Archive for January, 2012
The documentation of ancient plums growing in antiquity is sparse. The best evidence of that oldest existence is best documented through America’s most famous pomologist, Luther Burbank, who reported in his twelve volume botanical literary classic, Small Fruits, Volume IV page 136, that the European plum, Prunus domestica, and its ancestor fruit originated in the Caucasus Mountains near the Caspian Sea. Burbank detailed evidence that the prune (dried plum) was a staple food of the Tartars, Mongols, Turks, and Huns “who maintained a crude horticulture from a very early period.” Several websites have put forth the absurd idea that, because the European plum, Prunus domestica, seeds were not found in the ruins of Pompeii after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, “whereas, most other old world fruits were,” that this plum could be concluded to be a recent hybrid of “spontaneous chromosome” doubling to produce a hexaploid offspring.
The earliest reference to plum history in the American colonies came from Prince Nursery of Flushing, New York, that was established in 1737 and reported in 1771 in an advertisement “33 kinds of plums” for sale. These plum trees were no doubt European plums, Prunus domestica.
After the year 1755, Henry Laurens, who was a guest and friend of Wililam Bartram, introduced olives, limes, ginger, everbearing strawberry, red raspberry, and blue grapes into the United States. From the south of France he introduced apples, pears, plums, and the white Chasselas grape which bore abundantly. Henry Laurens lived in Charleston, South Carolina and served as a President of the Continental Congress.
William Bartram described two species of American plums in his famous book, Travels, in his 1792 trip to Georgia, where he identified the Chicasaw plum, Prunus chicasaw, and in Alabama, he found a wild plum, Prunus indica.
Luther Burbank contributed more toward improving and hybridizing plum trees of different species than any other person in history. His work on the plum group of stone fruits stands apart from any other person for his unequaled contribution to improving various fruits that are grown and enjoyed today.
Burbank states that his importation of twelve plum seedlings in the year 1885 was the “most important importation of fruit bearers ever made at a single time into America.”
Burbank brought plums from all over the world and intercrossed them in a giant “melting pot” to produce the best characteristics and to reject the wrong ones. These genetic plum mixtures were recombined for many generations and resulted in plum hybrids today that are so different from the original species as to appear to be new species.
Burbank stated that he spent more time hybridizing plums than with any other plant breeding program, and he reported that he screened 7.5 million plum hybrid seedling crosses before releasing outstanding cultivars for sale. His famous line of plum trees that were popular in the late 1890’s are still admired and grown commercially for sale and in backyard gardens today, such as Burbank, Santa Rosa, Wickson, Golden, Satsuma, Shiro, and Ozark Premier. His first huge success was applauded by USDA Professor, H.E. Van Deman, who suggested that the pick-of-the-lot creation of Luther Burbank be named after its creator, thus, the “Burbank Plum.”
Most of Burbank’s plum tree successes come from his combining the genetic materials of 4 major types of plums whose ancestry came from Japan, Europe, America, and China.
The most successful crosses between plums come from the Japanese plum, the most exotic, ‘Satsuma,’ the name suggested by Professor H.E. Van Deman of the USDA, who identified it as being imported from the Satsuma province in Japan. This unique plum grew a red skin with a pale-blue netting bloom overlay. The pulp was dark purplish-red, firm, tasty with an excellent quality to be preferred for home use.
Burbank’s experimental species were Japanese plums, Prunus triflora, that grew wild in Japan and were pickled by the natives. The Japanese plums grew in many colors in skin from white to purple, were large and rather tasteless, but the Japanese natives ate them while green and hard. The Japanese plum genes appear to dominate most hybrid plum offspring. Chinese plums, Prunus simonii, were aromatic, with rich colored skins, a small pit, but the skin cracks and the fruit tastes bitter.
European plums, Prunus domestica, are varied in sizes, largest to small, sweet or sour, complex genes, many colored skins, very widely adaptable, good for fresh eating, drying, or canning. The disadvantage: they are too juicy or watery. “Green Gage” is a well known standard European cultivar. Prunes are very high in sugar content.
Several species of America plums are very hardy and productive to the extent of covering the ground in spring with several layers of fruit. These plums can be tasty but have poor shipping quality. Burbank released an excellent hybrid strain of this cross called “Robinson plum.”
Several American native plum species have been used in hybridization experiments by Luther Burbank. American plums, Prunus Americana, wild goose plums, Prunus hortulans, the chicasaw plum, Prunus augustifolia, Western sand plum, Prunus besseyi, the beach plum, Prunus maritima, and the California wild plum, Prunus subcordata. These native plum trees are unusually cold hardy and frigid temperatures do no harm to them, even in the northernmost part of the central United States.
The “Myrobalan” plum originated as a French species, Prunus cerasifera is used extensively as a peach tree and plum tree rootstock that tends to be compatible with the resulting fruit tree union and appears to be highly resistant to nematodes and root diseases.
