most distinctive species only can be included, but no one will ever confuse a hawthorn with any other tree.

=The Cockspur Thorn=

_C. Crus-galli_, Linn.

The cockspur thorn is a small, handsome tree, fifteen to twenty feet high, with stiff branches in a broad round head. The thorns on the sides of the twig are three to four inches long, sometimes when old becoming branched, and reaching a length of six or eight inches. Stout and brown or gray, they often curve, striking downward as a rule, on the horizontal branches. The leaves, thick, leathery, lustrous, dark green above, pale beneath, one to four inches long, taper to a short stout stalk, seeming to stand on tiptoe, as if to keep out of the way of the thorns. From the ground up, the tree is clothed in bark that is bright and polished, shading from reddish brown to gray. The flowers come late, in showy clusters; and the fruit gleams red against the reddening leaves. As winter comes on the leaves fall and the branches are brightened by the fruit clusters which are not taken by the birds (_see illustration, page 167_). All the year long the cockspur thorn is a beautiful, ornamental tree and a competent hedge plant, popular alike in Europe and America.

=The Scarlet Haw=

_C. pruinosa_, K. Koch.

The scarlet haw found from Vermont to Georgia, and west to Missouri, prefers limestone soil of mountain slopes, and is more picturesque than beautiful. The foliage is distinctive; it is dark, blue-green, smooth, and leathery, pale beneath, and turns in autumn to brilliant orange. In summer the pale fruit wears a pale bloom but at maturity it is dark purplish red and shiny.

=The Red Haw=

_C. mollis_, Scheele

The red haw is the type of a large group, ample in size, fine in form and coloring, of fruit and foliage. This tree reaches forty feet in height, its round head rising above the tall trunk, with stout branchlets and stubby, shiny thorns.

The twigs are coated with pale hairs, the young leaves, and ultimately the leaf-linings and petioles are hairy, and the fruits are downy, marked with dark dots.

The only fault the landscape gardener can find with this red haw, is that its abundant fruit, ripe in late summer, falls in September. The species is found from Ohio to Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas.

=The Scarlet Haw=

_C. coccinea_, Linn.

The scarlet haw, native of the Northeastern states, is one of the oldest native thorns in cultivation. It is a favorite in New England gardens, because of its abundant bloom, deep crimson fruit and vivid autumn foliage. It is a shrubby, round-headed tree, with stout ascending branches, set with thorns an inch or more in length.

=The Black Haw=

_C. Douglasii_, Lindl.

In the West the black haw is a round-headed, native tree found from Puget Sound southward through California and eastward to Colorado and New Mexico. It is a round-headed tree reaching forty feet in height, in moist soil. Its distinguishing feature is the black fruit, ripe in August and September, lustrous, thin-fleshed, sweet, one-half an inch long. The thorns are stout and sharp, rarely exceeding one inch in length. The leathery dark-green leaves, one to four inches long, commend this black-fruited thorn of the West to the Eastern horticulturists. It has proved hardy in gardens to the Atlantic seaboard and in Nova Scotia.

THE SERVICE-BERRIES

A small genus of pretty, slender trees related to apples, and in the rose family, has representatives in every continent of the Northern Hemisphere, and also in North Africa. Their natural range is greatly extended by the efforts of horticulturists, for the trees are among the best flowering species.

=The Service-berry=

_Amelanchier Canadensis_, T. & G.

The Eastern service-berry, June-berry, or shad-bush, is often seen in parks and on lawns; its delicate, purple-brown branches covered in April, before the oval leaves appear, with loose, drooping clusters of white flowers. (_See illustration, page 182._) Under each is a pair of red silky bracts and the infant leaves are red and silky, all adding their warmth of color when the tree is white with bloom. The blossoms pass quickly, just about the time the shad run up the rivers to spawn. We may easily trace this common name to the early American colonists who frugally fished the streams when the shad were running, and noted the charming little trees lighting up the river banks with their delicate blossoms, when all the woods around them were still asleep. In June the juicy red berries call the birds to a feast. Then the little tree quite loses its identity, for the forest is roofed with green, and June-berries are quite overshadowed by more self-assertive species.

