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Cornell University 
 Library 
 
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 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924084753726 
 
CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 1850—1910 
 
EDWARD J. WICKSON. 
 
CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 AND THE PLANT INDUSTRY 
 
 1850-1910 
 
 A series of Addresses delivered before the California 
 
 Association of Nurserymen from 
 
 1916 to 1920 
 
 By E. J. WICKSON, 
 
 Emeritus Professor of Horticulture University of California ; author of " California Fruits 
 
 and How to Grow Them ; " " California Garden Flowers, Shrubs and Vines i " 
 
 " California Vegetables in Garden and Field ; " " One Thousand 
 
 Questions in California Agriculture Answered." 
 
 * OH in the stilly nieM, 
 Ere slumber's chain has bound me, 
 Pond memory brines the light 
 Of other days around me." 
 
 —Moore, 
 
 f 
 
 LOS ANGELES: 
 
 THE CAIvIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF NURSERYMEN 
 
 1921 
 
(p 
 
 I 
 
 
 Published by the California Association of 
 Nurserymen in compliance with a unani- 
 mous vote by the Fresno convention, held 
 November 11, 12 and 13, 1920. 
 
TO THB 
 
 BLITHE AND GALLANT PLANTSMEN 
 WHOSE FAITH, OPTIMISM 
 
 AND ENDEAVORS V- » 
 
 HAVE GRKATI,y HBLPBD TO MAKB 
 CALIFORNIA HORTICULTURE 
 
 WORLD FAMOUS 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Edward J. Wickson Frontispiece 
 
 Dedication 3 
 
 The Nestor of Our Horticulture 5 
 
 How Exotic Plants Came to California 9 
 
 Nurserymen of the First Decade 17 
 
 Nurserymen of the Second and Third Decades 26 
 
 Nurserymen of the Fourth Decade 90 
 
 Nurserjrmen of the Fifth and Sixth Decades 41 
 
THE NESTOR OF OUR HORTICULTURE 
 
 PROF. EDWARD J. WICKSON was born in Rochester, 
 New York, August 3, 1848. He spent his boyhood days 
 at the public schools in that town, later attending Hamilton 
 College, from which he was graduated in 1869, having during 
 his undergraduate course won honors in classics and chemistry. 
 After graduating he entered his father's agricultural imple- 
 ment factory, which was destroyed by fire in 1870, thus wreck- 
 ing the financial resources of the family. Later on he secured 
 a place upon the editorial staff of the Utica Morning Herald, 
 at that time recognized as influential in the newly developed 
 export cheese industry of Central New York. He was ap- 
 pointed to the secretaryship of the New York Dairymen's 
 Association in 1871, and in 1873 to the presidency of the 
 Utica Dairymen's Board of Trade. In 1874 he was a leading 
 speaker in the State Dairymen's Conventions from Vermont 
 westward to Illinois. While engaged in this work he attracted 
 the attention of the then publishers of the Pacific Rural Press, 
 which resulted in his coming to California in 1875 as editor 
 of that paper, which position he has occupied ever since. In 
 1876 he organized the first dairy association in California; in 
 1879 he was one of the organizers of the State Horticultural 
 Society, and in that same year was elected lecturer on dairy 
 husbandry in the University of California, and in 1885 was 
 given a broader field in the lectureship of practical agriculture. 
 In 1887 the superintendency of the agricultural grounds of the 
 University was added to his duties, and In 1891 he was again 
 promoted to the position of assistant professor of agriculture, 
 horticulture and entomology, and this position he held until 
 his elevation to the professorship of agricultural practice, in 
 1897. He was appointed trustee of the California Polytechnic 
 School at San Luis Obispo, at the organization of that insti- 
 
6 CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 
 tution by the State in 1903, and was re-appointed in 1906. 
 Professor Wickson was for many years a member of the 
 American Pomological Society, and is the California repre- 
 sentative on its General Fruit Committee. He was appointed 
 in 1899 a special agent by the United States Department of 
 Agriculture to investigate the pomological conditions of the 
 Pacific Coast region, and made a report on that subject. In 
 1906 he was appointed a member of the National Horticul- 
 tural Council, an advisory board constituted by the horticul- 
 tural societies of the United States. Professor Wickson was 
 elected Dean of the College of Agriculture of the University 
 by the faculty in 1905 and was appointed by the Regents of the 
 University acting director of the experiment station upon the 
 retirement of Dr. E. W. Hilgard. In 1906 he served as 
 expert for the commission which selected and purchased the 
 University Farm at Davis, and was a member of the commis- 
 sion organized by the legislature of 1905 to select a site for 
 and establish the Southern California Pathological Laboratory 
 at Whittier, and the Citrus Experiment Station at Riverside, 
 both of which were established as branches of the Agricultural 
 Department of the University of California. On September 
 11, 1907, Professor Wickson was promoted to the professor- 
 ship of agriculture of the College of Agriculture and director 
 and horticulturist of the University Agricultural Station. Dur- 
 ing his administration the agricultural interests of the Uni- 
 versity developed notably and the first of the group of per- 
 manent buildings for agriculture was constructed. The number 
 of students was also largely increased. Professor Wickson 
 was retired from the directorship in 1912 and ceased active 
 University service in 1914 with the rank of emeritus Professor 
 of Horticulture. Since that date he has given more attention 
 to editorial and book work. 
 
 Professor Wickson's work in book publication began with 
 the issuance of the first edition of "California Fruits and How 
 to Grow Them" in 1 898. This book received such a quick and 
 kindly welcome that a second, revised and extended edition was 
 
AND THE PLANT INDUSTRY 7 
 
 issued in 1891. Since that time it has been progressively re- 
 written through eight editions, the last of which appeared in 
 1919. The total issue of the book has reached twenty-two 
 thousand copies, and it is now in keener demand than ever, 
 not only in California, but in all parts of the world where 
 interest in California fruit growing and a desire to understand 
 the policies and methods have arisen. Other books by the 
 same author have also achieved wide popularity, viz. : "Cali- 
 fornia Vegetables in Garden and Field," of which the first 
 edition appeared in 1898 and the fourth in 1917, with a total 
 of nine thousand copies; "California Garden Flowers, Trees, 
 Shrubs and Vines," issued in 1915, with a total of five thousand 
 copies; and two volumes of "Answered Questions in California 
 Agriculture," issued in 1914 and 1916, with a total of ten 
 thousand copies. These five books, with an aggregate issue 
 of forty-six thousand volumes, have proved far and away 
 the "best sellers" of all the technical books of California origin. 
 With a background extending over nearly half a century 
 it is not at all surprising that Professor Wickson possesses 
 a wider and more accurate knowledge of the California com- 
 mercial plant industry than any other person now living; in- 
 deed, rarely is it the privilege of an individual to have known 
 the pioneers of an industry who blazed the way for the second 
 generation of plantsftien in Its larger exploitation and develop- 
 ment, and then to have instructed the third generation to a 
 realization of its opportunities In the fruition of horticulture 
 which has become the leader in economic and ornamental 
 plant production. It was only such a magnificent retrospec- 
 tive view that made it possible for Professor Wickson to pre- 
 pare the series of historical papers on the history and develop- 
 ment of the nursery industry in California — a series that have 
 been a leading feature at the annual conventions of the Cali- 
 fornia Association of Nurserymen for the past five or six 
 years, and which are herewith embodied in book form for 
 permanent preservation. The series closed with 1910, or at 
 the time when the Association took tangible form, thus In the 
 
8 CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 
 matter of historical sequence connecting with the Association's 
 annual reports, the first volume of which was published in 1911, 
 and which have been an annual feature ever since. The publi- 
 cation of this historical volume was ordered by a unanimous 
 vote at the convention of 1920, held in the City of Fresno. 
 
 Wickson's is eminently the optimistic temperament; the 
 ambition that wants to help to make the world better today 
 than it was yesterday, and better tomorrow than it is today. 
 This idea permeates his work. Nothing is left undone which 
 can be of possible service to our horticultural development; 
 and unless a thing possesses a value and an uplift to humanity, 
 it does not excite his interest. His is the spirit to "do things" 
 and to afford an incentive and encouragement in others to 
 "do things." And in no other direction have his sympathies 
 been more keenly excited than in furthering the nursery in- 
 terests of the State. A robust fellowship for the plantsmen 
 that have ever been in the front ranks exploiting and develop- 
 ing fruit orchards and the aesthetic side of California home 
 life by the free use of ornamental plants and flowers, has ever 
 attracted to him all the blithe and gallant souls that have given 
 California her place in the galaxy of states, not only as the 
 "Golden," but pre-eminently as the Horticultural State of the 
 Union. 
 
 I/>s Angeles, September 8, 1921. 
 
 -■MiMsAni^iJuutM^^ 
 
AND THE PLANT INDUSTRY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 How Exotic Plants Came to California 
 
 JUST as California sprang, full-panoplied, into the sister- 
 hood of sovereign States, without tarrying in a territorial 
 purgatory, so California was bedecked, almost from the date 
 of her American birth, with exotic vegetation from all quarters 
 of the globe. Endowed by the Creator with native vegetation 
 of unique grandeur, novelty, variety and charm of form, hue 
 and growth-habit; enriched by the padres through introduction 
 of the world's most important semi-tropical fruits, California 
 came to her union with other American States clad in plant 
 beauty beyond that of other States — "as a bride adorneth her- 
 self with her jewels." 
 
