U. P. Hedrick

The magnitude of the cherry industry in the United States is not generally appreciated. This is because cherries are very largely grown in small home plantations and the product is either consumed at home and in local markets, or is sent to canning factories and is therefore disposed of without the display attending the production and marketing of fruits sold in the general market. The following figures from the last census show the importance of the industry. There were in 1909, according to the census taken in 1910, 11,822,044 bearing cherry trees in the United States and 5,621,660 trees not of bearing age. The bearing trees bore 4,126,099 bushels of fruit valued at $7,231,160. When this, the thirteenth census, was taken, the cherry ranked fifth in commercial value among orchard fruits, being surpassed in the order named by the apple, peach, plum and pear.

The yield of fruit was 43.6 per centum greater in 1909 than in 1899. This high percentage of increase has been brought about in several ways. The recent development of rapid transportation, refrigerator service and of marketing facilities has greatly stimulated the culture of this as of all other fruits in the United States. An increased demand for canned and preserved cherries has sprung up so that cherries are much more used now than formerly, the trade in preserved cherries for confections and various drinks in particular having greatly increased. Lastly, better care of orchards and better means of combating insects and fungi have increased the yields during the last decade.

Cherries are grown in greater or less quantities in every state in the Union but commercially the industry is confined to a few states having especial advantages in climate, soil and markets. In but six states, according to the last census, was the value of the cherry crop more than a half-million dollars, the states being: California $951,654, Pennsylvania $909,975, Ohio $657,406, Michigan $590,829, New York $544,508, Indiana $508,516. In New York in particular, recent plantings of this fruit have been so great that at this writing, July, 1914, the figures given for this State could be increased by a quarter at the very least, and no doubt they could be largely increased also for California and Michigan. The great growth of the canning industry is most largely responsible for the large plantings of cherries in recent years in regions especially suited to this fruit.

In the several states named, the cherry industry is further localized. Thus, in the 61 counties in New York, the cherry is grown largely in but 12, the number of trees in each of these being: Columbia 78,526, Niagara 61,786, Monroe 49,831, Ontario 36,394, Wayne 35,385, Erie 29,483, Onondaga 25,932, Seneca 27,063, Chautauqua 24,483, Steuben 15,412, Orleans 14,682 and Cayuga 14,319. If the figures just given, the total number being 413,296, are compared with the number of trees in the State, 674,000, it will be seen that the industry is quite localized, two-thirds of the cherries being grown in 12 of the 61 counties, though the fact is brought out in the census that cherries are grown on 59,408 farms in New York, showing that this fruit is much grown for home use. Further figures of interest as regards New York are that the cherry crop in 1909 amounted to 271,597 bushels which sold for $544,508. The plantings in the State cover in the neighborhood of 9,500 acres.

A canvass of the leading cherry-growers and nurserymen in the United States shows that, in all parts of the country excepting California, Oregon and Washington, Sour Cherries are much more commonly grown than Sweet Cherries. In New York at least 90 per cent of the cherry trees are of sour varieties and this proportion will hold for the region east of the Rockies. The leading commercial varieties of Sour Cherries, in order named, are Montmorency, Early Richmond and English Morello. No other variety is nearly as commonly grown as is even the least well known of these three. No one of the Duke cherries is mentioned as of commercial importance, but May Duke, Late Duke and Reine Hortense are frequently grown in home plantations.

Growers of Sweet Cherries are not nearly as closely in accord as to the best varieties as are those who grow sour sorts. The most popular Sweet Cherries in the East seem to be Windsor, Black Tartarian, Napoleon and Wood with a very insistent statement of the few who have tried it that Schmidt is better than any of these for the market. On the Pacific Coast honors go to Napoleon, which the Westerners continue to call Royal Ann despite the fact that it has been cultivated for three centuries and had been called Napoleon for nearly a half-century before Lewelling took it to Oregon in 1847. Other popular sorts on the Pacific seaboard are Bing, Lambert and Republican—all western productions.

Rather more important than the information obtained from growers of cherry trees as to varieties was that as to the stocks on which cherries are grown in America. This brings us to a discussion of the whole subject of stocks for cherries.

STOCKS FOR CHERRIES

Cherries have been grown in America for over 200 years and for 50 years the crop has been important commercially. Yet despite the extent and the importance of the industry and the years it has been in existence, curiously enough so fundamental a question as the best stock upon which to grow cherries has not yet been settled; indeed, though cherries behave markedly different on the several stocks, interest as to which is the best seems but recently to have been aroused. Now there is a rather warm controversy as to which is the better of the two leading stocks, the Mazzard or the Mahaleb.

Fruit-growers on one side hold that the Mazzard is the best stock for all orchard varieties of this fruit while nurserymen controvert this view and say that the Mahaleb is at least a fit stock for sweet sorts and is the best one for Sour Cherries, and, moreover, that it is now impossible to grow cherries on Mazzard roots at prices that fruit-growers are willing to pay. Since no systematic attempts seem to have been made to determine the peculiarities and values of these two and other cherry stocks both sides dispute without many facts. Meanwhile, a fine crop of misunderstandings has grown up about the whole matter of cherry stocks. It is worth while to attempt to clear up some of the misunderstandings. The first step toward this end is to describe and give the botanical and horticultural relationships of the Mazzard and Mahaleb cherries to orchard cherries.

The Mazzard, as we have seen, is a common name, of uncertain origin, of the wild Sweet Cherry, Prunus avium, from which has come all cultivated Sweet Cherries. It is important to recall that the trees of the Mazzard reach a height of thirty or forty feet and the trunk often attains a diameter of eighteen or twenty inches. Other characters to be kept in mind are that the Mazzard lacks hardiness to cold but grows vigorously and is usually healthy, though susceptible to several fungi, one of which, the shot-hole fungus, Cylindrosporium padi, makes it a most difficult plant to grow in the nursery. Trees and fruit coming from the Mazzard used as a stock are very uniform, a fact easy to ascertain in New York where this stock has been largely used for nearly a century. The Mazzard is almost always grown from seed for stocks though suckers are occasionally used—a poor practice.

PRUNUS AVIUM (MAZZARD)

The Mazzard, or at least the Sweet Cherry, has probably been more or less used as a stock since the earliest cultivation of this fruit. The Greeks and Romans practiced budding and grafting centuries before Christ's time and when the cherry came to them as a domesticated fruit, at least three or four centuries before Christ, they undoubtedly made use of budding and grafting40 to maintain varieties and in the case of the Sour Cherry, if they had it, and they probably did, to avoid the suckers that spring from the roots of the trees. The literature of fruit-growing is scant and fragmentary during the Middle Ages but beginning with the herbals in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries there are many treatises on fruits and botany and in several of these the use of the wild Sweet Cherry, the Mazzard, is mentioned.41

In America the Mazzard as a stock probably came into use soon after the establishment of Prince's nursery at Flushing, Long Island, about 1730, budding and grafting seeming to have been little practiced in the New World before the founding of this nursery.42 The use of the Mazzard as a stock is mentioned probably for the first in Coxe's Fruit Trees,43 the second American treatise on fruits, published in 1817, and again in Thacher's American Orchardist, published in 1822.44 Both authors, as the foot-notes show, speak of the use of this stock as if it were in common use in American nurseries. Neither mentions the Mahaleb.