The borders of woods in rich upland soil, from Newfoundland to the Dakotas and south to the Gulf, are the habitat and range of this charming little tree.

=The Western Service-berry=

_A. alnifolia_, Nutt.

The Western service-berry grows over a vast territory which extends from the Yukon River south through the Coast Ranges to northern California and eastward to Manitoba and northern Michigan. In the rich bottom lands of the lower Columbia River, and on the prairies about Puget Sound, it reaches twenty feet in height, and its nutritious, pungent fruits are gathered in quantities and dried for winter food by the Indians. Indeed, the horticulturists consider this large juicy fine-flavored, black berry quite worthy of cultivation, as it grows in the wild to one inch in diameter--the average size of wild plums.

THE HACKBERRIES

Fifty or sixty tropical and temperate-zone species of hackberries include two North American trees which have considerable value for shade and ornamental planting. One hardy Japanese species has been introduced; three exotic species are in cultivation in the South. One is from South Africa, a second from the Mediterranean basin, and a third from the Orient.

It is easy to mistake the hackberry for an elm; the habits of the two trees lead the casual observer astray. The leaf is elm-like, though smaller and brighter green than the foliage of the American elm. A peculiarity of the foliage is the apparent division of the petiole into three main ribs, instead of a single midrib. At base, the leaves are always unsymmetrical. The bark is broken into thick ridges set with warts, separated by deep fissures.

The absence of terminal buds induces a forking habit, which makes the branches of a hackberry tree gnarled and picturesque. The hackberry is not familiarly known by the inhabitants of the regions where it grows, else it would more commonly be transplanted to adorn private grounds and to shade village streets.

=The Hackberry=

_Celtis occidentalis_, Linn.

The hackberry reaches one hundred and twenty-five feet in height in moist soil along stream borders or in marshes. It is distributed from Nova Scotia to Puget Sound, and south to Florida, Tennessee, Missouri, Texas, and New Mexico. The beauty of its graceful crown is sometimes marred by a fungus which produces a thick tufting of twigs on the ends of branches. The name, "witches' brooms" has been given to these tufts. Growths of similar appearance and the same name are produced by insect injury on some other trees.

The fruit of the hackberry is an oblong, thin-fleshed sweet berry, purple in color, one fourth to one half inch long. It dries about the solitary seed and hangs on the tree all winter, to the great satisfaction of the birds. (_See illustration, page 183._)

Emerson says: "The wood is used for the shafts and axle-trees of carriages, the naves of wheels, and for musical instruments. The root is used for dyeing yellow, the bark for tanning, and an oil is expressed from the stones of the fruit."

The best use we can make of the hackberry tree is to plant it for shade and ornament. It is easily transplanted, for the roots are shallow and fibrous, so that well-grown trees may be moved in winter time. The autumn yellow of the foliage is wonderfully cheerful, and the warty bark, checked into small thick plates, is interesting at any season.

=European Nettle Tree=

_C. Australis_

The European nettle tree is supposed to have been the famous "lotus" of classical literature. Homer tells of the lotus-eaters who, when they tasted the sweet fruit, straightway forgot their native land or could not be persuaded to return. This innocent tree, against which the charge has never been proved, bears a better reputation for the qualities of its wood. It is as hard as box or holly, and as beautiful as satin-wood when polished. Figures of saints and other images are carved out of it. Hay-forks are made of its supple limbs. Rocky worthless land is set apart by law in some countries for the growing of these trees. Suckers from the roots make admirable ramrods, coach-whip stocks and walking-sticks. Shafts and axle-trees of carriages are made of the larger shoots; oars and hoops are supplied from these coppiced trees. From northern Africa, throughout Europe, and on to India, the tree is planted for shade, and its foliage is used as fodder for cattle.

THE MULBERRIES

The mulberry family includes fifty-five genera and nearly a thousand species of temperate-zone and tropical plants. The genus _ficus_ alone includes six hundred species. Hemp, important for its fibrous, inner bark, and the hop vine are well known herbaceous members of the mulberry family, which stands botanically between the elms and the nettles--strange company, it would seem, but justified by fundamental characteristics. Three genera of this family have tree forms in America--the mulberry, the Osage orange, and the fig. Two native mulberries and three exotic species are widely cultivated for their fruit, their wood, and as ornamental trees. Weeping mulberries are among the most popular horticultural forms.