 FIRST DISPLAY OF EXOTICS 
 
 The language is florid, as becomes the theme, and has 
 growing precedent, as the reader may now see. In 1851 
 there was an exhibit in San Francisco at which there was a 
 wonderful display of fruits, vegetables, grains and forage 
 plants, a prominent feature of which was an announcement 
 by A. Williams, the orator of the occasion, that C. A. Sheldon 
 "has this day received from Valparaiso a choice assortment 
 of rare and valuable exotics — the entire stock of a greenhouse, 
 including (aside from fruiting plants), fifty varieties of jessa- 
 mines, four of African hibiscus, eight of chrysanthemums, 
 twelve of althea, wax-plants, pinks, cacti, eighty-four dahlias, 
 and over one thousand rose bushes." And the orator con- 
 tinued: "There is scarcely a fruit or plant, a shrub or a flower 
 of which any land can boast but what is embraced within the 
 limits of California — a bright, particular star in the constella- 
 tion of States, the crowning gem in the tiara of freedom"' — 
 which is surely going some, oratorically and exotically. 
 
10 CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 
 WHY SUCH HASTE 
 
 Exotics came to California in volume and variety and with 
 speed unknown to new States, and why? The argonauts were 
 men of high emprise. They were spenders of which this con- 
 tinent has never seen the like — either before or since. Unpre- 
 cedented prices waited for plants, both from those who wished 
 the plants themselves for local growth and from those who 
 only desired their symboltry. Gallantry was at its apex and 
 cried aloud for expression. Gold slugs, and nuggets, plaques 
 and jewelry became too trite for showers upon operatic and 
 terpischorean stars whom the populace worshipped and for 
 other inferior luminaries by whom they were entranced. It 
 was a time when knighthood was in flowers . Beyond such 
 sensational outbreak of demand for rare bloom, there was 
 the brisk call for exotics for homes and for home gardens. 
 It was a grand joy to newcomers to know that plants which 
 they had never before seen, except under glass, surpassed all 
 memory of their size and vigor in the open air in California. 
 And so the early Californian's demanded exotics, of which 
 they knew something in their old homes, so that they would 
 have something by which to measure the capacity of their new 
 homes. And they all had money to pay for what they yearned 
 for. It is not strange, then, that trade was brisk, nor that it 
 drew exotics from everywhere. This is the reason that Mr. 
 Sheldon, aforesaid, bought the full of a Chilean greenhouse 
 and shipped it bodily to San Francisco, as has been already 
 noted, before the State was a full year old perhaps. Think 
 of it; if we include the work of others at about the same date, 
 there was probably a shipload of potted plants sent to a com- 
 munity reputed to be largely flannel-shirted, with its trousers 
 in its boots. There never was such a thing before in the 
 world ! 
 
 Vl^HENCE CAME EXOTICS 
 
 Seeds, bulbs, roots, scions and living plants came to Cali- 
 fornia from every country which sent gold-seekers. It was a 
 popular movement induced atl first by trade opportunities 
 and by native-plant love, dictated by desire of all to have 
 something of the old home installed in the new home. Very 
 soon another motive was added, viz., to establish plant indus- 
 tries in California, which were important in other countries. 
 Quite a number of pioneers who came for gold revisited their 
 
AND THE PLANT INDUSTRY 11 
 
 old homes to secure collections of plants with which to establish 
 production new to this continent. The State staked some of 
 those undertakings and men of wealth freely indulged in 
 similar ventures, even larger in their money requirements. And 
 beyond these large undertakings, nearly all individuals brought 
 something. Quite a number brought as wives the girls they 
 left behind them, and they, themselves the loveliest exotics of 
 pioneer days, brought their dearest posies with thm, of course. 
 And so, by prairie schooner, and by real ship from Mexican 
 ports, from Panama or "the horn around;" across the Pacific 
 from the Orient, from the islands of the southern seas — from 
 everywhere, came exotics from all the world's climates, and 
 found a congenial home in California — the strictly tropical 
 under glass, all others in the open air. 
 
 WHICH EXOTICS CAME FIRST 
 
 The data which the writer has now in hand do not make it 
 possible to determine priority in the arrival of particular 
 plants, after the inrush of Americans in 1849. We know 
 that from 1769, during several following years, probably, the 
 padres introduced from Mexico (and possibly direct from 
 Spain also) all the commoner deciduous and evergreen fruit- 
 ing plants. We also know that the few Americans who came 
 out to California during the two decades before the gold 
 discovery in pursuit of peltry, trade, Spanish land grants (with 
 or without wives attached), and finally for war and conquest, 
 made homes, for the adornment of which many plants were 
 brought from Mexico and Central America. These fore- 
 runners of American population must be counted first in appre- 
 ciation of California. They were in part of American and in 
 part of European origin. William Wolfskill planted citrus 
 trees in orchard as early as 1838 in Los Angeles, and during 
 the years immediately following that date various other fruits 
 were planted in the central part of the State by Dr. Marsh, 
 John Wolfskill, George C. Yount and others. Probably most 
 of these planters took their start from the gardens at the 
 missions, though Mr. Wolfskill brought apricots from Mexico. 
 In the late forties the "black pepper tree" was planted both 
 in Los Angeles and San Jose — the early reporter mistaking 
 our now popular Chilean pepper for the pepper of commerce — 
 as many new comers have done since his time. Early in the 
 fifties more plants were brought from Mexico and Centra] 
 
12 CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 
 America and at that time the sapdta, aguacate and mango were 
 seen growing in Los Angeles. In 1851 R. W. Bourse of 
 Stockton brought an oleander from Mexico, and a visitor 
 in 1857 says of it: "It is the largest and finest oleander we 
 have ever seen. It has grown to enormous size and sheds 
 its fragrance all over the garden." No wonder it impressed 
 the visitor who had probably never seen an oleander before, 
 except as an Eastern house plant. And this reference must 
 cover all the sensations which giant open air callas, geraniums,' 
 lemon verbenas, fuchias, etc., gave the pioneers and continue 
 to produce on the minds of new-comers to the present day. 
 
 EXOTICS CAME WITH A RUSH 
 
 As already intimated, exotics came in such quantities with 
 the American pioneers that just what they were and just when 
 each of them came is not novf determinable. Probably all 
 of the exotics which were being carried about the world seventy 
 years ago reached California at about the same date, because 
 as already shown, plant importers brought whole green house 
 collections and had them suitably housed and were actively 
 trading in them remarkably soon. The house plant collections 
 at the east, whence most of the stock came, had undergone great 
 enlargement during the forties and a new American interest 
 had arisen in growing under glass everything of tropical and 
 semi-tropical requirements, which botanical prophets made 
 famous. California received immediately all that European 
 and East African collectors had secured during several pre- 
 vious decades of ransacking the five continents and all the 
 islands that lay between and around them. We have there- 
 fore to consider exotics en masse and note what California 
 did with her acquisitions. 
 
 It will, of course, be remembered that California received 
 as "house plants" many broad shrubs and tall trees, acaciaSi 
 palms, araucarias, ficuses, bamboos, fruits tender at the north, 
 etc., etc., which went almost at once to the open air because 
 they needed no protection and so it was only for plants strictly 
 tropical or for blooms of high quality that glass was provided. 
 And yet it is evident that before 1856 the San Francisco florists 
 had notable establishments. Official reports of the State Agri- 
 cultural Society for 1856 to 1858 present these records: 
 
 H. A. Sontag & Co., of the Mission district of San Frandisco, 
 are celebrated for the excellence of their roses and othef choice 
 
a:nd the plant industry u 
 
 shrubbery. It is doubtful whether a more extensive or finer 
 collection than theirs can be found this side of Europe. Be- 
 sides large open garden they have three glass houses, 120 to 
 165 feet in length. They are constantly importing all the 
 rarest and choicest varieties of plants to be found in other 
 parts of the world. 
 
 James O'Donnell had two houses filled with choice plants 
 and he was a pushing sort of a man for he took premiums 
 at State Fairs at San Jose, Marysville and Sacramento for the 
 best and largest collections of potted plants. 
 
 W. C. Walker is also credited with having one of the 
 largest and rarest collections of fine plants ; in fact, it is doubted 
 whether it can be excelled in any of the Atlantic States. No 
 expense is spared in introducing the newest and rarest kinds. 
 It augurs well for the cultivated taste of the public which appre- 
 ciates and sustains an establishment that requires so much 
 time, labor and expense to support it. Mr. Walker also had 
 a large greenhouse full of exotics and ample open-air cultures. 
 
 Besides these three establishments, which are cited because 
 the largest and because of their function in the distribution 
 of exotics, there were others of the same kind. There were 
 also popular recreation gardens and privat gardens and plant 
 houses of notable conservatories like that of John Center, 
 which was filled with choice plants and had a fine fountain 
 in the center — and all this within five years from the gold 
 discovery, for they were all reclaimed from the sand dunes, 
 built and planted some time before the record was made. 
 
 Although it is natural that there should be greatest activity 
 in exotic plants in San Francisco where there were most people 
 and where gold and gallantry were freest in expression, there 
 were also exotics of the ornamental class to be found in abun 
 dance and profusion in Oakland, San Jose, Sacramento, Stock- 
 ton, Marysville, and at other points, as quickly, though in less 
 amount, than in the metropolis. 
 