The Mahaleb, Prunus mahaleb, it will be remembered from the description previously given, is a bush or bush-like cherry, sometimes but not often attaining the height and port of a tree. The top is thick, with rather slender ramifying branches bearing small, green, smooth, glossy leaves, which resemble those of the apricot more than they do the leaves of either species of orchard cherries. The fruits are at first green, then yellowish, turning to red and at full maturity are shining, black and so hard, bitter and astringent as to be scarcely edible. This brief description of Prunus mahaleb shows that it is quite distinct from either our commonly cultivated Sweet Cherry, Prunus avium, or the Sour Cherry, Prunus cerasus, differing from either much more than the two edible species differ from each other. It is quite as far removed from the Sweet or the Sour Cherry botanically as the apple is from the pear, the quince, or the thorn and if anything more distantly related than orchard cherries are to plums. One would expect the wood structure of the Mahaleb to differ from that of Sweet or Sour Cherries very materially and that even if the union proved in budding or grafting wholly normal that there would be some difficulty in the proper passage of nutritive solutions between stock and cion. This cherry, as we have seen, is propagated almost entirely from seed though it may easily be grown from layers, cuttings and suckers. The American supply of Mahaleb stock comes from France.

The Mahaleb seems to have come into use as a stock for other cherries in France having been first mentioned for this purpose by Duhamel du Monceau in his Traite des Arbres Fruitiers in 1768.45

Miller in his Gardener's Dictionary, 1754, describes the Mahaleb cherry and says it was "Cultivated in 1714 by the Duchess of Beaufort." This seems to be the first mention of its culture in England though Gerarde in The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes describes it. Neither mentions its use as a stock. In fact, it seems not to have been mentioned as a stock in England until 1824 when Loudon in the Encyclopedia of Gardening speaks of it as "the most effectual dwarfing stock."46

It was not until after the middle of the Nineteenth Century that the Mahaleb came into use in America, none of the horticultural writers in the first half of the last century, as Cobbett, 1803; McMahon, 1806; Coxe, 1817; Thacher, 1822; Prince, 1828; Kenrick, 1833; Manning, 1838; Thomas, 1846; Floy, 1846, nor Cole, 1849, having mentioned the Mahaleb though nearly all speak of the Mazzard as the stock upon which cherries are budded. Downing, in 1845, makes first mention of the Mahaleb as a stock in the New World;47 Thomas in his second edition, 1851, recommends it as a stock to dwarf cherries;48 Barry, 1852, says that Mahaleb stock is imported from Europe;49 while Elliott, in 1854, also speaks of it as a dwarfing stock.50 From this date on the Mahaleb is mentioned in all American works on pomology in which stocks for cherries are discussed.

All know that the Sweet Cherry is a little difficult to grow—is capricious as to soils, climates, cultivation and pruning, and as to diseases and insects. The Mazzard now used for stocks has the faults of the species to which it belongs. The Mahaleb, on the other hand, is adapted to a greater diversity of soils; is hardier to either heat or cold; less particular about cultivation; will stand more cutting in the nursery if pruning be necessary; is less susceptible to aphids which in many parts of the United States trouble cherries in the nursery row; and, more to the point than all else, in New York at least, is not nearly as badly infested with the shot-hole fungus, Cylindrosporium padi, which often ruins plantations of Mazzard stock. Mahaleb stock, too, is more easily "worked" than the Mazzard both in the actual work of budding and in having a longer season for this nursery operation. Cherries on Mahaleb ripen their wood earlier than those on Mazzard and may thus be dug earlier in the fall.

Nurserymen and fruit-growers alike agree to this statement of the superior merits of the Mahaleb as a nursery plant. The facts set forth are matters of common observation—so well known that it is not necessary to verify them experimentally. A half-century of experience in America on many soils, in many climates and under widely varied conditions has demonstrated that it is easier to grow cherries in the nursery on the Mahaleb than on the Mazzard stock.

From experience in the orchard, fruit-growers have established several facts as to the relative value of Mazzard and Mahaleb stocks from their standpoint. These are:

1. Cherries on Mahaleb are hardier to cold than those on Mazzard stocks. This hardiness is due, in part at least, to the fact that cherry wood on Mahaleb ripens sooner than on Mazzard. This superior hardiness of the Mahaleb is evident in the nursery-row as well as in the orchard and is a matter of great importance in northern nursery regions. In this connection it should be said that the Mahaleb is not as hardy as might be wished and that there are, as we shall later show, still hardier stocks.

2. There is no question but that the Mahaleb is a dwarfing stock. It came into use and in Europe continues to serve almost the sole purpose of dwarfing varieties worked upon it. This retarding effect is not fully realized by American cherry-growers because for the first few years the diminution in size is not apparent and even at the close of a decade the difference in size is not as marked as it would be between standard and dwarf apples or pears of the same age.

3. Cherry-growers who have tried both stocks agree that most varieties come in bearing earlier on Mahaleb than on Mazzard stocks. From the known effects of dwarfing on other fruit trees this would be expected.

4. The size of the cherries is the same on trees grown on the two stocks. The claim is made that apples and pears are a little larger on dwarf trees and that when peaches and plums are dwarfed the fruit is smaller. No one seems to have seen or to have thought that there are differences in the size of cherries grown on Mazzard or Mahaleb stock.

In the colder parts of New York and of the United States, undoubtedly seedlings of Russian cherries would make hardy and in most other respects very desirable stocks. These Russian cherries, too, as a rule, come nearly or quite true to seed, making very good orchard plants on their own roots. Some of them, if not most of them, sprout rather badly—not so serious a fault as one might think, especially in a cultivated orchard. For budding over to other varieties only sour sorts should be used, taking for trial such varieties as Bessarabian, Brusseler Braune, Double Natte, George Glass, Lutovka, Early Morello, Ostheim and Vladimir. Probably most of these would dwarf standard varieties more or less but in no case is it to be supposed that they would have the dwarfing effect of Mahaleb. In the North Mississippi Valley some of these, especially of the Ostheim or Morello type, have been very successfully used as stocks.

The small, wild, red cherry locally known as the Bird, Pin and as the Pigeon Cherry, Prunus pennsylvanica, found from the Atlantic to the eastern slopes of the Coast Range on the Pacific in northern United States and southern Canada, is often used as a hardy stock. The writer has seen it so used in northern Michigan but from his observation can recommend it only for cold regions and as a makeshift since it dwarfs standard varieties and usually suckers badly. W. T. Macoun, Ottawa, Canada, Dominion Horticulturist, states that this stock is commonly used in the colder parts of Canada and with good results. This cherry is not as distantly related to orchard varieties as the Mahaleb and unites with Sour Cherries at least as readily as does the Mahaleb.