=The Red Mulberry=

_Morus rubra_, Linn.

The red mulberry grows to be a large dense, round-headed tree, with thick fibrous roots and milky sap. Its alternate leaves, three to five inches long, are variable in form, often irregularly lobed, very veiny, usually rough, blue-green above, pale and pubescent beneath, turning yellow in early autumn. The inconspicuous flower spikes are succeeded by fleshy aggregate fruits like a blackberry, sweet, juicy, dark purple or red, each individual fruit single-seeded. Birds and boys alike throng the trees through the long period during which these berries ripen. They are hardly worthy to rank with the cultivated mulberries as a fruit tree. But planted in poultry yards and hog pastures the dropping fruits are eagerly devoured by the occupants of these enclosures.

The chief value of the tree lies in the durability of its orange-yellow wood, which, though coarse-grained, soft and weak, is very durable in the soil and in contact with water. Hence it has always commended itself to fence- and boat-builder. It is sometimes planted for ornament, but its dropping fruit is a strong objection to it as a street or lawn tree.

One of the mulberry's chief characteristics is its tenacity to life. Its seeds readily germinate and cuttings, whether from roots or twigs, strike root quickly. Indians discovered that rope could be made out of the bast fibre of mulberry bark. They even wove a coarse cloth out of the same material. The early settlers of Virginia, who found the red mulberry growing there in great abundance, dreamed in vain of silk culture as an industry based upon this native tree. Their hopes were not realized. Silk culture has never yet become a New-World industry.

=The White Mulberry=

_M. alba_, Linn.

The white mulberry is a native of northern China and Japan. From this region it has been extensively introduced into all warm temperate climates. Its white berries are of negligible character. It is the leaves that give this oriental mulberry a unique position in the economic world. They are the chosen food of silkworms. No substitute has ever robbed this tree of its preëminence, maintained for many centuries in its one field of usefulness.

The hardy Russian mulberries are derived from _M. alba_. These have done much to enrich the horticulture of our Northern states, but the parent tree, though it thrives in the eastern United States and in the South, has not been the means of establishing silk culture on a paying basis in this country.

=The Black Mulberry=

_M. nigra_, Linn.

The black mulberry, probably a native of Persia, has large, dark red, juicy fruits, for which it is extensively cultivated in Europe. In this country it is hardy only in the Southern and the Pacific Coast states. It is the best fruit tree of its family, yet no mulberry is able to take rank among profitable fruit trees. The fruits are too sweet and soft, and they lack piquancy of flavor. They ripen a few at a time and are gathered by shaking the trees.

The dark green foliage of the black mulberry gives ample shade throughout the season. Planted in the garden or in the border of the lawn where no walk will be defaced by the dropping fruits, the mulberry is a particularly desirable tree because it attracts some of our most desirable song-birds to build on the premises. Given a mulberry tree and a bird-bath near by, and the smallest city lot becomes a bird sanctuary through the summer and a wayside inn for transients during the two migratory seasons.

THE FIGS

The genus _ficus_ belongs to all tropical countries, and this remarkable range accounts for the six hundred different species botanists have identified. The rubber plant, popular in this country as a pot and tub plant, is one of the best-known species. In its East Indian forest home it is the "Assam Rubber Tree." It may begin life as an air plant, fixing its roots in the crotch of another tree, in which a chance seed has lodged. A shock of aërial roots strikes downward and reaches the ground. After this the tree depends upon food drawn from the earth. The supporting host tree is no longer needed. The young rubber tree has by this time a trunk stiff enough to stand alone.

Assam rubber, which ranks in the market with the best Brazilian crude rubber, comes from the sap of this wild fig tree, _Ficus elasticus_. Clip off a twig of your leathery-leaved rubber plant and note the sticky white sap that exudes. In the highest priced automobile tires you find the manufactured product.

Dried figs have always been an important commercial fruit. These imported figs are from trees that are horticultural varieties of a wild Asiatic species, _Ficus Carica_. Smyrna figs are best for drying. They form a delicious, wholesome sweet, which has high food value and is more wholesome than candy for children. Tons of this dried fruit are imported each year from the countries east of the Mediterranean Sea. Now California is growing Smyrna figs successfully.