Burbank’s goal in hybridizing plums was to produce a tree that had “stability, novelty, variety, hardiness, beauty, shipping quality and adaptability.”
The plum leaves and twigs exhibit many subtle characteristics that can be experienced by the plant hybridizer to predict the future characteristics of fruit that will be grown from small seedling crosses. Most hybridizers known from experience a predictable outcome, even though these plant qualities are too intangible to explain to an audience, like changing facial expressions or minute variations of color changes. If the leaves of a plant are dark red, the fruit will be red. This same phenomenon is applicable to flowers such as the canna lily leaf color, and the red rhizome color; or in the crinum lily cultivars, a red bulb means a red flower; a light green bulb means a white flower.
Luther Burbank developed a seedless plum by hybridizing a French plum cultivar, “Sans noyaii.” These plums develop into various skin colors ranging from white to yellow, orange scarlet, crimson, violet, deep blue, almost black, striped, spotted, and mottled. These seedless plums were delicious and unique, but were never commercially successful with growers or with public demand.
Burbank crossed many plums that had a tendency to produce fruit with a high sugar content, like the sweetness of figs, pineapple and oranges. This high sugar content makes it possible for the plum (prune) to insure long term preservation, when it is dried. The prune contains a thick and tough skin of such texture that is required to not crack when the commercial drying process begins and proceeds to deliver a tasty, honey-sweet fruit that lasts well.
A prune will not dry properly into a marketable fruit, unless the plum contains a sugar concentration of at least 15%. Before drying, the prune is submerged briefly into an alkali solution that prevents future fermentation by preventing microbes from growing on the surface of the skin. For satisfactory prune production commercially, a prune tree must be a reliable grower with an annual substantial crop of fruit. The prune must ripen early, when the days are long and warm and must drop from the tree to avoid expensive picking costs at the proper ripening time. The prune fruit must cure and dry to a black color and grow a small pit. Most prune hybrids have been hybridized from the European plum, Prunus domestica.
Many cultivars of Plums are recommended for planting: Blue Damson, Chicasaw, Elephant Heart, Green Egg, Methley, Morris, Stanley, Au Amber, Au Homeside, Au Rubrum, Black Ruby, Byrongold, Ruby Sweet, Six Weeks, and Plumcot are just among the few varieties of trees offered in the market today.
There are also three ornamental varieties of flowering plum trees recommend for planting: Newport, Prunus cerasifera ‘Newport’, Purple Pony Prunus cerasifera ‘Purple Pony’, and Red Leaf Plum Prunus cerasifera ‘Thundercloud’, flowering plum trees.
Burbank developed purple leaved plum trees from a French plum ancestor with purple leaves, Prunus pissardi, that commercially are sold as ‘Thundercloud’ flowering plum, Vesuvius, and Othello. Some of these red leaf flowering plums developed by Burbank grew delicious red fruit in addition to the beautiful red ornamental leaves.
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Jan
26
Have you ever noticed that there are some rooms you just love to go into and others that you find unsettling? Without realizing it colors affect our moods and the way we function. Interior decorators have known this for years and use it in their offerings on a daily basis but you don’t have to be a professional to learn how to use colors to your benefit.
How we react to color is usually on an unconscious and almost instinctual level and that reaction is purely our own. You may love the color blue because you find it soothing and calming whereas I may find that same color unsettling and a little disconcerting. There is no right or wrong reaction to any given color but there is scientific backup to show how the use of color affects our moods.
Try this little quiz to see if you can tell which color belongs to which effect:
1. blue ………………………A. energy, vitality, excitement
2. orange…………………… B. harmony and balance
3. red………………………..C. dramatic, sensual, sophisticated
4. yellow…………………….D. truth, serenity and harmony
5. green……………………..E. intellect, used for mental stimulation
6. purple…………………….F. social and exuberant, warmth
7. black……………………..G. purity, innocence and joy
8. white……………………..H. suppressive
9. pink……………………….I. restful and calming
10. grey…………………….. J. powerful, aloof, intimidating
You might be hard pressed to try to figure out which is which although some are fairly obvious because again we react to them on a subconscious level. I’ll give you a hint: pink is restful and calming and is the color of equilibrium. That is why delinquent children and even adults placed in pink holding cells had fewer outbursts when it was tried in the state of California. Conversely, couples fought more and babies cried more in a bright yellow room. These are the kinds of things you need to consider when painting and decorating your home. Green is a restful color and will help you sleep so it would be a good choice for bedrooms. This might be ringing some bells for you as you recall color schemes that were wrong for the atmosphere you were trying to create in a given room. Perhaps your yellow and white bedroom looked beautiful in the daylight but was unsettling when you were trying to relax and fall asleep. Keeping this knowledge in mind can help you enormously when you are ready to redecorate.