In the West and Northwest the Sand Cherry, Prunus pumila, is used very successfully in cold, dry regions as a stock for Sour Cherries. The following is a very good account of its behavior from the pen of the late Professor J. L. Budd, a pioneer cherry grower in the Middle West.51

"Those who have seen acres of the Sandy Cherry in the northwest loaded with fruit have not been ready to believe it a good stock for the cherry on account of its sprawling bushy habits of growth. But those who have watched its growth when young under culture on rich soil can comprehend the fact that it is as easy to work as the Mahaleb. As with the Mahaleb the seedlings grown in seed bed will be large enough to set in nursery row the next spring, and of good size for August budding. To illustrate its rapidity and uprightness of growth I will state that we rooted a few cuttings in plant house last winter. When set in nursery they had made a show of growth of from two to four inches, yet at budding time, the middle of August, they were fully as large, stocky and upright as the Mahalebs, and in all respects in as perfect condition for budding.

"This hardiest of all cherries is very closely related to our garden cherries, so nearly indeed that our botanists long ago decided that valuable crosses on it might be made.

"As yet its use for stocks is somewhat experimental, but we can say positively that it united well with our hardy sorts in budding, and it does not dwarf the sorts worked upon it to a greater extent during the first five years of growth than does the Mahaleb."

There are records of the Choke Cherry, Prunus virginiana,52 and of the Rum, or wild Black Cherry, Prunus serotina, having been used as stocks but these long-bunch, or racemose, cherries are so distantly related to the short-bunch, or fascicled, orchard cherries that it would seem that their use would be desirable only under great stress.

In Japan a horticultural variety of Prunus pseudocerasus is used as a stock. Of this cherry for this purpose, Professor Yugo Hoshino of the Tohoku Imperial University at Sapporo, Japan, writes as follows:

"You wish to know about the cherry stocks used in this country. It is very rare to use our common wild cherry as a stock for European cherries. In Hokkaido (Yozo Island), we commonly use the seedlings of European Sweet and Sour Cherries as stocks. But in the northern part of Japan proper (Main Island), it is a common practice to graft European cherries on a special kind of our cherry. This cherry has particular characters which fit it for propagation; namely, it roots very easily either from cuttings or by layering (mound). Its botanical position is not certain, but it is probable that it is a cultural variety of Pseudocerasus, especially bred for stock purposes. It is grown by nurserymen only and called Dai-Sakura. (Dai means stock: Sakura means cherry.) It has a somewhat dwarfing influence on cions and hastens their fruiting age."

This stock ought to be tried in America if, indeed, it is not already under cultivation from introductions made by the United States Department of Agriculture.

These are but a few of many cherries that have been or might be tried as stocks for orchard varieties. There are many species of cherries more closely related to the cultivated edible sorts than the Mahaleb. Many of the cherries from Asia, not now known to growers, will eventually find their way to America; a few have already been introduced by the United States Department of Agriculture; some of them can undoubtedly be used as stocks and from them we may hope to find a better stock than either the Mazzard or Mahaleb.

Cherries are now grown almost wholly as budded trees but they can be more or less readily root-grafted, depending upon the variety. Under some circumstances it might be profitable to propagate them by grafting. Usually it is necessary to use a whole root and to graft at the crown of the stock. Budd recommends this practice for Iowa, using Mazzard stock but with the expectation that the cion will take root and eventually the tree will stand on its own roots.53 We cannot believe, however, that grafting can ever take the place of budding as a nursery practice or that it can be profitably used except in very exceptional cases.

Buds in propagating are usually taken from nursery stock, a practice of decades, and there is no wearing out of varieties. Old varieties have lost none of the characters accredited to them a century, or several centuries, ago by pomological writers. Nor does it seem to matter, in respect to trueness to type, whether the buds be taken from a vigorous, young stripling, a mature tree in the heyday of life or some struggling, lichen-covered ancient—all alike reproduce the variety. The hypothesis that fruit-trees degenerate or, on the other hand, that they may be improved by bud-selection, finds no substantiation in this fruit. There seems to be no limit to the number of times its varieties can be propagated true to type from buds.

CHERRY CLIMATES AND CHERRY SOILS

Climate and soil have been the chief determinants of location for cherry-growing in New York. Both Sweet Cherries and Sour Cherries are profoundly influenced by the natural environment in which they are grown—Sweet Cherries rather more so than any other fruit, either climate or soil dictating whether they may or may not be grown.

The Sour Cherry is at home in a great variety of climates, the vagaries of weather affecting it but little. It is probably the hardiest to cold, in some of its varieties at least, of all our tree fruits, thriving almost to the Arctic Circle and from there southward, in some of its forms, quite to the limits of the Temperate Zone. The blossoming season is relatively late so that fruit-setting is seldom prevented by spring frosts. Yet, even with this hardy fruit, it is necessary to take thought of heat and cold in growing commercial crops; for spring frosts may wither the bloom or summer heat and wind blast the crop if the orchard site be not well selected as regards local weather.

The Sweet Cherry, on the other hand, must be coddled in every turn of the season, in climatic requirements being particularly sensitive to heat and cold. This cherry stands with the peach in not being able to survive temperatures much below zero and in suffering greatly from spring frosts because of early blooming. It is even more susceptible to heat than the peach, and especially cannot endure long-continued heat, both fruit and foliage suffering. The Sweet Cherry is at its best in a warm, sunny, genial, equable climate. The Duke cherries, hybrids between the Sweet and the Sour species, in the matter of hardiness are midway between the hardy Sours and the tender Sweets though this is but a very general statement applying to the group as a whole and not to individual varieties. Some of these withstand cold and heat well while others are tender in either extreme.

Cherries are more at the mercy of moisture than of temperature conditions. Continued rain at blossoming time will almost surely prevent a proper setting of fruit; and the cherries crack, and brown-rot becomes exceedingly aggressive if there is wet weather in harvest time. Late summer rainfall to supply moisture to the trees is a matter of small concern to the cherry-grower, for growth begins early and the crop is off the trees before summer droughts usually begin. Where irrigation is practiced water for the cherry is safely supplied at most seasons of the year except when harvest is in swing at which time the cherries will swell and crack if there be too much water.

As with all fruits the direction, temperature and humidity of winds are factors which decree whether or not cherries can be grown profitably either in a locality or a region. A pocket in the hills filled with dead air or a wind-swept highland would be unsatisfactory extremes; for, in the first case, fungi, especially the dreaded brown-rot, would take too great toll, and, in the second, blossoms would be blasted or foliage frazzled and the fruit whipped. The harsh, drying winds of winter, too, would be disastrous to Sweet Cherry culture and if extreme, as on the Great Plains, wood and buds of Sour Cherries would suffer. Artificial wind-breaks have not been found profitable in the hilly and wooded East, entailing too many disadvantages, but if cherries be planted at all in the prairies of the Middle West, some protection from the winds must usually be provided.

The two species from which cultivated cherries come grow with proper vigor in quite different soils. The Sour Cherry and most of its hybrid offspring, the Dukes, may be made to grow in almost any arable soil, but the Sweet Cherry is fastidious—to be pleased only by particular soils.