 THE MOST POPULAR FLOWERING EXOTICS 
 
 The most popular exotic flowers of California's first decade 
 were roses, camellias and dahlias. This claim is based on the 
 fact that special premiums were offered for displays of these 
 flowers at the fairs of the early fifties while others were not 
 particularized. Just what this preference was based upon It 
 is not easy to determine. Were they the most popular exotics 
 
14 CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 
 everywhere at that date or was it because their bloom seasons 
 in the open air in California were different and practically" 
 covered the year? It is an interesting question to remember 
 and to answer as one may feel confidnce. 
 
 Little need be said of the supremacy of the rose; it exists 
 to the present day. It is interesting, however, to note how soon 
 the early California propagators worked largely with the 
 best roses of their time. A. P. Smith of Sacramento (who 
 was really the first man to start a California nursery; even 
 before the gold-rush) had in 1857, 12,000 rose plants of 200 
 varieties; L. Prevost of San Jose had in 1858, 20,000 rose 
 plants of 120 varieties; W. S. Osborne of Los Angeles had 
 20,000 plants of 118 varieties, and so on with many other 
 growers. 
 
 Of the popularity of the camellia with the pioneers one can 
 hardly say more than that it was as highly prized then as it 
 is now neglected. It was splendidly grown in the open air in 
 San Francisco, but the pioneer leader with the camellia was 
 A. P. Smith of Sacramento of whom an official report in 1858 
 says: "No man has been at greater expense with camellias nor 
 succeeded so well." He was at that time credited with 2000 
 plants of 200 varities. When Mr. Smith's establishment was 
 dismantled, early in the sixties probably, his camellias, some 
 of which had reached the height of ten or twelve feet, were 
 transplanted to San Francisco by E. L. Reimer and produced 
 abundant blooms some of which were sold at $100 each, for 
 their popularity was then still strong. It is probable that some 
 of the large camellias in the Sacramento gardens, from which 
 blooms are now sold at a nickel each for the buttonholes 
 of California legislators, are from the old collection at Smith's 
 Gardens so famous in the fifties among visitors to the State 
 capital. 
 
 The early popularity of the dahlia when the bloom was 
 chiefly the formal rosette of our grandmothers is not easy 
 to understand, and yet W. C. Walker had in 1856a collection 
 of 100 varieties which, "cultivated in the shaded sandy loam 
 of San Francisco, far excelled any noticed in this country «ip 
 elsewhere" — ^as the visiting committee said of them. The 
 tremendous popularity of the dahlia at the present day is 
 threfore but a recrudescence of the excitement of sixty years 
 ago, but our grandmothers could surely not have imagined 
 
AND THE PLANT INDUSTRY 15 
 
 the size, gorgeous colorings and abandon in form and atti- 
 tude recently assumed by the flower whose self-restrained 
 primness commanded their admiration. 
 
 HOW THE PIONEERS tJSED EXOTICS 
 
 As the pioneers sought exotics grandly and lavishly, so they 
 used them picturesquely and gorgeously. A few brief extracts 
 from the records of 1856 to 1858 indicate what was to be seen 
 in those days. A charming place must have been Hock Farm, 
 the home of John A. Sutter, who was a pioneer of pioneers. It 
 was situated on the river bank about six miles below Marys- 
 ville, on the river side of the residence, of which it is written : 
 
 "The well arranged ornamental grounds are laid out in the 
 old English style and present a scene of rare beauty and in- 
 terest. There are 120 distinct species and varieties of ever- 
 greens gathered from the equator to the highest latitudes in 
 which vegetation thrives. There are fine Oriental cypresses 
 together with rare and beautiful shrubs all being well arrang- 
 ,ed and presenting beautiful effects." 
 
 The account given in 1857 of the home of J. W. Osborne in 
 the Napa Valley is rather more dazzling. It is as follows : 
 
 "The house is new, large, convenient, unique, plain, rich, 
 droll, labyrinthian and unfinished. Is is of the Elizabethan 
 style, applied to a Swiss suburban villa, surrounded by East 
 Indian verandahs and topped out with a touch of the Burmese 
 pagoda covered with a china-built roof. It is all very pretty, 
 surrounded by hedges, clumps of trees, ever-greens and shrub- 
 bery. It is approached from the road by three wide avenues, 
 half a mile long, bordered by ornamental shade trees." 
 
 But even more striking, in landscaping if not in architecture, 
 is the layout of Dr. T. J. White in 1858, the site of which is 
 now in the center of the business district of Los Angeles : 
 
 "The dwelling is situated about three hundred yards from 
 the street and approached by a drive bordered by noble English 
 walnuts and luxurious pomegranates to within a hundred feet 
 of the house where it branches and encloses an oval containing 
 a large fountain, ornamented with shells, coral, evergreens and 
 flowers. On either side of the fountain, in a triangular form, 
 there is another fountain embowered as is the central one. The 
 whole plat between the house and the street, about 300 yards 
 square, is laid out with serpetine walks and set with ornamen- 
 tal trees and shrubbery presenting a view from the elevated 
 
16 CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 
 porch of the dwelling which is both picturesque and beautiful. 
 
 There are many more instances of the arrangements which 
 the pioneers made for using their wealth of exotic plants, but 
 these will serve to indicate their devotion and interest. 
 
 Another phase of the attitude of the pioneers toward beauty 
 in its various manifestations is shown by the following para- 
 graph from the report of an official visiting committee in 1857 : 
 
 "One and a half miles above Marysville on the Yuba river 
 is the farm of C. Covillaud. The proprietor being absent, his 
 wife volunteered to show us the place and upon our objecting 
 that the sun was too hot for her comfort she broke off a branch 
 of a tree, to supply the absence of a parasol, and continued to 
 lead us on, from point to point, explaining the designs and pro- 
 posed improvements and many objects of interest, with a true 
 womanhood which scorns all aristocracy not founded on the 
 faithful prosecution of some laudable calling. The place con- 
 tained 1200 ornamental trees. The approach to the residence 
 was on either side skirted with double rows of ornamental trees 
 intermingled and entwined with a great variety of standard and 
 climbing roses producing an effect an once unique and beauti- 
 ful. There was also a broad corridor surrounded and shaded 
 by a luxuriant growth of clematis, indigenous and exotic." 
 
 Thus the early-day records present to us the pioneer woman 
 in her environment of exotic plants in the lofty calling of home- 
 making in a new State. Probably no single material fact has 
 given our women more courage and comfort in their homes, 
 and more cheer amid difficulties to be overcome, than the gift 
 of the world's best plants for California home adornment and 
 the delight which they manifest in their new environment. 
 
 The foregoing general sketch of the very earliest undertak- 
 ings with exotic plants, chiefly of the ornamental class, is under- 
 taken as introductory to the more specifie consideration of the 
 activities of California nurserymen which follow. 
 
AND THE PLANT INDUSTRY 17 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 California Nurserymen of the First Decade 
 
 ONE of the notable things about the beginnings of Ameri- 
 can agriculture in California was the quick uprising and 
 rapid development of what is now commonly called "the nur- 
 sery business." The word "nursery" designates the space, 
 with promising equipment and environment, for the upbring- 
 ing of the young, either of plants or animals. The phrase 
 "the nursery business" indicates an industry — the commercial 
 growth and distribution of plants. It is interesting to note 
 that California had both nurseries and nursery business from 
 the very beginning : that even when nearly all who came in the 
 gold rush of 1849-50, either went to mining gravel or to dig- 
 ging into each other with various ventures, there were a few 
 who devoted their time and money to the horticultural arts 
 and found great achievement and satisfaction therein. The 
 results which they attained soon attracted attention of others 
 and within three or four years, the plant collections and estab- 
 lishments for plant propagation in California were, in size 
 and number, such as no other American state has ever pos- 
 sessed in its youth. The reasons for this rapid development 
 of appreciation and demand for plants are to be found in two 
 directions, neither of which need be pursued beyond citation; 
 first, the welcoming climatic conditions which American enter- 
 prise never possessed before and was delighted to prove out 
 by plant tests; second, the purchasing power of gold which 
 was abundantly in nearly every one's hands in the beginning. 
 There never was a young state with such forceful incentives 
 to buy plants and so much money to buy with. Emotions and 
 sentiments were also involved, of course, and the early Cali- 
 fornians were more moved by them than the founders of some 
 other states, perhaps, but it was the call of the climate and the 
 gleam of the gold which impelled California to shoot from the 
 starting-post so like a thoroughbred. 
 
18 CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 
 A STATE OF PREPAREDNESS 
 
 It is our purpose to present what seem to us unique and in- 
 teresting facts about the men who ministered to this building 
 in California of the superstructure of American horticulture 
 upon the excellent foundation laid by our Spanish predecessors 
 in the justly celebrated mission gardens of the Franciscan 
 fathers. American horticultural builders could not possibly 
 have achieved what they did in the first decade without such 
 clear demostrations of climatic capacity as the missions afford- 
 ed. It is true that the padres had not large lists of exotics but 
 every one they had spoke truly for the class of plants to which 
 it belonged and therefore most of the American dreams of hor- 
 ticultural expansion based on mission achievements came true. 
 
 But there was also an American condition of preparedness 
 which contributed grandly to California's quick start and wond- 
 erful early attainment. One of the moving forces in Califor- 
 nia's early development both in fruit and ornamental lines was 
 the nursery establishment of EUwanger & Barry of Rochester, 
 New York. Patrick Barry of that firm wrote a book in the 
 '40s which was fundamental in suggesting the style of Cali- 
 fornia fruit trees. Downing and Thomas also wrote books in 
 that decade, but they seemed inclined largely to the laissez- 
 faire method of training fruit trees, but Barry expounded the 
 European systems of cultural training which early Californians 
 adapted to large scale operations in this state by their own 
 original modifications. But I wish to take from Barry not 
 training systems but a personal observation of the expansion 
 of eastern nursery industry during the decade preceding Cali- 
 fornia's begining. 
 
