The Portland daily press., 1882-07-31
The Rose Family.
Evolution of Our Favorite small Fruits.


lSt. James Gazette.
The ultimate origin of the pulpiness in plums
and cherries was quite antecedent to any partc
ular adoption of their stocks in the primitive
orchards of early man. So far as We can now
tell, the roses do not date back in time beyond
the tertiary period of geology. The very earli-
est members of the family still extant are little
creeping herbs, like cinquefoil and slver-weed
with yellow blossoms (all primitive blossoms,
indeed, are Yellow and small, dry, inedible
seeds. The strawberry is the lowest type of
rose above these very simple forms. 1t is still
creeping herb, and its seeds are still small,
dry and inedible; but they are imbeddsd in a
juicy pulp which entices birds to swallow them
and SO aid in dispensing them under circum-
stances peculiarly favorable to their due germ
ination and growth. Next in order after this
earliest rude succulcnt type (nature's first rough
sketch of a fruit so to speak; and very success.
full one, too, from the human point of view at
least) come the blackberry and raspberry,
where the individual fruitlets grow soft, sweet
and pulpy, instead of remaining dry as in the
strawberry. And this change clearly marks a
step in advance, so that blackberries and rasp-
berries are enabled to get along with fewer
seeds, and yet to thrive much better in the
struggle for life too-seeing that they have de-
veloped into stout woody trailers, often forming
considerable thicksts, and killing down all the
lesser vegetation beneath and between them
Again, the dog-roses show still higher devel-
opment alike in their erect bushy form, in the
large pink flowers, and in their big scarlet hips
which are UNBEATABLE by us, it is true, but are
great favorite with birds in severe winters. The
haws of the whitethorn are even more success
full in attracting the robins and other non-mig-
atory allies; and the white thorn has been ena-
bled, accordingly, to reduce its seeds to one or
two, each enclosed in hard, bony, indigestible
nut. Finally at the very summit at the genealo-
gical tree, we get the plum tribe, highest OF all
the roses; growing into considerable arborcs-
cent forms (though in this respect inferior to
pears or apples) and producing large, luscious,
pulpy fruits, with small stony seed, admira-
bly, adapted to the bcst type of dispersion, and
never wasting solitary germ unnecessarily, as
must be continually the case with its small dry
seeded congeners. the silver weeds and cinque-
foils. Not, of course, that this pedigree must
be accepted in lineal sense Gndesd, the roses
early in their history broke up into at least
three distinct lines, which have evolved separ-
ateiy on their own account, and have culminat-
ed respectively in the plums, the tube roses and
the apples); but it illustrates the general meth
cd of their development, and it shows the
strong tendency which they all alike possess
toward tho production of sweet pulpy fruits in
one form or another.
If you look for .moment at ripe cherry-by,
preference red one, as being less artificial than
the pale whiteheartS-you will see how well 1t
is fitted to perform the functions for which the
tree has produced it, 1t has bright outer
coat, to attract the eyes of birds and particular
" of southern birds for England is near its
northern limit, and it is big fruit for our ma
tive species to eat; rowan berries, haWs ana
bird-cherries are rather special food in our
northern ATTITUDES. Then, again, it has
sweet pulp to tempt their appetlts; sweetness
and bright color in plants being almost always
directly traceable to animal selection. But,in,
side, its actual seed is protected by stony shell
while it's kernel is stored with rich TO 'd-stu1ts
for the young Seeding laid by in its thick seed
leaves, which form the two lobes OF the almond
like embryo The flower it is true, has pair
of separate ovules, which ought, under ordlna-
~ circumstances to develope into two seeds;
but es the fruit ripens one OF them almost al
ways atrophies. Such diminution in the num-
Der of seeds invariably accompanies every ad-
vance In specialization, or every fresh forward
step in appliances for more certain distribu-
ton. The little hard nuts on abe outside of the
strawberry number fifty or sixty; the nutlets OF
the raspberry number only some twenty or
thirty; the pips of the apple, relatively i'll pro-
tected by the leathery core, range from i've to
ten: the stones of the haw, with their bolier
covering, are only two; but in the plum tribe,
with their extreme adaptation to animal disper-
sion, the seeds have reached the minimum ir-
redueible of one. 1t is this highest tribe of ALL
accordingly, that supplies us with what we call
distinctively our stone fruit.
The sloes of the common blackthorn have
grown, under cultivation, into our domestic
plums; the two wild cherries have grown into
our morellos and bigaroons; an eastern bush
has been gradually developed into our more
delicate apricots. The old-fashioned botanists
have thrust the peach and nectarine into sep
arate genus, because of their wrinkled stones;
but common sense will show any one that it
would be easier ia get peach out of an april
cot than to get an apricot out of plum: and,
indeed, these artificial scientific distinctions
are fast breaking down at the present day, as
we learn more and more about the infinite plas
ITCHY of living forms under cultivation or al
tered circumstances. Even the almond, differ
emit as its nut appears from the plum type of
fruit is really plum by origin; for in all
other particulars of flower, leaf and habit, it
closely resembles ths nectarine, from which it
was diverged only in the solitary specially of
less juicy fruit We know how little trouble
it takes to turn single white May blossom
into the double pink variety or to produce our
distorted Towering almonds and our big, many
petallea roses from the normal form; it takes
very little more trouble for nature to turn an
apricot into peach, or to produce dry she'll
covered almond from juicy nectarine. Only
since nature acts more slowly, and since her
conditions remain approximately the same
throughout, her new species do not tend to re-
lapse at once into the parent form, as our arti-
fetal varieties mostly do the moment we relax
the stringent regimen under which they have
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