Sour Cherry orchards in New York most excel on strong, even-tempered, loamy soils, naturally or artificially well drained yet retentive of moisture. There is possibly a shade of difference in favor of clay loams and some thriving plantations may be found on stiff clays having good depth and good drainage. Wet, sticky clays underlaid with a cold, clammy subsoil—a combination all too common in Central New York—furnish conditions which defy the best of care and culture.

Sweet Cherry orchards are found excelling on lighter, and less fertile soils than those we have described for the grosser feeding Sours. Growers of Sweet Cherries conceive a perfect soil for this fruit to be a naturally dry, warm, deep, free-working, gravelly or sandy loam. If the soil is not naturally dry, it must be made so by artificial drainage, for this fruit is most impatient of too much moisture or a root-run restricted by water. In Sweet Cherry soils, as will be surmised, it is difficult to supply humus yet this must be done either by cover crops or by manure to make the soil sufficiently retentive of moisture. Sweet Cherries can be grown on other soils than those under discussion but, for a large, firm, finely finished product for the markets, only the soils described are suitable.

The conditions of soil and climate, as we have briefly defined them, that favor cherry culture are to be found in several parts of New York. Briefly we may name and describe the cherry regions of the State as follows:

The undulating, maritime plains of Long Island, covered with a thick deposit of sand, are very well adapted to cherries where the soil is rich enough to come under the plow. The genial climate, with its rather heavy rainfall, is precisely that in which the cherry thrives, the region falling short in the poorness of the soil—a fault easily remedied, where there is good bottom, by manuring. Despite the fact that occasional trees and plantations show that this fruit thrives on Long Island the cherry is not much grown here, the industry needing some leader to show the way.

The valley of the Hudson from where the river leaves the mountains on the north to its entrance into the highlands of its lower stretch is admirably adapted to cherry-growing, both climate and soil meeting the requirements of this fruit. In parts of the valley the industry has been developed, Columbia County taking first place among the counties of the State, with its 78,526 trees in 1909. The product of this region goes chiefly to the great city market near at hand. Unfortunately the standard of cultivation is low in the Hudson Valley and the handling and marketing of the crop is also on a lower level than westward in the State. The cherry harvest is earlier here than elsewhere in New York, if we except the small crop of Long Island, an advantage, for prices usually fall rather than stiffen as the season advances.

The great basin in which lie the Central Lakes of New York is far famed for its Sour Cherry industry, the product going largely to canneries. Some Sweet Cherries are grown—more and more are being planted—about these lakes; but the rich, heavy soils which mostly prevail hereabouts are more fit for varieties of the Sour Cherry; though the equable climate makes almost certain the Sweet Cherry crop on soils suited to its culture. Here, as elsewhere in the State, the acreage at this writing is greatly on the increase though it is doubtful if the advance will much longer weather the present depression in prices. All through this region, as in that to the north, the Sweet Cherry grows wild, thriving like the Biblical bay—seemingly a sheer gift of the soil and, like other gifts, generally neglected.

The high plain along the shore of Lake Ontario from the St. Lawrence River to the Niagara River, extending from the lake on the north from ten to fifteen miles inland, is the region of greatest possibilities for the cherry in New York. The climate of this great stretch of territory is nearly perfect for this fruit and the soils are sufficiently diversified to furnish a suitable habitat for any of the many varieties of either Sweet or Sour cherries. In the past there have been so many ups and downs in the cherry industry that fruit-growers in this favored belt have given more attention to other fruits but for the last decade, until the recent downward turn in the cherry market, the plantings have been greatly increased, both Sweet and Sour cherries finding favor.

Not unlike the Ontario shore in climate, but quite unlike it in its soils, is the shore of Lake Erie, the most westward topographical division of New York in which cherries are grown. The mainstay of this region is the grape, but, in seeking for a more diversified agriculture, Sour Cherry culture was introduced some twenty years ago and has become a thriving industry with prospects of continued growth. Here, as is so often the case in agriculture, credit must be given to some one leader for the development of a crop and the cherry orchards that dot the landscape for miles about the home of the late John Spencer speak eloquently of his leadership in this region.

A necessary accompaniment to a discussion of climate is a statement of the dates of blooming of the various sorts of cherries; for often, through selection with reference to this life event of the plant, injurious climatal influences may be escaped at blooming-time. In the accompanying table averages of the blooming dates of varieties of cherries for the years just past, 1912 to 1914, are given.

In making use of these dates, consideration must be given to the environment of the orchards at Geneva. The latitude of the Smith Astronomical Observatory, a quarter of a mile from the Station orchards, is 42° 52' 46.2"; the altitude of the orchards is from five hundred to five hundred and twenty-five feet above the sea level. The soil is a stiff and rather cold clay; the orchards lie about a mile west of Seneca Lake, a body of water forty miles in length and from one to three and one-half miles in width and more than six hundred feet deep. The lake has frozen over but a few times since the region was settled, over a hundred years ago, and has a very beneficial influence on the adjacent country in lessening the cold of winter and the heat of summer and in preventing early blooming.

The dates are those of full bloom. They were taken from trees grown under normal conditions as to pruning, distance apart, and as to all other factors which might influence the blooming period. An inspection of the table shows that there is a variation of several days between the time of full bloom of the different varieties of the same species. These differences can be utilized in selecting sorts to avoid injury from frost.

THE POLLINATION OF CHERRIES

We cannot complain in New York of much uncertainty in the setting of the cherry crop. Late spring frosts occasionally catch the blossoms of Sweet varieties but seldom those of the Sour sorts. Cold weather, especially if accompanied by wet weather, not unfrequently cuts short the cherry crop by preventing proper setting. There is, however, no general complaint of poor crops through self-sterility. In fact from the behavior of perfectly isolated trees in all parts of the State it would be premised that the cherry is most nearly self-fertile of all tree-fruits.

Yet there may be orchards or seasons in which cross-pollination cuts a figure, for Gardner54, of the Oregon Station, found in experiments carried on by him in various parts of Oregon that many varieties of Sweet Cherries in the Pacific Coast environment are self-sterile. The work seems to have been very carefully done and the conclusions are worth reprinting in full, bearing in mind that they would be much modified under New York conditions. Gardener found:

"1. All the varieties of the Sweet Cherry tested are self-sterile. This self-sterility is in no case due to a lack of germinability of the pollen produced. On the other hand, the pollen of each of the varieties studied is capable of producing a set of fruit on the variety or varieties with which it is inter-fertile. The list includes Bing, Black Republican, Black Tartarian, Coe, Early Purple, Elton, Knight, Lambert, Major Francis, May Duke, Napoleon, Rockport, Waterhouse, Willamette, Windsor, Wood.

"2. Certain of these varieties—Bing, Lambert, and Napoleon are mentioned especially—are inter-sterile. Mixed plantings of these three varieties cannot be expected to set fruit unless the trees are within the range of influence of some other variety or varieties that are inter-fertile with them.