 In 1860 there was a course of lectures on agricultural science 
 at Yale College and Mr. Barry was one of the speakers. He 
 said that in 1 840 two or three small nurseries near each of the 
 larger eastern cities, occupying in all not more than 500 acres 
 of land, and a few other nurseries occupying perhaps one acre 
 each, supplied the plant and tree demand of the whole United 
 States and Canada. Twenty years later there were over a' 
 thousand nurseries in the country, and in his county alone 
 there were three or four thousand acres in nursery, selling 
 annually half a million dollars' worth of plants and trees. It 
 was this eastern development in the commercial handling of 
 plants and trees which made a large contribution to Califor- 
 
AND THE PLANT INDUSTRY 19 
 
 nia's start, for it gathered all the then known plants, the hardy 
 in the open air, the tender under glass, and had them available 
 for bulk movement to California and the California demand 
 found the munitions ready. 
 
 Foreign countries contributed also, for plants came from 
 everywhere — and men came also, chiefly young men trained 
 abroad in plant handling, who soon saw that most of the plants 
 grown under glass in wintry climates needed only sky-cover- 
 ing in California. The start in this state in 1850 was there- 
 fore deeply indebted to the world's awakening to desirability 
 in new and better plants during the preceding decade. 
 
 HOW CALIFORNIA WELCOMED THE NURSERYMAN 
 
 The California pioneers had a high appreciation of the 
 functions of the nurseryman and his relations to the upbuild- 
 ing of the state in making of beautiful homes and in the advan- 
 cement of moral, esthetic and patriotic standards in the citizen- 
 ship as well as in promoting industry. 
 
 Therefore the pioneers began in 1854, when the State Agri- 
 cultural Society was organized by statute, to send out visiting 
 committees to the nursery estableshments to make public re- 
 ports upon their conditions and contents and to award state 
 premiums to the most worthy of them. It meant a great deal 
 to California progress that such an attitude was assumed so 
 early. It was an acknowledgment of obligation to plant intro- 
 ducers and propagators which has not always been well re- 
 membered in recent years. It was surely encouraging and 
 stimulating to industry in plant propagation and distribution. 
 
 From these official reports we learn that as early as 1856 
 there were nurseries of considerable size in San Francisco 
 owned by H. A. Sontag & Co., James O'Donnell, W. C. Walk- 
 er, and R. W. Washburn, which are credited with area, equip- 
 ment and plant collections equal if not superior to many similar 
 establishments in the eastern states or in Europe at that day. 
 They all had good greenhouses and their sales of potted plants 
 and cut flowers, the latter for their weight in gold slugs probab- 
 ly, during the flush times of the metropolis, are now almost 
 incredible. Away from San Francisco there were many nur- 
 series in 1856-7 chiefly occupied in growing fruit trees to satis- 
 fy the first great passion for fruit planting. In Oakland, James 
 Hutchison had fruits and flowering plants and George Lee 
 had "the largest variety and most luxuriant growth of tropical 
 
20 CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 
 fruits in the state." At Alameda, Wilson Flint had 329,000 
 fruit trees of 150 varieties and received the first premium for 
 the best nursery in the state. At Alameda also was A. H. 
 Meyers with 50,000 trees and the first seedling peach to receive 
 a name, which is now forgotten. At San Lorenzo, John Lewel- 
 llng had 52,000 trees and at Mission San Jose as many more. 
 Around San Jose there were many nurseries. L. Prevost had 
 72,000 fruit trees, and many ornamentals, including 17,000 
 roses in 80 varieties; A. Delmas had 10,000 European grape 
 vines in 80 varieties and 300 basket willows, and William Lent 
 also had foreign grapes in variety. L. E. Gould and J. Morse 
 had small nurseries. B. S. Fox had 42,000 fruit trees and took 
 the first prize for nurseries in 1858. Smith & Winchell had 
 123,000 fruit trees and took the first prize in 1856. Capt. 
 Aram also had a "well known nursery" near San Jose, and 
 Sanderson, Lowe, Daniels, Pellier, Case and O'Donnell were 
 other nurserymen in the San Jose district. At Sacramento were 
 the "Smith Gardens" of A. P. Smith, whose large operations 
 will be mentioned presently. Near Marysville were the New 
 England Nurseries of George H. Beach, who grew large 
 stocks of fruits and ornamentals, including 95,000 fruit trees 
 and grape vines, and near Napa, S. and W. N. Thompson had 
 50,000 trees and grape vines in nursery. 
 
 In Los Angeles, which then included most of the settled area 
 of Southern California, there was much interest in fruit plant- 
 ing to secure the high prices prevailing in San Francisco and 
 many undertook nursery work. William Wolfskill had in 
 1856, 9000 orange and 6000 lemon and lime trees. Dr. S. W. 
 Halse had 14,000 citrus trees, which received a diploma as 
 "the best the committee had seen" ; H. C. Cardwell had 15,000 
 trees and shrubs on the "best land the committee had seen for 
 nursery purposes"; William Stockon (near San Gabriel) had 
 10,000 budded trees and W. B. Osborne had 20,000 rose 
 bushes of 1 18 varieties. Dr. T. J. White had 300 vines of 47 
 varieties Imported from France; also sapota, aguacate and 
 mango brought from Nicaragua and 8000 citrus trees In boxes. 
 S. Harbison near Sacramento had a "timber nursery" which 
 received a premium In 1858 for shade and ornamental trees. 
 
 Thus within the first decade California had nearly forty 
 nurseries of professional standing, with an unknown number 
 who grew trees for their own planting and sold some — which 
 resulted in the great sensation of the period. 
 
AND THE PLANT INDUSTRY 21 
 
 FIRST nurserymen's ASSOCIATION 
 
 The disposition of planters to grow their own trees and to 
 sell "left-overs" to others has arisen whenever unusual interest 
 in fruit planting has prevailed in California. "Every man his 
 own nurseryman" was a slogan against which the pioneer pro- 
 fessional had to contend, and war broke out in 1858 when the 
 first recorded association of California nurserymen was form- 
 ed. The convention was held in San Francisco in November 
 of that year and its purpose was "to regulate prices and sale 
 of trees." When duly organized the association made this 
 declaration : 
 
 "For years a base imposition has been practiced upon 
 purchasers of fruit tress by non-professional nurserymen who 
 go about the country picking up small refuse stock here and 
 there, and, after labeling the trees to suit supposed demand 
 for certain varieties, load them into wagons and then for weeks 
 trundle them over the country. No reliance can be placed upon 
 trees thus hawked about — either on the chance of living or on 
 the varieties secured." 
 
 Thus California nurserymen declared war upon "tree ped- 
 dlers" nearly sixty years ago. The way they proposed to pro- 
 tect the public was as follows : 
 
 "We propose to sell trees only from our nursery grounds, 
 diggings and packing no faster than ordered. We have assem- 
 bled in convention to adopt such a reduced scale of prices as 
 will enable all purchasers to obtain directly from long establish- 
 ed nurseries, genuine and reliable trees and vines at less cost 
 than they have hitherto been induced to pay for those of un- 
 known and worthless character." 
 
 These declarations were signed by nine nursery firms engag- 
 ed in the production of fruit trees, viz. : A. P. Smith, Sacra- 
 mento ; J. Aram & Co., San Jose ; J. Lewelling, San Lorenzo ; 
 L. A. Gould, Santa Clara; China Smith and B. S. Fox & Co., 
 San Jose; R. W. Washburn, San Francisco; G. H. Beach, 
 Marysville ; A. Lewelling & Co., Fruitvale. 
 
 The scale of prices which would knock out the tree peddlers 
 is very interesting now, viz. : 1-year-old apple trees, 3Sc to 50c 
 each; 2 years old, 62c to $1 ; pear, nectarine, apricot and cher- 
 ry trees, 1 year old, 75c to $1, 2 years old, $1 to $2; plum 
 trees, 1 year old, 50c to $1, 2 years old, $1 to $2; peach trees, 
 1 year old, 37c to $1, 2 years old, $1 to 1.50 ; almonds, seedling. 
 
22 CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 
 50c to $1, grafted, $1 to $2; figs, California, $1 to $1.50, 
 foreign, $2 to $3; walnut, 1 year old, 50c to $1, 2 years old 
 $1 to $1.50. It must be remembered that these are all prices 
 for single trees; no prices by 100 or 1000 are quoted and there 
 is no intimation of reduction in price for quantity orders. Apple 
 and peach scions are $10 per M; pear, plum and cherry scions, 
 $20 per M. 
 
 These are the prices which were held to be low enough to 
 knock out tree peddlers. It is not indicated what these prices are 
 reduced from, but it is otherwise known that fruit trees had 
 been sold in previous years at $3 to $5 each. Probably plant- 
 ers often fail to realize how much more easily they can now 
 provide for planting than the pioneers could, through the or- 
 ganization and efficiency of modern nursery operations. Plant- 
 ing more closely, as the pioneers did, even at the reduced prices 
 noted above, it must have cost, on the average, from $100 to 
 $150 to get the trees for an acre of land. 
 
 Looking backward for notes of the speed with which pioneer 
 nurserymen advanced it is very significant to remember that in 
 1858 nine of them alluded to their "long established nurseries" 
 when only one of them had been in business more than five years 
 and most of them less than that. It was quite characteristic of 
 the times. Things grew old very fast. 
 