The banyan tree of India is famous, striking its aërial rootlets downward until they reach the ground and take root, and thus help support the giant, horizontal limbs. These amazing trees, members of the genus _ficus_, sometimes extend to cover an acre or more of ground. To walk under one is like entering the darkness of a forest of young trees. By the clearing away of most of these aërial branches, a great arbor is made for the comfort of people in regions where the sun's rays are overpowering in the middle of the day.

Our own fig trees in North America are but sprawling parasitic trees, unable to stand alone. They are found only in the south of Florida, and therefore are generally unknown.

=The Golden Fig=

_Ficus aurea_, Nutt.

The golden fig climbs up other trees and strangles its host with its coiling stems and aërial roots. One far-famed specimen has grown and spread like a banyan tree, its trunk and head supported by secondary stems that have struck downward from the branches. Smooth as a beech in bark, crowned with glossy, beautiful foliage, like the rubber plants, this parasitic fig is a splendid tropical tree, but the host that supports all this luxuriance is sacrificed utterly. The little yellow figs that snuggle in the axils of the leaves turn purple, sweet, and juicy as they ripen. They are sometimes used in making preserves. An interesting characteristic of the wood of the golden fig is its wonderful lightness. Bulk for bulk, it is only one fourth as heavy as water.

THE PAPAWS

Two of the forty-eight genera of the tropical custard-apple family are represented by a solitary species each in the warmer parts of the United States. Important fruit and ornamental trees in the tropics of the Old World are included in this family, but their New-World representatives are not the most valuable. However, they have a sufficient number of family traits to look foreign and interesting among our more commonplace forest trees; and because their distribution is limited they are not generally recognized in gardens, where they are planted more for curiosity than for ornament.

=The Papaw=

_Asimina triloba_, Dunal.

The papaw has the family name, custard-apple, from its unusual fruit, whose flesh is soft and yellow, like custard. The shape suggests that of a banana. The fruits hang in clusters and their pulp is enclosed in thick dark brown skin, wrinkled, sometimes shapeless, three to five inches long. Dead ripe, the flesh becomes almost transparent, fragrant, sweet, rather insipid, surrounding flat, wrinkled seeds an inch long. The fruit is gathered and sold in local markets from forests of these papaws which grow under taller trees in the alluvial bottom lands of the Mississippi Valley. In summer the leaves are tropical-looking, having single blades eight to twelve inches long, four to five inches broad, on short, thick stalks. These leaves are set alternately upon the twig, and cluster in whorls on the ends of branches. The flowers appear with the leaves and would escape notice but for their abundance and the unusual color of their three large membranous petals. At first these axillary blossoms are as green as the leaves; gradually the dark pigment overcomes the green, and the color passes through shades of brownish green to dark rich wine-red. The full-grown foliage by midsummer has become very thin in texture, and lined with pale bloom. The tree throughout exhales a sickish, disagreeable odor. The fruit is improved in flavor by hanging until it gets a nip of frost.

This "wild banana tree" is the favorite fruit tree of the negroes in the Black Belt. Its hardiness is surprising. From the Southern states, it ranges north into Kansas, Michigan, New York, and New Jersey.

=The Melon Papaw=

_Carica Papaya_, Linn.

The melon papaw does not belong to the custard-apple family, but it grows in southern Florida and throughout the West Indies, and has the name of our little "wild banana tree," so it may as well have mention here, as it is the sole representative of the true Papaw family, and it is universally cultivated for its fruit in the warm regions of the world. By selection the fruit has been improved until it ranks as one of the most wholesome and important of all the fruits in the tropics. In Florida the papaw grows on the rich hummocks along the Indian River, and on the West Coast southward from Bay Biscayne. It is very common on all the West Indian Islands. It grows like a palm, with tall stem crowned by huge simple leaves, one to two feet across, deeply lobed into three main divisions, and each lobe irregularly cut by narrow sinuses. The veins are very thick and yellow, and the hollow leaf-stalks lengthen to three or four feet. The bark of this tree is silvery white--a striking contrast with the lustrous head of foliage. The flowers are waxy, tubular, fragrant, turning their yellow petals backward in a whorl. On fertile trees the fruits mature into great melons, sometimes as large as a man's head; but these are the cultivated varieties. Wild papaws rarely exceed four inches long, and usually they are smaller. When full grown the fruit turns to bright orange-yellow. The succulent pulp separates easily from the round seeds.