"3. Among those studied, Black Republican, Black Tartarian, and Waterhouse seem to be the most efficient pollenizers for this group of varieties.

"4. Other good pollenizers that may be mentioned are: Elton, Wood, Coe, Major Francis, Early Purple. These, however, proved somewhat variable in their pollenizing abilities.

"5. Some of the seedling trees found in and about cherry orchards are efficient pollenizers for the three varieties—Bing, Lambert, Napoleon. Probably many of these seedling trees are efficient pollenizers, though the value of any particular seedling can be determined only by experiment or very careful observation.

"6. At least some members of the Duke group of cherries are capable of pollinating some of the Bigarreaus.

"7. At least some of the varieties of the Sour Cherry (P. cerasus) are capable of pollinating some of the Bigarreaus.

"8. Inter-sterility of Sweet Cherry varieties is apparently not correlated with their closeness of relationship.

"9. The ability of a variety of cherry to set fruit is not entirely dependent upon the kind of pollen available. Environmental factors are important."

It is doubtful if New York cherry-growers will need to pay much attention to cross-pollination but, in case cherry trees are not setting full crops, and for no other apparent reason, the fertility of the blossoms may well receive attention. Should varieties be found self-sterile, sorts must be chosen which come into blossom at the same time, in which case the preceding table shows the sorts which bloom together or nearly enough so to make cross-pollination possible.

CHERRY ORCHARDS AND THEIR CARE

It is patent to the eye of every passer-by that cherry trees are commonly set too thickly in most of the orchards in New York. While close planting is a universal fault, the amount of room differs greatly in different cherry centers, depending mostly upon the custom in the community, though, as all confess, it should depend upon the variety and the soil. The very erroneous notion seems to have prevailed in setting the plantations now reaching maturity that a large return could be skimmed from a small area by close setting, Sour Cherries often being put only twelve feet apart each way and Sweet Cherries, considering their great size, even closer, at sixteen feet. Experienced growers now put such dwarf kinds as the Morellos at from sixteen to eighteen, the Montmorencies and their kind at eighteen to twenty-two; and the large growing Sweet Cherries at from twenty-four to thirty feet.

Cherries are usually planted two years from the bud. Spring is the season for setting, though the hardy Sour sorts might often be set advantageously in late autumn. The losses at setting time are greater with the cherry than with any other fruit, old hands in fruit-growing losing trees as well as beginners. An experiment at the Station shows that these losses are greatly mitigated by a change in the usual method of transplanting. The custom is to shorten-in all branches of transplanted fruit-trees but this, with the cherry in particular, removes the largest and presumably the best nourished buds—certainly those from which would soonest develop the leaves so necessary to sustain the breath of life in the young plant and to give it a start. In the experiment at this Station it was found that, if the top of the young tree was reduced by thinning the branches instead of cutting all back, a much larger proportion of the trees would strike root and live through our parching summers.

Cherry trees in the past have been headed three or four feet above the ground but in new plantations they are now usually started lower—at half of the above distances. Two forms of top are in vogue, the spire-shape and the vase-shape. Sour Cherries are almost universally grown with closed centers but some growers prefer the form of the vase for Sweet varieties, though the majority hold to trees with central trunks and many subsidiary branches. Little pruning is done in cherry orchards after the first two or three years, by which time the sapling has been shaped. Subsequent pruning consists in removing dead, injured or crowded branches and an occasional superfluous one. Heading-in finds little favor with experienced growers. These few statements indicate that the cherry, as now grown, is pruned but little, and that that little must be done very carefully, the pruning knife in the hands of a careless man being, with this fruit, "a sword in the hands of a child."

The general tuning-up in the cultivation of fruits during the past quarter-century has had its influence on cherry culture. Commercial orchards are no longer kept in sod and the clean, purposeful cultivation that has taken the place of grass has doubled the output of cherries, tree for tree, throughout the State, the difference in yield being especially noticeable in seasons when drought lies heavy on the land. Cultivation, as practiced by the best growers, consists of plowing the land in the spring and then frequently stirring the soil until the first of August, at which time a cover-crop is sown. If the soil is light, and therefore hungry and thirsty, the plowing should be done early and the cultivator kept constantly at work until cherry-picking. Cherry orchards often, without apparent cause, have an indefinable air of malaise—look dingy and unhappy—such require almost week-to-week cultivation to tide them over their period of indisposition.

Grain, as well as grass, is discountenanced in cherry orchards, but cultivated truck and farm crops in young plantations, or, under some conditions, small fruits, are looked upon as permissible and often pay for the keep of the young trees until they come into profitable bearing. Cover-crops are in common vogue in cherry orchards in New York and, since with this fruit they can be sown earlier in the season, are used to better advantage than in other orchards to furnish a full supply of humus and to provide nitrogen. Brown-rot, an annual scourge in most cherry orchards, takes less toll from trees cultivated and cover-cropped, these operations covering the mummied fruits and keeping the spores they carry from coming to light and life.

Cherry growers as a rule are not now using fertilizers for their crops. It would seem that this is not doing duty by the land; but it must be remembered that the cherry grows vigorously and that over-feeding may stimulate the growth too much, laying the orchard open not only to unfruitfulness but to winter injury of bud and tree. Among those who use fertilizers there is little accord as to what fertilizing compounds are best or as to what the results have been. There is common agreement, however, that Sour Cherries respond more generally to fertilizers than the Sweet sorts. Until there are carefully carried out fertilizer experiments with this fruit the vexatious problems of fertilization cannot be solved. Nitrate of soda seems to be a great rejuvenator in orchards laid down to grass. Whatever the cause, when leaves lack color and hang limp, this fertilizer is a sovereign tonic. Heavy dressings of stable manure are much used in grassed-over orchards, as they are, also, in such as have had none or but scant crops.

THE COMMERCIAL STATUS OF CHERRY-GROWING IN NEW YORK

Cherry growing is a specialist's business in which, under the best of conditions, there are more ups and downs than with other fruits. Because of the great profits that have come to a few in the years just past many growers have been drawn into the business in a small way or have planted an acreage beyond their means to manage. The inevitable depression that follows over-planting is, at this writing, at hand and spells ruin to some and disgust and discouragement in the industry to others. Perhaps no fruit can better be left to men of reserve capital than the cherry, and even with men of substance cherry-growing should largely be incidental to the culture of other fruits—an industry to fit in to keep land, labor and machinery employed.

Cherry trees begin to bear in the climate of New York when set from three to five years. The varieties of Prunus cerasus first produce profitable crops but, at from six to eight years from setting, both Sweet and Sour sorts are in full swing as money-making crops. The limits of profitable age are not set by the life of the tree but, rather, by its size. Thus, cherry trees of either of the species commonly cultivated are not infrequently centenarians but the profitable age of an orchard is not often more than from thirty to forty years. After this time the trees become large and the expense of caring for them and of picking the fruit becomes so great as to prevent profits. Moreover, disease, injuries and inevitable accidents will have thinned the ranks of trees until the orchard is below profit-making.