Start with determining what the room is going to be used for. Do you want to use warm colors that stimulate activity or warm colors that create a more tranquil mood? Check out www.littlemonkeymurals.com for more information on colors and great ideas for decorating.
Colors not only enhance the atmosphere of a room but they can also visually change the dimensions of a room. The use of warm colors makes things like doors seem to stand out more and cool colors tend to recede or withdraw. You have to be careful though as there is a fine line between a color being aggressive and that same color being cozy. Usually the difference lies in the tones used. Walls, like our waistlines, appear longer and taller with vertical stripes.
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It is a fact that the local library may be a good source of advice regarding bed products, advances such as the internet may often make us neglect the various other home improvement resources which are all around and freely available to all of us, you should definitely make use of such sources of cost free bed guidance, good bed product info can on occasions be hard to find.
The bed experts will be capable offering you a lot of prime niche assistance on matters such as getting the best deals on and how to obtain the proper item guarantee whenever getting a bed, their bed expertise will surely help you get the best product for your needs.
Most online interior design research can uncover a vast number of items, lots of bed sites will often have a whole load of merchandise, this might often be truly overpowering, heavy duty bed frames, black iron beds, there are so many products to choose from nowadays, it might then be difficult to decide the best product to buy.
Quite obviously home furnishing is a subject that covers a serious area of diverse bed items like heavy duty bed frames and water bed sheet sets, say that you wanted particular details on an area of beds, say for instance futon sofas, this might very well be sourced with the help of a bed specialist.
Quite obviously home furnishing is a subject that covers a serious area of diverse bed items like heavy duty bed frames and adjustable twin beds, say that you wanted particular details on an area of beds, say for instance water bed inserts, this might very well be sourced with the help of a bed specialist.
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Japanese persimmons, ‘Diospyros kaki L.,’ were introduced into the United States from Japan by Admiral Perry who discovered the fruit growing on the coast of Southern Japan in 1851.
Most of the early Japanese persimmon introductions in 1828 were sprouted from seed in Washington, DC, but were unsuccessful, because of the unusually cold winters experienced during that period.
The USDA introduced grafted cultivars of Japanese persimmon into California and Georgia beginning in 1870, and many of these experimental persimmon tree trials were begun in Central Florida in the early 1900’s at the University located in Gainesville, Florida.
One thousand cultivars of Japanese persimmon are available from Japan, but from the hundreds of tree cultivars tested in the United States during the past years, only a handful of commercial trees should be considered by the home gardener for reliable fruit production.
The cultivars of Japanese persimmon trees recommended for home gardeners are Fuyu, Fuyugaki, Giant Fuyu, Chocolate, Eureka, Hachiya, Jiro, Tam-o-pan, and Tanenashi.
Many cultivars were planted in Florida by Professor Hume of the University of Florida at Gainesville, Florida during the early 1900’s. The trees were a sensation because of the prolific early bearing and the observation that the trees ripened into large crops of colorful, juicy fruit in late fall when very few fresh delicacies are available. Reports of early Japanese persimmon tree orchards show that in excess of 22,000 trees were being grown commercially in Florida alone. The Japanese persimmon trees are classifieds into two categories using two terms that confuse most people. The use of the term “non” is interpreted by most people as a negative, meaning a tree that demonstrates a less desirable quality. Japanese persimmon trees produce fruit that is non-astringent or astringent. The non-astringent term in this case is more desirable for eating to the prevailing garden public, because it contains a “non” bitter taste in the green or hard fruit state. Eventually the astringent Japanese persimmon fruit will develop a juicy, flavorful, very desirable, taste when it ripens to the point of being soft. The peak flavor of a Japanese persimmon never really climaxes until both the non-astringent and the astringent persimmon both ripen completely on the tree to the point of softness. The use of these terms in recommending the purchase of Japanese persimmon trees has been unfortunate, to the point of discouraging many gardeners from planting trees of the astringent persimmon cultivars. Plum trees, for instance, are not classified into two categories of sour and sweet, even though a hard green plum before fully ripening is sour to taste, yet it becomes pleasantly sweet and juicy in the soft colored stage.
Some botanist historians argue that the Japanese persimmon tree documented as growing there one thousand years ago actually originated in China. This argument is often repeated by academics, when national origins of plants are debated about many other plants, but the argument is meaningless. It is realized by geologists that the land boundary of Japan was united to the continent of Asia at some past period of ancient history.
Japanese persimmon fruits are produced in great numbers by California orchardists and the fruit begins showing up on grocery shelves around Thanksgiving. South American persimmon fruit production matures at different seasons than persimmons, ripening period in America, so that many grocery stores can stock this delicious tasty fruit year round. Japanese oriental fruits can be stored for two months for future consumption at a refrigerator temperature of 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Read the rest of this entry »