In the West Indies, the trees often branch and attain much greater size than in Florida, where fifteen feet is the maximum, in the wilds.

The leaves of this papaw contain, in their abundant sap, a solvent, _papain_, which has the property of destroying the connective tissue in meats. They are bruised by the natives and tough meat, wrapped closely in them, becomes tender in a few hours. The fruits are eaten raw and made into preserves. Negroes use the leaves also as a substitute for soap in the washing of clothes.

THE POND APPLES

The pond apple (_Anona glabra_, Linn.) is our only representative of its genus that reaches tree form and size, and it is the second of our native custard-apples. It comes to us _via_ the West Indies, and reaches no farther north than the swamps of southern Florida. It is a familiar tree on the Bahama Islands. Thirty to forty feet high, the broad head rises from a short trunk, less than two feet in diameter, but very thick compared with the wide-spreading, contorted branches and slender branchlets. It is often buttressed at the base. The leaves are oval and pointed, rarely more than four inches long, bright green, leathery, paler on the lower surface, plain-margined. The flowers in April form pointed, triangular boxes by the touching of the tips of the yellowish white petals, whose inner surfaces near the base have a bright red spot.

The fruit, which ripens in November, is somewhat heart-shaped, four to six inches long, compound like a mulberry. The smooth custard-like flesh forms a luscious mass between the fibrous core and the surface, studded with the hard seeds. Fragrant and sweet, these wild pond apples have small merit as fruit. Little effort has been made to improve the species horticulturally. Its rival species in the West Indies have a tremendous lead which they are likely to keep.

=The Cherimoya=

_Anona Cherimolia_, Mill.

The cherimoya, native of the highlands of Central America, has long been cultivated, and its fruit has been classed, with the pineapple and the mangosteen, as one of the three finest fruits in the world. Certainly it deserves high rank among the fruits of the tropics. This also has been introduced into cultivation in southern Florida, but its culture has assumed much more importance in California, where it seems to feel quite at home.

The tree is a handsome one, with broad velvety bright green leaves, deciduous during the winter months. It grows wherever the orange is hardy, and its fruit, heart-shaped or oval, green or brown, is about the size of a navel orange. Conical protuberances cover the surface and enclose a mass of white, custard-like pulp, with the flavor of the pineapple, in which are imbedded twenty or thirty brown seeds. A taste for this tropical pond apple is as easily acquired as for the pineapple, which has become universally popular. Every garden in the Orange Belt should have a cherimoya tree for ornament and for its fruit.

THE PERSIMMONS

The persimmon tree of the Southern woods belongs to the ebony family, which contains some important fruit and lumber trees, chiefly confined to the genus _diospyros_, which has two representatives among the trees of North America. Doubtless a climate of longer summers would enable our persimmon trees to produce wood as hard as the ebony of commerce, whose black heart-wood and thick belt of soft yellow sap-wood are the products of five different tropical species of the genus--two from India, one from Africa, one from Malaysia and one from Mauritius. The beautiful, variegated wood called _coromandel_ is produced by a species of ebony that grows in Ceylon.

Fossil remains of persimmon trees are found in the miocene rocks of Greenland and Alaska, and in the later cretaceous beds uncovered in Nebraska. These prove that _diospyros_ once had a much wider range than now, extending through temperate to arctic regions, whereas now our two persimmons and the Chinese and Japanese species, are the only representatives outside the tropics.

=The Persimmon=

_Diospyros Virginiana_, Linn.