Cherry-picking begins in New York about the first of July, following the rush in harvesting strawberries, and lasts, if the orchard contains both Sweet and Sour varieties, from four to six weeks. Workers may in this way fill in a gap between small-fruits and other tree-fruits and the crop becomes one in which the grower may often take small profits to keep his help employed; though, in the long run, if the more or less frequent depressions can be weathered, the cherry may prove as profitable as other fruits.

The problem of labor is a most vexatious one under present conditions, it being impossible to obtain casual men laborers for cherry-picking and women and children are unsatisfactory, since the fruit must be carefully picked or both cherries and trees suffer. The problem is solved, unsatisfactorily in most cases, in various ways by different growers. Most of the crop is now picked by children in the teens under the eyes of men or women supervisors. In picking for the market the stem is left on and only the stem is touched by the fingers. Cherries for canning factories are less laboriously picked. The picking package is usually an eight-pound basket. The rate paid is one cent per pound. Pickers earn $1.50 to $2.00 per day in good seasons. Close watch is kept on pickers to prevent the breaking off of fruit-spurs, thereby destroying the succeeding year's crop, varieties fruiting in clusters suffering especially from carelessness in this respect. Cherries are picked a few days before full ripeness.

Cherries are sent to canneries in various packages but chiefly in half-bushel baskets or paper-lined bushel crates, the container being often supplied by the cannery. The six- and eight-pound baskets are the favored receptacles for Sour Cherries in city markets but the Sweet sorts are rather oftener sent in four-pound baskets and still more frequently in quart boxes. In the larger packages not much effort is made to make the fruit attractive but in the smaller ones, stemless and bruised cherries are thrown out and the package filled, stem down, with the best fruits. In fancy grades all of the fruit in the box is layered. The demands of the market, of course, determine the package and the manner of packing. Cherries are seldom stored longer than a few days at most in common storage and a week or two weeks in cold storage.

There is a marked difference in the shipping and keeping qualities of varieties of cherries, the sorts that keep longest and ship best, quite at the expense of quality, having the call of the markets. Undoubtedly this must remain so, though it is to be desired that local markets, at least, be supplied with the best, irrespective of handling qualities. A further factor that prevents the placing of choicely good cherries in distant markets at all times is brown-rot, to be discussed later, which more often attacks the juicy and usually the best-flavored varieties, oftentimes ruining the pack on the way to market—one of the most discouraging events incidental to cherry-growing.

Marketing machinery for cherries is at present very costly, inadequate and frequently sadly out of gear. The fruit passes first from the grower to a local buyer who ships to a center of consumption, transportation companies taking heavy toll on the way. Jobbers or commission companies, who in some cases receive the fruit direct from the grower, then distribute the crop to retailers in the consuming centers. Lastly, the retailer parcels out the quantities and the qualities demanded by the housewife. The whole business of selling the crop is speculative and the grower is fortunate to receive half of what the consumer pays and not infrequently has all of his pains for nothing or may even be forced to dip into his pocket for transportation. The perishableness of the product and the present defects of distribution go far to make the crop the hazardous one it is but all look forward to better times coming under an improved system of marketing.

Up to the present, it must be said, but little effort has been made in New York to ship far and to develop a trade in cherries other than at the canneries. The canners have until the last year or two taken the cream of the crop but with recent greatly increased plantings are now over-supplied. The average grower, possessing a mixture of mental inertia and business caution, has not sought other sources for the surplus fruit. Bolder and more energetic spirits are now developing new markets and opening up those to which other tree-fruits more generally go so that the present over-production may prove a blessing in disguise. The greatly increased demand, for Sour Cherries in particular, brought about by the development of markets in 1913-14, are most hopeful signs for the future of the cherry industry.

Cherries, without preventive or remedial intervention, are at the mercy of two or three fungus diseases and sometimes several others are virulent, depending upon locality, season, weather and variety. One of these diseases, brown-rot, in spite of the great advances in plant pathology of recent years, is almost beyond the control of preventive or remedial measures. Happily, all the others yield better to treatment.

Brown-rot55 (Sclerotinia fructigena (Persoon) Schroeter), sometimes known as fruit-mold or ripe-rot, very frequently attacks flowers and shoots but is most conspicuous on the ripe or ripening cherries where its presence is quickly detected by a dark discoloration of the skin which is afterwards partly or wholly covered with pustule-like aggregations of gray spores. The decayed fruits usually fall to the ground but sometimes hang to the tree, becoming shriveled mummies, each mummy being a storehouse of fungus threads and spores from which infestation spreads to the next crop. The disease, in some seasons, like a withering blight, attacks twigs, flowers and leaves early in the spring doing great damage to the young growth and often wholly preventing the setting of fruit. The rot spreads with surprising rapidity on the fruits in warm, damp weather either before the fruit is picked or in baskets while being shipped or stored. Preventive remedies have so far met with but indifferent success; probably the best method of control is to destroy the mummy-like fruits and all other sources of infection either by picking them from the trees, or much better by plowing them under deeply. Varieties of cherries show various degrees of susceptibility to brown-rot. All Sweet Cherries are more subject to the disease than the Sour sorts. But with either of the two species there are great variations in the susceptibility of the varietal hosts—a matter specially noted in a later chapter in the discussion of varieties.

Another serious disease of the cherry, and probably the most striking one in appearance, is the black-knot56 (Plowrightia morbosa (Schweinitz) Saccardo), characterized by wart-like excrescences on shoots and branches. Black-knot looks more like the work of an insect than a fungus and was long supposed to be such even by those who were studying the trouble. The knots begin to form early in the summer and are of characteristic color and texture—dark green, soft and velvety, but in the fall, as the fungus ripens, the color changes to coal-black and the knots become hard and more or less brittle. The excrescences usually form on one side of a twig or branch so that death seldom follows quickly. The disease attacks both wild and cultivated plants in every part of this continent where cherries are grown but is epidemic only in the East, the cherry regions of the West being practically free from the disease. Up to the present time the fungus has not been found elsewhere than in America. Happily, black-knot may be controlled by cutting out the diseased wood. To completely eradicate the fungus, if it is especially virulent, however, the orchard must be gone over several times during a season. In New York the removal of black-knot is ordered by law, the results showing that when the law is obeyed, especially if there be hearty co-operation among growers, eradication is usually possible. Sweet Cherries are much less attacked by black-knot than the Sour sorts but the differences in immunity between varieties in either of the two species are not very marked—at least such is the case on the grounds of this Station where the disease is always present and is often very prevalent.

Exoascus cerasi Fuckel57 is the cause of a very striking deformity of the cherry in Europe, both Prunus avium and Prunus cerasus being attacked. The disease has been reported in America but has not yet become virulent. The fungus attacks the branches, causing a clustering of the twigs in the form of a broom, giving it the name witches' broom. The leaves on the diseased twigs usually take on a crinkled shape and a reddish color. The malady may be readily prevented by the destruction of affected branches.