 EXPERIENCES OF TWO PIONEER NURSERYMEN -. .. 
 
 Perhaps we can get a more realizing sense of conditions in 
 the first California decade by contrasting the experiences of 
 two pioneer nurserymen which we glean from various contem- 
 porary records. 
 
 A. P. Smith of Sacramento was apparently the first com- 
 mercial nurserymen of California, for he started in 1848, on 
 sixty-five acres of land three miles from the city on the Amer- 
 ican river, which he purchased from Capt. Sutter, whose old 
 fort, somewhat restored, now stands in the center of the capital 
 city. Mr. Smith evidently entered the nursery business by the 
 market garden route and was ready not only with vegetables 
 for the inrushing '49ers, but for the first start both with fruit 
 trees and ornamentals. F. A. Miller, himself a pioneer whom 
 many of us remember, wrote in 1904 as follows : "Mr. Smith 
 cultivated a very meritorious collection of ornamental and 
 fruit-bearing trees, shrubs and vines which would be considered 
 a credit to his state at the present time." The early records 
 
AND THE PLANT INDUSTRY 23 
 
 justify Mr. Miller's tribute to the first of all nursery pioneers. 
 In 1856 it was officially reported: 
 
 "In the extent of plantings, the number and variety of plants, 
 the hedges of escalonia and osage orange, the firm walks and 
 perfect cultivation, it would be difficult to find the equal of the 
 gardens and nurseries of A. P. Smith. The grounds are irri- 
 gated with water from the American river raised by a 10-horse- 
 power steam pump, capable of throwing 10,000 gallons an 
 hour into a reservoir from which it is carried by 6000 feet of 
 12-inches earthen pipe under ground to twenty hydrants, from 
 which it is distributed through 4500 feet of canvas hose, here 
 and there as desired." 
 
 In 1857 Mr. Smith had in nursery 194,000 trees and plants 
 of 1109 different varieties. In that year he grew and sold 
 4000 pounds of garden seeds. He had three greenhouses, 
 each over 100 feet long, which took state premiums in 1857 
 and 1858. During three years, from 1856 to 1858, Mr. Smith 
 sold products to the value of over $150,000 and his expenses 
 during the same years were $1 10,000. 
 
 He was doing a good business, but soon after the demand 
 failed to keep pace with such expansion and the establishment 
 was broken up a few years later after a hard struggle. It was ' 
 too great for the time and the competition which surrounded it. 
 
 Quite in contrast with this pioneer nursery tragedy was the 
 upbuilding of another pioneer concern by B. S. Fox of San Jose, 
 remembrance of whom, in his latter days, a number of us prob- 
 ably share. He was a quaint Irish bachelor gentleman, well 
 trained in handling plants, with a fine thrift, a hunger for hard 
 work and an acuteness in trade. His chief recreation was 
 seedlings pears, some of which still stand in honor on Ameri- 
 can fruit lists. He was perhaps the closest link between Cali- 
 fornia and the distinguished eastern pomologists of fifty years 
 ago. He was the opposite of his predecessor. Smith, in every- 
 things but the plant-love which both of them possessed. >He 
 built up his business, which endured until his death, in the early 
 '80s, with less money probably than Smith unconsciously threw 
 away. Surely the modern science of efficience has nothing on 
 Fox in economy of production. We have his word for it, as 
 follows : 
 
 "In 1857, I planted ten acres of stocks, afterwards grafted, 
 budded and cultivated the same all the rest of the year, mak- 
 ing and caring for 63,000 budded trees for a cash outlay of 
 
24 CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 
 $1423. In 1858, I planted out and budded later, 100,000 
 trees and kept them growing with an outlay of $1828." 
 
 How Mr. Fox could produce budded nursery trees for less 
 than 2 cents each would be hard to understand if we did not 
 fortunately have his own explanation. In his report, he in- 
 genuosly says : "We do all our own budding and grafting and 
 of course make no charge nor credit for our own labor, not 
 knowing its value." He also wrote : "Time pressed so hard 
 that we had to graft day and night." With this sidelight we 
 can understand how Mr. Fox could figure cost of trees so low, 
 but even this left him in some economic doubt, for he wrote 
 that he "questioned whether trees would pay a fair return 
 upon the capital sunk at the present price of labor. I am afraid 
 that they will not, but our operations for the coming season 
 will be on an extended scale, considering the age of the state." 
 But while he still had doubts whether returns would justify the 
 capital sunk in paying one man and a boy the sum mentioned 
 above per 100,000 trees, still he kept bravely on. His timid 
 expansion secured for him the first prize for the best fruit tree 
 nursery in the state and he maintained a leading position in the 
 California nursery business for a quarter of a century after 
 his doubts began. 
 
 DRY FARMED OR IRRIGATED TREES? 
 
 Early in the '50s the tap-root controversy was hot in Cali- 
 fornia as it was at the East, and the prejudice created against 
 transplanting was somewhat troublesome to the nurseryman. 
 The answer is, of course, then as now, that not one in a million 
 of successful fruit trees ever grew from a seed planted in 
 place — which is a complete demonstration that its original tap 
 root is of no importance to a tree. If it wants one, or several, 
 it will make them after transplanting. And so the tap-root 
 issue of the first decade came to naught as that issue always 
 will. Closely related was the controversy, which also arose in 
 the '50s, as to whether nursery trees should be irrigated or not. 
 George H. Beach, the pioneer nurseryman of Marysville, met 
 that issue squarely in 1858 with this declaration : 
 
 "About half my nursery trees and vines are grown with and 
 half without irrigation. I think those which were irrigated 
 start more thriftily when set in orchard, having softer wood 
 and bark, finer sap vessels and roots better fibered, always con- 
 tinue to do better with the same treatment than those grown 
 
AND THE PLANT INDUSTRY 25 
 
 without irrigation. The latter tend to a tap-root, while those 
 grown with irrigation send out a multiplicity of roots and fibers 
 and I find the top partakes very much of the style of the roots." 
 It must be admitted that some of these claims were then, and 
 are still, unsupported by demonstration, but as theories they 
 are quite as good as those which have been constructed against 
 properly irrigated trees. 
 
 THE PIONEER LANDSCAPIST 
 
 Now that California nurserymen are acting upon the convic- 
 tion that it is a part of their business to offer planters advice 
 about arrangement and handling of plants as well as fill their 
 orders for them, it is interesting to note that at least one pio- 
 neer nurseryman laid out his business that way. J. R. Lowe, 
 edicated in England, estableshed a nursery and offered to do 
 landscape work in San Jose early in the fifties. Of him the 
 early official reports say that he was the most prominent land- 
 scape gardener and that he laid out handsome grounds, not 
 only in the Santa Clara Valley, but in remote places. The report 
 of 1857 speaks of Lowe and of his work as follows: 
 
 "Landscape gardening is beginning to be quite fashionable. 
 The careless, irregular, but graceful curves and winding of the 
 carriage drives bordered with flowering hedges, lawns, groups 
 of rare and well-shaped trees, surrounded and mingled, forest- 
 like, with shrubs and running vines, please the admirer of na- 
 ture more than the old geometric style, with its stiff set, me- 
 chanical forms." 
 
 Now that the so-called natural system prevails so widely in 
 California and the formal system is usually restricted to its 
 proper elements and surroundings, it is interesting to remem- 
 ber that next to Nature itself, the natural system was first prac- 
 ticed professionally by J. R. Lowe, as a part of his regular 
 nursery business, early in in the first decade. 
 
26 CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 California Nurserymen of the Second and Third Decades 
 
 THE period of pioneer nursery effort in California does 
 not properly close with the records of the early '50s, but 
 should extend to the time when public recognition of the devet 
 opment value of it was manifested, which was in the latter '70s. 
 As I undertake then a few sketches of nursery affairs of the 
 second and third decades, they will be found intimately inter- 
 woven with similar affairs of the first decade. 
 
 First, I will undertake lists of pioneer California nursery- 
 men whose work was of character and extent enough to secure 
 mention in such publications of the time as I have at hand and 
 of many of whom I have also personal memory. Inserted 
 dates indicate year of beginning, where available : 
 
 Nurserymen who survived the first decade. A. P. Smith, 
 Sacramento, 1848; John Bidwell, Chico, 1851; J. Aram & 
 Company, William Daniels, William O'DDonnell, B. S. Fox 
 & Company, 1853; L. F. Sanderson, 1853; L. Prevost, D. T. 
 Adams, China Smith, J. R. Lowe, Louis Pellier, San Jose ; H. 
 A. Sontag, James O'Donnell, W. C. Walker, R. W. Wash- 
 burn, E. L. Reimers, San Francisco; L. A. Gould, Santa Clara; 
 J. Lewelling, San Lorenzo; A. Lewelling & Company, Fruit- 
 vale; W. F. Kelsey, 1852, James Hutchinson, 1852; A. D. 
 Pryal, 1853, Oakland; Wilson Flint, A. H. Myers, Alameda; 
 W. H. Pepper, 1858, Petaluma; S. & W. N. Thompson, Sus- 
 col; W. B. West, 1852, Stockton; G. H. Beach, Marysville; 
 C. W. Reed, 1855, Sargent & Colby, S. Harbison, Sacramento; 
 T. J. White, S. W. Halsee, Matthew Keller, O. W. Childs, 
 William Stockton, W. B. Osborne, Los Angeles; 
 
 Nurserymen who began in the second decade. William Sex- 
 ton, 1860, Petaluma; John Rock, 1865, John Hannay, 1865, 
 Sylvester Newhall, San Jose; Robert Williamson, 1865, Sac- 
 ramento; James Shirin, Niles; E. Gill, 1866, Oakland; Felix 
 
AND THE PLANT INDUSTRY 27 
 
 Gillet, Nevada City; Joseph Sexton, Santa Barbara; Miller & 
 Sievers, E. Meyer, F. Lundemann, 1869, San Francisco; 
 Thomas A. Garey, Los Angeles. 
 