The persimmon will never be forgotten by the Northerner who chances to visit his Virginia cousins in the early autumn. Strolling through the woods he notes among other unfamiliar trees a tall shaft covered with black bark, deeply checked into squarish plates. The handsome round head, held well aloft, bears a shock of angular twigs and among the glossy, orange-red leaves hang fruits the size and shape of his Northern crabapples. The rich orange-red makes it extremely attractive, and the enthusiasm with which the entire population regards the approaching persimmon harvest focuses his interest likewise upon this unknown Southern fruit. He is eager to taste it without delay, and usually there is no one to object. Forthwith he climbs the tree, or beats a branch with a long pole until a good specimen is obtained. Its thin skin covers the mellow flesh--but the first bite is not followed by a second. The fruit is so puckery that it almost strangles one.

But after the frosts and well on into the winter the persimmons grow more sweet, juicy, and delicious, and lose all their bitterness and astringency. To find a few of these sugary morsels in the depths of the woods at the end of a long day's hunting is a reward that offsets all disappointments of an empty bag. No fruit could be more utterly satisfying to a dry-mouthed, leg-weary, hungry boy.

The opossum is the chief competitor of the local negro in harvesting the persimmon crop. Individual trees differ in the excellence of their fruit. These special trees are "spotted" months before the crop is fit to eat. It would seem as if the opossums camp under the best persimmon trees and take an unfair advantage, because they are nocturnal beasts and have nothing to do but watch and wait. One thing solaces the negro, when he sees the harvest diminish through the unusual industry and appetite of his bright-eyed, rat-tailed rival. He knows what brush-pile or hollow tree shelters the opossum, while he sleeps by day. Every persimmon the opossum steals helps to make him fat and tender for the darkey's Thanksgiving feast, so it is only a question of patience and strategy to recoup his losses by feasting on his fat 'possum neighbor, and to boast to the friends who join him at the feast, of the contest of wits at which he came off victorious.

In summer time a persimmon tree is handsome in its oval pointed leaves, often six inches long, with pale linings. The flowers that appear in axillary clusters on the sterile trees are small, yellowish green and inconspicuous. On the fertile trees the flowers are solitary and axillary. The fruit is technically a berry, containing one to eight seeds.

The following first impressions of persimmons in Virginia woods are from the pen of a traveler in the early part of the seventeenth century, whom Pocahontas might have introduced to a fruit well known to the Indians:

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"They have a plumb which they call pessemmins, like to a medler, in England, but of a deeper tawnie cullour; they grow on a most high tree. When they are not fully ripe, they are harsh and choakie, and furre in a man's mouth like allam, howbeit, being taken fully ripe, yt is a reasonable pleasant fruiet, somewhat lushious. I have seen our people put them into their baked and sodden puddings; there be whose tast allows them to be as pretious as the English apricock; I confess it is a good kind of horse plumb."

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"'Simmon beer" and brandy are made from the fruit, and its seeds are roasted to use when coffee is scarce. The inner bark of the tree has tonic properties, and the country folk use it for the allaying of intermittent fevers. The wood is used in turnery, for shoe lasts, plane stocks and shuttles. It is a peculiarity of the persimmon tree that almost one hundred layers of pale sap-wood, the growth of as many years, lie outside of the black heart-wood, upon which the reputation of ebony rests.

The Japanese Persimmon

Kaki

The native persimmon of Japan has been developed into an important horticultural fruit. China also has species that are fruit trees of merit. In the fruit stalls of all American cities, the Japanese persimmon is found in its season, the smooth, orange-red skin, easily mistaken for that of a tomato as the fruits lie in their boxes. The pointed cones differ in form, however, and the soft mellow flesh, with its melon-like seeds and leathery calyx at base, mark this fruit as still a novelty in the East.

In southern California no garden is complete without a Japanese persimmon tree to give beauty by its cheerful, leathery, green leaves and its rich-colored fruits. But the beginner will establish a grave personal prejudice against this fruit unless he wait until it is dead ripe, for it has the astringent qualities of its genus. No fruit is more delicate in flavor than a thoroughly ripe kaki, so soft that it must be eaten with a spoon.

The Department of Agriculture at Washington has established a number of varieties of these oriental fruit trees in the warmer parts of the United States. Our native persimmons are being used as stock upon which to graft the exotics. A distinct addition to the fruits of this country has thus been made and the public is fast learning to enjoy the luscious, wholesome Japanese persimmons.