In common with other species of Prunus the foliage of cherries is attacked by several fungi which produce diseased spots on the leaves, the dead areas usually dropping out leaving holes as if punctured by shot. Thus we have "shot-hole fungus," "leaf-spot" and "leaf-blight" as effects of these diseases. Three fungi are in the main responsible for these leaf troubles; these are Cylindrosporium padi Karsten,58 MycosphÆrella cerasella Aderhold59 and Cercospora circumscissa60 Saccardo. The ravages of these fungi are prevented by the proper use of bordeaux mixture and lime and sulphur, remedies which, however, must be used with some care to avoid spray injury. With these, as with other fungi, cultivation has a salutary effect as it destroys diseased leaves which harbor the fungi during their resting period.

Cherry leaves are often covered with a grayish powder which in severe cases causes them to curl and crinkle and sometimes to drop. This powdery substance consists of the spore-bearing organs of a mildew61 (PodosphÆra oxyacanthÆ De Bary). Powdery mildew is much more common on nursery stock than on fruiting trees and in New York is a serious pest on young cherry trees. In the nursery, injury may be prevented by the use of copper sprays or lime and sulphur, either of which is also an efficient preventive in the orchard but the mildew is seldom prevalent enough on orchard plants to require treatment.

Wherever cherries are grown in either the nursery or orchard, crown gall62 (Bacterium tumefaciens Smith and Townsend) has obtained a footing. In the North at least, it seldom greatly injures old trees, but if the galls girdle a nursery plant serious injury results. Therefore, badly infected young trees showing galls should not be planted. However, but little harm is liable to result under most conditions. When infected plants have been planted it has been found that galls vary greatly in duration, sometimes disappearing within a year or two and at other times persisting indefinitely. The tumor-like structures are usually at the collar of the plant and vary from the size of a pea to that of a man's fist, forming at maturity rough, knotty, dark-colored masses. Neither prevention nor cure has been discovered, though it is known that soils may be inoculated with the disease from infected stock and that, therefore, diseased trees should not be planted in soils virgin to the galls. It is probable that there are differences in the susceptibility of Sweet and Sour cherries to the fungus and that the varieties of the two species vary in their resistance but as yet no one seems to have reported on the differences in susceptibility of cherries to the disease.

The leaf-rust63 (Puccinia pruni-spinosÆ Persoon) of stone-fruits, occurring rarely on the fruit, sometimes attacks cultivated cherries and is a rather common disease of the wild Prunus serotina. This rust is troublesome only, however, in warm, moist climates. It is most apparent in the fall and is easily recognized through its numerous rust-colored sori on the underside of the leaves. Defoliation takes place in severe infestations. Either bordeaux mixture or lime and sulphur may be used as a preventive.

Old cherry trees are often attacked by a fleshy fungus or "toadstool"64 (Polyporus sulphureus (Bulliard) Fries). This fungus is said to be world-wide in its distribution and to occur upon a large variety of trees. It is very striking in appearance, the clusters appearing during late summer or early autumn in large, shelving branches, the sporophores fleshy and of cheese-like consistency when young but becoming hard and woody with age. At first the "toadstools" are all yellow but later only the under surfaces are yellow while the upper surface is orange-red. The plants are more or less odoriferous, the odor increasing with age. Happily, the fungus is not very virulent but is often the cause of decay in the tree-trunk—the brown-rot of the wood of this and other orchard and forest plants. In localities where the fungus thrives it may usually be controlled by covering all wounds with tar or other antiseptic materials.

At least two other fleshy fungi have been found injuring cherries. These are Clitocybe parasitica Wilcox65 and Armillaria mellea Vahl.,66 the latter the honey agaric, more or less abundant in both Europe and America. Both are associated with and are probably a cause of the root-rot of the cherry and other orchard fruits. Neither is a common enough pest in this country, however, to receive extensive description in texts on diseases of plants. Control measures are different in localities where fungi occur, consisting in the main of getting rid of stumps and roots in orchard lands and planting to field crops before using for orchard purposes. Infected trees should be removed or isolated by trenching about them.

All stone-fruits suffer more or less from an excessive flow of gum. The name gummosis67 is generally applied to these troubles. Gumming is much more prevalent in the far West than in the East but is to be found wherever stone-fruits are grown. This excessive gumming is a secondary effect of injuries caused by fungi, bacteria, insects, frost, sunscald, and mechanical agencies. There is a good deal of difference in the susceptibilities of varieties and species to this trouble, the Sweet Cherry suffering much more than the Sour sorts and varieties of other species having hard wood suffering less than those having softer wood. There is less gummosis, too, on trees in soils favoring the maturity of wood; under conditions where sun and frost are not injurious; and, obviously, in orchards where by good care the primary causes of the diseases are kept out.

A number of diseases of the trunk arise from mechanical injuries from wind, sun, frost and hail. Few, indeed, are the fruit-growers whose trees are not occasionally damaged in one way or another in the vicissitudes of a trying climate. Very often these mechanical injuries are followed by fungal parasites or insects so as to make it difficult to distinguish the primary from the secondary trouble. There is a wide difference in the susceptibility of Prunus avium and Prunus cerasus to such injuries, the Sweet Cherry, with its softer wood, being much more easily injured by any and all stresses of weather than the Sour Cherry. In the main the elements cannot be combated but low heading of the trees is a preventive from sunscald, at least, and sometimes may have a favorable effect in preventing wind and frost injuries.

CHERRY INSECTS

Insects troubling cherries are numerous but hardly as destructive as with other tree-fruits. Entomologists list about 40 species of insects attacking cherries and about as many more occasionally attack the varieties of one or the other of the two cultivated species. The majority of these pests came with the tree from its habitat over the sea but several have come from the wild cherries of this continent.

Of the pests peculiar to the cherry alone, possibly the cherry fruit maggot68 (Rhagoletis cingulata Loew) is, the country over, as troublesome as any. The adult insect is a small fly with barred wings which lays eggs under the skin of the cherry in mid-summer. From these eggs small, whitish maggots about one-third of an inch long hatch and eat out a cavity in the ripening fruit. These maggots when full grown pupate in the ground and remain there until the following season. The only effective preventive or remedial measure to take against the pest in large orchards is to spray with a sweetened arsenical, but in small plantations chickens are fairly effective in scratching up and eating the pupating maggots.

The cherry fruit maggot is probably responsible for most of the "wormy" cherries in New York but the plum curculio is also a cause of "wormy" fruits and in some seasons is a most formidable pest. This curculio69 (Conotrachelus nenuphar Herbst) is a rough, grayish snout-beetle somewhat less than a quarter of an inch in length, so familiar an insect as scarcely to need further description. The female beetle pierces the skin of the young cherries and places an egg in the puncture. About this cavity she gouges out a crescent-shaped trench, this cut or sting being a most discouraging sign to the cherry-grower, for he well knows that from the eggs come, within a week or two, white and footless grubs which burrow to the stone and make "wormy fruit." Some of the infested cherries drop but many remain eventually to distract the housewife and those who eat cherries out of hand. Jarring the beetles from the trees, a method employed by plum-growers, is quite too expensive and ineffective for the cherry-grower and poisoning with an arsenate is the only practical means of combating the pest. Rubbish and vegetation offer hiding places for the insects and, therefore, cultivated orchards are freer from curculio than those laid down to grass. There are no curculio-proof cherries but, as with plums, the thin-skinned varieties are damaged most by the insect.