 Nurserymen who began in the third decade. E. Germain, 
 1871, Milton Thomas and Louis Stengel, Los Angeles; P. S. 
 Russell, Riverside ; James Waters, Watsonville ; C. M. Silva 
 & Son, New Castle; James O'Neill, 1876, Haywards; Leonard 
 Coates, 1878, Napa and Morganhill. 
 
 These lists are probably incorrect and incomplete. I sub- 
 mit them merely as the foundation of a roll of honor which 
 I hope will be rendered more correct and complete by records 
 and memories which are not at the moment available to me. 
 
 LEADERS OF THE PIONEER PERIOD 
 
 Two names seem to stand out as leaders of the first three 
 decades of California nursery history from the point of view 
 of public attitude and influeunce. In the first decade Wilson 
 Flint was the leader in pomologlcal discussion, both with voice 
 and pen. He was the closest student of local conditions and 
 horticultural ways to secure best results from them. He was 
 naturally pressed into service as executive officer and promoter 
 of the surprisingly complete and significant horticultural exhi- 
 bitions of his time. After years of activity in all these lines he 
 entered seriously upon the nursery business and in 1857 had 
 what is described as "the largest nursery in the state" at Ala- 
 meda. Mr. Flint died in 1866, while still in the prime of life. 
 
 The nursery and pomological leader during the later '60s 
 and thereafter for over a third of a century was John Rock, to 
 whose memory a touching tribute by Mr. Kruckeberg was pub- 
 lished in the report of the second annual meeting of the Cali- 
 fornia Association of Nurserymen. Mr. Rock was more wide- 
 ly and deeply grounded in pomological knowledge than any 
 of his contemporaries. To him came first the vision of the 
 greatness of nursery enterprise of which California is capable 
 and he lived to see his pioneer conception of such greatness at- 
 tained not only in his own enterprise, but in the undertakings 
 of the later generation. During his forty years of California 
 life his leadership in his chosen art and industry and in the 
 quality of his manhood and citizenship was unquestioned. In 
 1904, the year of Mr. Rock's death, F. A. Miller, another pi- 
 oneer nurseyrman whose career covered the whole period of 
 
28 CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 
 Mr. Rock's activity wrote this appreciative and discriminating 
 sketch of him : 
 
 "Mr. Rock was a remarkable man, closely identified during 
 a long and useful career with the inception, development and 
 final establishment of an elightened horticultural practice in 
 California; a personality at once pronounced, broadly human, 
 intensely serious, patriotic, imbued with a healthy ambition and 
 a broad civic pride in the state and country of his adoption ; a 
 trained horticulturist, a man of integrity and honesty of pur- 
 pose in everything he said or did." 
 
 All of this is true, but it is not all that I enjoyed in Mr. 
 Rock's personality. To me the quiet cordiality of his greet- 
 ing, which found chief expression in the twinkling of his kind- 
 ly eyes can never be forgotten. And there was his placid de- 
 meanor in the midst of things which others might think excit- 
 ing ; also the humorous view through which he delivered a deep 
 and kindly philosophy. I remember appealing to him in the 
 '70s for advice as to how to treat two rival nurserymen who 
 were lambasting each other in print in a quarrel as to whether 
 a certain kind of fruit was worth planting. One glorified it 
 and the other condemned it and held everybody who would 
 have anything to do with it up to public scorn. And so I asked 
 Mr. Rock whether the variety was any good and what I ought 
 to do about the quarrel. He replied: "The fruit is good 
 enough to plant and don't worry about the men. They will 
 get tired presently. The fact is that one man has too many 
 trees of that kind and the other hasn't enough." 
 
 RESEARCH BY PIONEER NURSERYMEN 
 
 Probably nearly all the pioneer nurserymen were something 
 more than tree and plant merchants. They were the chief de- 
 monstrators of the suitability of the world's plants to Califor- 
 nia conditions before there were many amateurs and before 
 there was any institutional effort in that line — except in the in- 
 troduction and testing of wine grapes, which was the State's 
 first enterprise in plant production and trial. Plant research, 
 to determine adaptability and value, was really the foundation 
 of early nursery effort, both with economic and ornamental 
 growths, and the early announcements were often good proph- 
 ecy. One who watches the growing promises of the transfor- 
 mation of the interior valley plains from treeless wastes to a 
 vast arboretum, which will some day be realized, should re- 
 
AND THE PLANT INDUSTRY 29 
 
 member the beginnings toward that end were made by the nur- 
 serymen and that they were the first preachers of demonstrated 
 practicability. For example, W. B. West of Stockton, who 
 was a leader in plant research for four decades, wrote in 1861 
 as follows : 
 
 "It has been supposed that evergreens, especially conifers, 
 would not thrive in our hot, dry climate and stiff, clayey soil, 
 but it is a great mistake. We have never seen better growth 
 than that made by arbor vitae, pine and cypress. The only 
 requisite is to raise them from seed and nurse them through 
 the first and second years. They then become hardy, grow 
 thriftily and will do with less water than any ornamental tree. 
 We think the day will come when they will be plenty and cheap, 
 so that we may adorn our dwellings, make hedges and use 
 them freely. The want of them is sadly felt in our landscape." 
 
 But all the pioneer nurserymen did not find such work easy,! 
 In 1863 a prize was offered for the best essay on plant grow- 
 ing, and William Daniels of San Jose took a try at it with an 
 essay on grape culture beginning: "I would rather cultivate 
 a vineyard than write an essay, but at the solicitation of my 
 friends I will state the results of my fifteen years' practical ex- 
 perience and actual observation in California." And he took 
 the first prize for it. 
 
 CONSCIENTIOUS EFFORT FOR TRUTH 
 
 It is also interesting to note that the pioneer nurserymen had 
 a high moral code and conscientiously endeavored to propa- 
 gate the best and to have their plants true to name. C. W. 
 Reed of Sacramento wrote in 1866 this interesting narrative 
 of his personal endeavor : 
 
 "I brought to California in 1855 twenty thousand fruit trees 
 and fifteen bushels of fruit seeds to plant. In 1856 I imported 
 eighty thousand trees and twenty-five bushels of seeds. 
 
 "It has been the misfortune of nurserymen in California to 
 disseminate many trees incorrectly named In early times. The 
 evil to a great extent has been unavoidable in consequence of 
 having to rely on nursery trees. Eastern nurserymen are not 
 infallible. California nurserymen are always blamed, whether 
 the mistakes occur with them or not. To avoid mistakes, I not 
 only cut all my buds and scions myself, but endeavor to cut all 
 from bearing trees. I have often traveled 100 miles to obtain 
 buds and scions from trees I knew to be correct. 
 
30 CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 
 "In 1864 I sold 25,000 trees and had in nursery 436 vari- 
 eties of fruit. My object was not to sell so many varieties, but 
 to prove them and propagate only those I found best adapted 
 to soil and climate of California." 
 
 In 1867 Mr. Reed had a million trees in his nursery and 
 was awarded a prize for the best nursery in the State. Sub- 
 sequently he was a leader in fruit growing and eastern ship- 
 ment for more than a decade. 
 
 DEMONSTRATORS OF CULTURAL METHODS 
 
 The pioneer nurserymen assumed the duty not only of in- 
 troducing plants, but of teaching people how to grow them. 
 In the latter line they had serious difficulties overcoming the 
 false doctrines and wrong practices of the so-called "profes- 
 sional gardeners" who claimed to know everything then, as 
 they are still apt to do. E. L. Reimers, looking backward, 
 wrote of his experience in 1873, as follows: 
 
 "If a nurserjmian offers for sale such shrubs as lilacs, snow- 
 balls, philadelphus, deutzias, etc., people will tell him they 
 will never produce flowers in this country. Years since I used 
 to sell a quantity of such shrubs, but the sale has gradually 
 diminished from year to year. These interesting shrubs will 
 bloom in this country as profusely as in any other. Non- 
 blooming is not the fault of the climate, but of the jobbing 
 gardeners who pretend to take care of private places. They 
 intrude themselves upon the public in this part of the world 
 as horticultural experts though they have never occupied any 
 higher grade than the use of the broom, the manure fork, and 
 the wheelbarrow. I have found that complaint of the plants 
 comes from the fact that these jobbing gardeners have all these 
 shrubs trimmed down in winter and have cut away all the 
 blooming tips of the last summer's growth by cutting to a 
 sugar loaf form, and the owner gets new foliage in the spring 
 but naturally looks in vain for the flowers, because the flower- 
 ing buds have been cut off and thrown on the rubbish heap." 
 
 CONTRACTION IN THE SECOND DECADE 
 
 The decade from 1860 to 1870 was in some ways quite 
 in contrast with the preceding ten-year period. Scores of 
 nurseries went forward from the first to the second decade, 
 but rather few went farther, Many of the early pioneers be- 
 gan late in life and grew weary when the absorbing interest 
 
AND THE PLANT INDUSTRY 31 
 
 of the beginning slackened. Fruit production reached the 
 limits of the local demand and no good outlet appeared. Im- 
 portations of fruit were reduced to small figures, but this 
 did not make an opening for the large planting. Nurseries 
 became fewer in number and success in the "short-order" trade 
 enabled a number to work along until the re-awakening which 
 rewarded some of them for their patient persistence and for 
 the wisdom which they had gained from long experience. 
 
