Our Fruits and their Names
" WHY have not everywhere the names been preserved," said Baron Humboldt, " of those who, instead of ravaging the earth with war, have enriched it with plants useful to the human race." Oddly enough, few fruits do commemorate the names of those who first invented or introduced them into the countries that now relish them. The loganberry is an outstanding exception, for it was the late Judge Logan; who, died so recently, who first produced that succulent hybrid. His memory is likely to live long among all who cultivate, reap, and savour the annual harvest of rich, red-black berries from this extremely easy-to-grow and easy-to-gather fruit. The greengage, too, luscious and golden-green, performs a double commemorative function. In France it beais the 'mime of one, who, if she did not originate the queen of plums in her own country, so fostered its cultivation that it became known as " La Reine Claude," and is still so called, as those who have eaten of the preserve, so plentiful on the shelves of every epieerie in town and country village, well know. " La Reine Claude " was the wife of King Francis, and her favourite dessert was the plum called after her. It was a member of the Gage family who brought it over to England, where it was at once christened the greengage. Botanists will tell you that the three hundred or so varieties of plum now in existence have all developed in the course of ages from the wild hedge sloe. Our Pershore egg plum, which last year celebrated its centenary anniversary, apparently evolved itself without human aid, for it was discovered by a Mr. Crooks in Tiddesley Wood, grown by him in his Pershore garden from a slip taken in the Wood, and afterwards became one of the proudest boasts of the Vale of Evesham. The Orleans plum came, as its name denotes, from Orleans, and the damson hailed. oriainallv. from Damascus. Thomas Cromwell-introduced no fewer than three plum varieties in the days of Henry VIH., and Richard Baines, one of that monarch's 'gardeneri,- planted cherry trees near Sittingbouriie froni which our famous Kentish cherries (at one time known as Flanders cherries) are descended. Still earlier cherry trees were brought to England from Asia Minor by the Knights Templars, returning from their crusadings in the Holy Land, and it was, no doubt, the harvestings from these and their progeny that were hawked in the streets of London before Henry V. went forth to win his victories in Fiance.
Gooseberries are natives of our land, and can still be fcund growing wild occasionally. Wild gooseberries are quite common in many parts of Northern and Central Europe. Raspberries were so named because of their " rasped " or roughened exteriors. The European varieties were said to have been grown from plants brought from Mount Ida in Greece, but wild raspberries undoubtedly grew long before that transplanting in our English hedges and thickets. Currants, too, are natives of old England, though there are those who aver that our latter-day currants were produced by a single bush imported from the island of Zante, of which the children and grandchildren have increased and multiplied through the years, until our present-day widely-scattered bushes enrich the vast majority of gardens.
We have, of late years, imported strawberries from America, while we have sent her cherries in exchange. The hautbois, one of our earliest cultivated kinds, were brought to us froin Bohemia's " high woods " ; but Richard, Duke of Gloucester (afterwards Richard III.), begged strawberries of the Bishop of Ely, in those troub- kus days when he was busy clearing a way to the throne, if we can rely on the authority of Shakespeare. That was long before the arrival of the Bohemian natives, so it is highly probable that other strawberries, flourished in gardens up and down the country as well as in the grounds of' the Lord Bishop of Ely's London palace, cultivated from the little wild, sharp-flavoured berries that we find on our country walks ui early summer.
Our peaches we got from Persia, via Rome, but the earliest peaches came from China, whence they emigrated to Persia, long years before the Romans found them there. Pekin peaches used to be the wonder of the world, and it was from the interior of China that Californian orchards were stocked with a very fine peach, discovered and borne home by an explorer hunting for botanical novelties on behalf of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Agri- culture. Burchell, the traveller and naturalist, helped to spread peach 'cultivation in the interior of South Africa when he gave a native chieftain a box of fresh peach stones and instructed him how they should be planted. Apricots were grown in -China in very ancient times, and the Romans brought them from Persia, where they were known as " the fruit of the sun." England's first apricot tree was planted in 1524. It came from France, and was the pride of Henry Via's head gardener.
The crab apple, like the hedge sloe, is one of our indi- genous. fruits, and from its many children our leafy apple orchards have sprung. Apples were well known in Saxon England, and Homer sang their praises in Ancient Greece. Some of our apples, notably the pippins, introduced in Henry VIII.'s day, and so called because fruit-bearing trees could be raised from the seeds (or- pips) without grafting, came from France. For the non-pareils, too, we are indebted to that fertile land, v.-hence they arrived in Queen Mary's day.
Pears were first grown in Britain after one of the early Roman invasions, and in: the dark. days of the Middle Ages they were cultivated with considerable success by many skilful growers. London was renowned at one time for its pears, and Gerard refers particularly to those of " Master Richard Pointer, who has them all who is in his ground at Twickenham, near London, who is a most cunning and curious grafter and planter of all manner of rare fruits ; and also in the ground of an excel- lent grafter and painful planter, master Henry Bunbury of Touthill Street, near unto Westminster . . . and in divers other grounds about London." Worcester, like- wise, was celebrated in the days of long ago for its pears, though to-day its plums are better known to fame. Still the city of Worcester bears on its coat of arms to this day—three pears !
The luscious black mulberry; once so common, now, alas ! so rarely seen in English gardens, came from Asia. It is not the black, but the white mulberry, a species that bears little no-account berries, that is grown for its foliage for the feeding of silkworms all the world over.
JOSEPHINE VINCENT.
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