The grub of the plum curculio is easily distinguished from the cherry fruit maggot. This "worm" is the larva of a beetle, a true grub, footless and with a brownish, horny head while the cherry fruit maggot, the larva of a two-winged insect, is a true maggot like that which comes from the common house-fly and hardly to be distinguished from the apple maggot. It is important to be able to distinguish in wormy cherries the grub of the curculio from the cherry fruit maggot in order to know and understand the nature of the two enemies in combating them.

Another pest of this fruit is the cherry leaf-beetle (Galerucella cavicollis Le Conte) the larvae of which sometimes do much damage to cherry foliage. The adult insect is an oval, reddish beetle about one-fourth of an inch long with black legs and antennae. Both the adult and the larvae feed on the leaves and do much damage if abundant. Usually there are two broods, the insect pupating in the ground. Fortunately the pest is easily controlled with the arsenical sprays.

The cherry scale (Aspidiotus forbesi Johnson) is commonly found on this fruit and occasionally on others as well. To the unaided eye it is very similar to the well-known San JosÉ scale, differing chiefly in being lighter in color. The remedy is the same as for the San JosÉ scale, which we next discuss.

The dreaded San JosÉ scale70 (Aspidiotus perniciosus Comstock) is rather less harmful to cherries than to other tree-fruits and yet is sometimes a serious pest on Sweet Cherries. Sour Cherries are almost immune. The insect is now so well known in all fruit-growing regions that it needs no description. It is usually first recognized by its work, evidence of its presence being dead or dying twigs—oftentimes the whole tree is moribund. Examination shows the twigs or trees to be covered with myriads of minute scales, the size of a small pin-head, which give the infested bark a scurfy, ashy look. If the bark be cut or scraped a reddish discoloration is found. Leaves and fruit as well as bark are infested, the insidious pest, however, usually first gaining a foothold on the trunks or a large branch. Cherry-growers, in common with all fruit-growers, find the lime and sulphur solution the most effective spray in combating this insect.

Several other scale insects feed on the cherries and, now and then, become pestiferous; among these the following may be named: The European fruit lecanium71 (Lecanium corni BouchÉ) occasionally does a great deal of damage in New York and now and then destroys the whole crop in an orchard. The winter treatment for San JosÉ scale is used to control this pest, but usually such treatment is supplemented by a summer spray about July first with such contact sprays as whale oil soap and kerosene emulsion. The fruit pulvinaria (Pulvinaria amygdali Cockerell), the mealy bug (Pseudococcus longispinus Targioni), the scurfy scale (Chionaspis furfura Fitch), the West Indian peach scale (Aulacaspis pentagona Targioni), the Putnam scale (Aspidiotus ancylus Putnam), the walnut scale (Aspidiotus juglans-regiÆ Comstock), Howard's scale (Aspidiotus howardii Cockerell), the European fruit scale (Aspidiotus ostreÆformis Curtis), the red scale of California (Chrysomphalus aurantii Maskell), the oyster-shell scale (Lepidosaphes ulmi Linnaeus), and the soft scale (Coccus hesperidum Linnaeus), are all more or less common.

Several borers occasionally infest cherry trees of which the peach borer72 (Sanninoidea exitiosa Say.) is the most troublesome. Larvae of the peach borer are frequently found in both Sweet and Sour Cherries, more particularly in Sweet Cherries, in eastern orchards. Fortunately this pest is not as rife with the cherry as with peaches and plums. Its work may be prevented by thorough cultivation, by mounding the trees and, according to some, by the use of a covering of tar or of obnoxious or poisonous washes. Usually preventive measures are not effective, however, and the borer must be destroyed—best done by digging it out with a knife and wire. Since the pest is easily discovered through the exudation of gum mixed with sawdust or excreta, close to the surface or just beneath the ground, its presence can be detected in time to prevent its doing much damage. The lesser peach borer73 (Sesia pictipes Grote & Robinson) often attacks old or weakened cherry trees, working in the growing tissues of the trunk anywhere from the ground to the main branches. The worm is much like the common peach borer, known by all, but is smaller, rarely reaching the length of four-fifths of an inch when full grown. The flat-headed apple tree borer74 (Chrysobothris femorata Fabricius) is a common pest in wild cherries and sometimes seriously attacks the cultivated species. It is treated as is the peach borer.

The shot-hole borer75 (Eccoptogaster rugulosus Ratzeburg), though seldom injuring healthy trees, is very often a serious menace in old or decrepit cherry trees. It may be looked upon, however, as an effect rather than a cause. The peach bark-beetle76 (PhlÆotribus liminaris Harris) is very similar in its work to the shot-hole borer and like it attacks only diseased and decrepit trees.

All cherry-growers are familiar with the small, dark green, slimy slugs which feed on the surface of the leaves of the cherry, possibly more common on the foliage of pears, eating out the soft tissues and leaving but the skeleton of the leaf. If the slugs are numerous the tree may be defoliated or if the leaves remain the foliage looks as if scorched. The adult of this slug is a sawfly (Caliroa (Eriocampoides) cerasi Linnaeus) which lays its eggs within the tissue of the leaves. Despite the fact that it is easily destroyed by any of the arsenical sprays or by dusting with lime this slug everywhere does much damage to cherries.

Wild cherries suffer severely from the tent caterpillar77 (Malacosoma americana Fabricius) and occasionally cultivated trees are attacked. The arsenical sprays are fatal to the pest. The spring canker-worm78 (Paleacrita vernata Peck) and the fall canker-worm79 (Alsophila pometaria Harris), the white-marked tussock moth (Hemerocampa leucostigma Smith and Abbot), the rusty tussock moth (Hemerocampa antiqua Linnaeus), and the definite-marked tussock moth (Hemerocampa definita Packard) are all occasional cherry pests and all succumb to poisonous sprays. The two now notorious European pests recently introduced into America, gypsy moth (Porthetria dispar Linnaeus) and the browntail moth (Euproctis chrysorrhÆa Linnaeus), attack cherry trees in common with other deciduous trees and may often do considerable damage. Sometimes, but not often, the buds of the cherry are attacked by the bud-moth (Spilonota (Tmetocera) ocellana SchiffermÜller), the caterpillars of which bind the young leaves together as they expand so that small, dead, brown clusters of foliage are to be seen here and there where the pests are at work. Spraying with arsenicals is effective if done just as the buds begin to open.

In sandy soils the cherry is sometimes attacked by hordes of the common rose-chafer (Macrodactylus subspinosus Fabricius), leaves, flowers and even the fruit suffering from the pest. It is a difficult insect to control but a spray of arsenate of lead with molasses is fairly effective. It is important to know that the insect does not often breed in ground kept in clean cultivation.