 THE THIRD DECADE ENDS IN GLORY 
 
 It is my present purpose only to pursue the work of the 
 pioneers until the horticulture of California reached the end 
 of its pioneer period, manifested consciousness of its high 
 industrial calling and entered confidentially upon the realiza- 
 tion of it. This change in the attitude came in the latter '70s 
 and the manifestation of it was a sudden expansion of public 
 interest in large investments in lands and wide planting; in 
 recognition of the advantages of organization; of the neces- 
 sity of laws and institutions capable of promotion and protec- 
 tion of wide investment and systematic effort for better trans- 
 portation of great volumes of unique products to the world's 
 markets. Of course all these things were not suddenly 
 achieved, but the disposition to enter resolutely upon them 
 was quite sudden and remarkable : it was an awakening 
 evolved from the experiences of the pioneer period : it was an 
 awakening to work confidently toward an end which the nat- 
 ural resources of California demonstrated to be reasonable 
 and the spirit of Californians determined to attain. Four dec- 
 ades have passed since the date of that awakening — each 
 bringing surprises in volume, value and uniqueness of achiev- 
 ment and manifesting capacity and elasticity which are really 
 characters of the early stages of a development process. What 
 we now see and do for California horticulture we should there- 
 fore regard with humility, for there surely will come a time 
 when our work will not be looked upon in any way as an ac- 
 complishment, but merely as a part of the beginning of it. As 
 we honor those who intelligently and faithfully worked that 
 we might do more than we could do, so perhaps may we hope 
 for honor from those who really will see our beloved state in 
 the fullness of her plant beauty and plant production. It is 
 fitting then that we should honor the memory of those decades 
 ago made supreme effort and staked their livelihoods for sue- 
 
32 CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 
 cessful plant production, improvement and propagation, for 
 their skill, devotion and investments lie in the firm foun- 
 dation, not only of our degree of attainment, but of the ulti- 
 mate horticultural achievement of California, which none of 
 us can ever see unless we can gaze from the ramparts of an- 
 other world upon it — ^possibly with longings to return. 
 
AND THE PLANT INDUSTRY 33 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Nurserymen of the Fourth Decade 
 
 THE period of 1880 to 1890 is especially notable in Cali- 
 fornia fruit growing because it was the time for which 
 all pioneer demonstrations and undertakings were preparatory, 
 and it was also the decade in which practically all our great 
 ideas of large scale enterprises in fruit production, preser- 
 vation and co-operative fruit handling found birth. It was 
 also naturally the birth time of expansive enterprises in nur- 
 sery propagation, for which definite opportunity then arose 
 in a greater demand for trees than had previous existed. The 
 nurserymen of the first three decades had some great dreams, 
 but were baffled in efforts to realize them by the incapacity 
 of the small local population to consume fruit and fruit 
 products; by the high cost of long distance transportation; by 
 lack of proper facilities and skill for delivery of fresh fruits 
 in good condition; by the absence of adequate establishments' 
 for fruit preservation, and by the ignorance of ways by which 
 growers could give their own products acceptable and durable 
 forms for distant commercial handling. But the pioneer nur- 
 serymen held bravely on in spite of all these limitations to 
 realization of enterprises which they foresaw, and they were 
 ready for expansion when the opportunity disclosed itself in 
 the fourth decade, largely because they themselves insisted 
 that it would arise and labored unceasingly to reveal it. 
 
 CO-OPERATION OF NURSERYMEN AND PLANTERS 
 
 It was in the latter '70s that the actual development of 
 California fruit growing into a great industry began. The 
 incoming of many men and women experienced in affairs and 
 possessed of capital and enterprise gave birth to colony devel- 
 opment about 1875, which in a few years awakened a new 
 spirit of progress in California. It 1879 two very important 
 and influential undertakings began: the holding of the first 
 
34 CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 
 citrus fair at Riverside and National City and the establish- 
 ment of the State Horticultural Society, a private, self-sup- 
 porting association which enrolled membership from all parts 
 of the state, and the Southern California Horticultural Society, 
 also a self-supporting society, which was geographically 
 limited, as its name indicates. These voluntary societies were 
 enthusiastically supported by the nurserymen, both in their 
 meetings for discussions and in their exhibitions. The State 
 Horticultural Society, which held monthly meetings in San 
 Francisco from 1879 to 1895, was during its whole life an 
 assembly of nurserymen and fruit growers — each class freely 
 contributing the kind of local knowledge which the other 
 eagerly desired. The growers were thirsty for experience in 
 propagation and the nurserymen hungry for fore-knowledge 
 of varieties which growers approved for planting, so that 
 they might offer such trees as soon as possible. 
 
 The voluntary societies named were active in securing state 
 aid for formation and protection of fruit growing, and this 
 was quickly realized, beginning with creation of a state com- 
 mission for viticulture in 1880, and for tree fruits (commonly 
 called "horticulture") in March of the following year — a 
 state horticultural commission being provided and a county 
 horticultural law being enacted by the legislature of 1881. In 
 December of the same year the first general "fruit growers 
 convention" was held to actuate the provisions of the new 
 laws. It was the first of the uninterrupted services of popular 
 conventions. In all this work for fruit growing development 
 nurserymen took an active part. Two pioneer nurserymen, 
 W. B. West and Felix Gillet, were members of the first state 
 horticultural commission under the law of 1881. 
 
 HOW QUARANTINE PROVISIONS BEGAN 
 
 At the first Fruit Growers' Convention (1881) a nursery- 
 men's committee, consisting of Felix Gillet of Nevada City, 
 Robert Williamson of Sacramento, S. McKinley of Los An- 
 geles, and C. M. Sllva of Newcastle, submitted this resolu- 
 tion: 
 
 "Whereas, Nurserymen are In a position to scatter 
 pests far and wide, therefore, all nurserymen are urged 
 to thoroughly disinfect all trees and plants before send- 
 ing them out or offering them for sale." 
 
AND THE PLANT INDUSTRY 35 
 
 At the second Fruit Growers' Convention (1882) another 
 nurserymen's committee consisting of W. M. Williams of 
 Fresno, W. B. West of Stockton, J. M. Asher of San Diego, 
 John Rock of San Jose, and E. B. Silva of Newcastle, sub- 
 mitted a resolution reaffirming the need of local disinfection 
 and suggesting also the desirability of a national quarantine 
 or exclusion of plants from foreign countries. This was too 
 remote a recourse for those who desired immediate state 
 quarantine, and too adverse to the interests of those desir- 
 ing to import plants, but it is interesting as being the first 
 formal declaration in California favor of such nationl quaran- 
 tine laws as we now have. 
 
 At several conventions from 1882 to 1887 nurserymen 
 prominently participating, in addition to those already men- 
 tioned, included Leonard Coates of Napan, James Shinn of 
 Niles, L. F. Sanderson of San Jose, John Bidwell of Chico, 
 T. A. Garey and Milton Thomas of Los Angeles, L H. 
 Thomas of Visilia (who was afterwards a member of the 
 state horticultural commission) and others. At the end of 
 the eleventh convention, at Nationl City in 1888, J. E. Cutter, 
 a Riverside nurseryman, submitted a scale of points for judg- 
 ing oranges different from the Florida scale, which was sub- 
 sequently influential in impressing California standards of 
 desirability in oranges upon American pomological conscious- 
 ness. 
 
 DEMONSTRATIONS OF SUITABILITY IN VARIETIES 
 
 The free and cordial intercourse between nurserymen and 
 planters during the fourth decade was to their mutual advan- 
 tage. It had a marked effect on the choice of varieties for 
 propagation and planting becasue it promoted discernment 
 of what was desirable in the establishment of a great and 
 progressive fruit growing industry. It is hard to realize, 
 now that standards are largely fixed, the uncertainty which 
 prevailed when there were really no standards. Fruit ship- 
 ping to eastern markets was small and hazardous, because 
 it was not known what varieties would carry well and what 
 eastern people would buy largely. Canning establishments 
 were only beginning to learn by experience what varieties 
 would process well and not cloud or color the syrup, and what 
 fruits consumers would buy freely. Dried fruits were only 
 beginning to emerge from the chips and shoemakers' wax 
 
36 CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 
 products of pioneer sundrying, while machine drying had 
 proved too expensive and of too little capacity. Sun-drying 
 after sulphuring had just been introduced through demon- 
 strations of its production of fine, natural color products by 
 the pioneer apricot growers of Riverside. The whole state 
 had to learn what fruit varieties would ship well, can well, 
 dry well and sell well, and varieties which would combine 
 two or three of these requisites to safety and profit in large 
 production, and to have plenty of trees of each variety for 
 planting, were indispensable to the foundation of a great indus- 
 try. A commencement towards realizing all these require- 
 ments was in no small measure due to the free co-operation 
 of nurserymen and planters and the thinking, talking and 
 exhibiting which both did in their joint assemblies. It was 
 this intense work in the fourth decade which demonstrated 
 the suitability of most of the varieties which now constitute 
 our chief production — except in the case of shipping plums, 
 of which the list then approved was much modified by Bur- 
 bank's later creations. 
 
 NURSERY CENTERS IN THE FOURTH DECADE 
 
 The passion for planting fruits which was strong in 1880 
 naturally multiplied nurseries. It was like the pioneer pas- 
 sion of 1850, but with a different motive : then it was a passion 
 to determine what they could grow in California; in 1880, it 
 was a passion to get as much as possible of what would sell 
 profitably from California. Both passions impelled the ex- 
 pansion and multiplication of nurseries, and also impelled 
 orchard planters to "grow their own trees and a few more 
 to sell while they were at it." The result was such a great 
 supply of fruit trees that nurserymen took to planting orchards 
 and orchardists took to advertising nursery stock; but the 
 development in Southern California and in the San Joaquin 
 valley created a great demand, and the fact that California 
 yearlings in the deciduous line are old enough to plant or to 
 burn helped to get any surplus out of sight and encouraged 
 new production. The old nursery centers of the preceding 
 decades increased establishments and products and new cen- 
 ters were developed. 
 
 The old Los Angeles group of Jose Rubio, Lewis Wolfskill, 
 T. A. Garey, E. Germain, McKinley Brothers, Fisher & 
 
AND THE PLANT INDUSTRY 37 
 
 Richardson, Milton Thomas, and others was extended to 
 include Tim Carroll at Anaheim, Ford at Santa Ana, Asher 
 and Swayne at San Diego, Twogood & Cutter, P. S. Russell, 
 Frost & Burgess, J. H. Fountain, T. W. Cover (first commer- 
 cial distributor of Riverside Navel buds in 1879), and others 
 at Riverside; Dave Turner and Thomas, Thomas Brown of 
 San Bernardino, J. S. Armstrong at Ontario, R. M. Teague, 
 San Dimas, Joseph Sexton and Kinton Stevens at Santa Bar- 
 bara. The San Jose center of B. S. Fox, John Rock, James 
 Shinn, M. F. Sanderson, John Hannay and others, extended 
 southward to take in James Waters at Watsonville and north- 
 ward to include O'Neil and Collins at Haywards, and Tosetti 
 at San Leandro. The Oakland center retained of the pioneers 
 Hutchinson, the Kelseys, E. Gill and others, added Duane of 
 Martinez, and started out W. P. Hammon in Oakland and 
 A. Lusk & Co. at North Temescal for brief, brisk runs. North 
 of the Bay of San Francisco, Pepper and William Sexton, of 
 the old Petaluma district, were reinforced by Luther Bur- 
 bank at Santa Rosa and Leonard Coates in Napa valley ex- 
 tended the achievements of the pioneer Thompsons as Suscal. 
 In the Stockton-Sacramento district, W. B. West and C. W. 
 Reed expanded their own pioneer undertakings, and Robert 
 Williamson with his associates, J. A. Anderson and W. R. 
 Strong, grew vast numbers of trees both in the valley and 
 foothill places. In Placer and Nevada counties, C. M. Silva 
 & Son of Newcastle and A. F. Boardman & Co., of Auburn 
 extended their operations, and Felix Gillet continued his propa- 
 gation of selected varieties of fruits and nuts at Nevada 
 City. In the upper Sacramento valley, John Bidwell am- 
 plified his old Rancho Chico Nurseries under the superin- 
 tendence of D. H. Lennox, Hatch & Rock started large 
 propagation at Biggs, and J. T. Bogue, after dealings in 
 imported French seedlings for all nurserymen, concluded to 
 take his own medicine and started budding seedlings in his 
 own nursery south of Marysville. 
 
 Besides these few recalled from memory there were many 
 others at various places adding to the tree supply and other 
 scores who were primarily florists who took to growing trees 
 or dealing in them because of the keen commercial demand 
 for fruit trees which for a time almost wholly absorbed the 
 call for ornamentals. 
 
38 CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 
 THE NURSERY UPLIFT AT FRESNO 
 
 The most notable thing in the nursery expansion during 
 the fourth decade was the great push at Fresno. When 
 colony planting began there in the later '70s trees and vines 
 were largely secured from the pioneer establishments in the 
 Stockton and Sacramento districts, though there soon arose 
 local nurseries like that of the elder Kirkman at Merced, 
 which contributed to the early supply. But Fresno was the 
 place where the northward wave of expansion from Los An- 
 geles and the southward wave from central California were 
 to meet and engender a great uplift of enterprise to meet 
 the large new planting demand for the colonists in the central 
 San Joaquin valley. 
 
 The first large commercial propagation at Fresno consisted 
 of grape vines, begun by the Eison Vineyard Company and 
 others in the late '70s and continued into the fourth decade, 
 but growth of the general nursery stock soon followed. Just 
 before 1880, W. M. Williams, an orange grower and nursery- 
 man of Los Angeles, moved to Fresno, and in 1882 had half 
 a million trees to sell; in 1884 he added to his trees for that 
 year a million rooted vines; in the two following years he 
 claimed "the largest stock in the state," and in 1887 this 
 was specified to include "a million and a half fruit trees." 
 I remember Mr. Williams as a very expansive man of great 
 optimism and cordiality and at the time very sincere and con- 
 vincing in his address. He could see a good chance and knew 
 how to handle it at sight. He was broad of shoulder, deep 
 of chest, generous of girth, very bright in the eye and very 
 glad in the hand. No pent up Los Angeles could contract 
 his powers. It was his function to plant the buoyant Los 
 Angeles spirit in a place where it could expand — and he 
 recognized the San Joaquin plains as such a place. And he 
 did not conceal the fact, for Williams was a prominent par- 
 ticipator at all fruit growers' conventions during the period 
 of his activity. 
 
 But Williams had no free field. Lewis & Bard came out 
 with their Fresno Nursery, in 1993, and F. Roeding of San 
 Francisco announced in 1884 the operations of the Fancher 
 Creek Nurseries under the management of Dr. Gustav Eisen 
 for two years, when the elder Roeding passed over the man- 
 agement to his son, George C. Roeding, who had previously 
 
AND THE PLANT INDUSTRY 39 
 
 had much to do with it. In 1889 F. H. Wilson established 
 the "Fresno Nursery" as it is now known. Thus the Fresno 
 district started out on the leadership in the nursery enterprise, 
 which since that time has been largely extended in establish- 
 ments, in the use of land and capital and in the variety of 
 production until it surpassed any other district in the state. 
 
 FIG FIGHTS AT FRESNO 
 
 Everybody, of course, knows of the recent events in the Cali- 
 fornia fig industry in which George C. Roeding made Fresno 
 famous by his long and strenuous efForts to secure true Smyrna 
 figs with bugs in them, and we are sure that if Roeding had 
 been in the Garden of Eden at the right time he would have 
 circumvented the devil and saved the human race much trouble, 
 by getting a worm into the apple which the serpent handed 
 out to Eve. But Roeding's victory with Smyrna figs and 
 Smyrna bugs belongs to a later decade. It is interesting 
 to know that there was in the fourth decade a fight over 
 figs in Fresno which was quite lively. It was over the "White 
 Adriatic," which G. N. Milco of Stockton found growing 
 at Knight's Ferry from a forgotten importation, and named 
 it from a fig memory of his childhood on the east side of the 
 Adriatic. M. Dfenicke of Fresno secured cuttings early, was 
 pleased with the product and had his fig nursery in operation 
 in 1885. In 1886 Milco announced a "White Adriatic Spec- 
 ialty" from a nursery he planted in Merced county. In 1883 
 Williams got into the game and announced his Fresno nur- 
 sery "Headquarters for White Adriatic." Denicke first coun- 
 tered on this the same year by advertising his outfit as "Chief 
 headquarters for White Adriatic," and afterwards, in more 
 refined strategy, named his place "Eleme Fig Nursery," using 
 a Turkish word said to mean "selected." The fight cooled 
 down soon, for everybody had White Adriatic to sell and 
 planting was large and widely spread both in the San Joaquin 
 and Sacramento valley and foothills, and now, after 35 years, 
 and in spite of its defects, the White Adriatic has larger 
 acreage than any other fig variety and has brought to its 
 growers a barrel of money. The incident shows how the 
 nurserymen even in the fighting add largely to the wealth of 
 the state. 
 
 DAWN OF THE LARGE NURSERY IDEA 
 
 But the fourth decade of California nursery history scored 
 
40 CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 
 a peace victory no less renowned. It was the beginning of 
 large scale enterprises in propagation and sale by using large 
 areas of land and associated capital. Previously a few acres 
 had constituted a nursery and a few scores of trees a large 
 nursery. In the '80s acreage began to be included by the 
 hundreds, from one to two hundred actually employed being 
 the start in that direction. In 1884, John Rock associated 
 with himself R. D. Fox, heir of B. S. Fox, the pioneer nursery- 
 man of San Jose, who had recently died, and James Hutchin- 
 son of Oakland and Thomas Maherin of San Francisco, also 
 pioneer nurserymen, and several other capitalists in the incor- 
 poration of the California Nursery Company on 460 acres 
 of land at Niles, of which Mr. Rock became manager, while 
 still operating his old etsablishment near San Jose for several 
 years. In the fourth decade he carried his private establish- 
 ment forward to an acreage of 190 acres, and in 1885, 
 the nineteenth year of his private production, he was awarded 
 ten medals and thirty-nine premiums for his exhibit of nursery 
 trees planted out at the New Orleans World Fair. His man- 
 agement of the California Nursery Company continued until 
 his death in 1904. Thus, while retaining during nearly forty 
 years his reputation as California's leading pomologist and 
 expert of cultivated plants, he was known during his last two 
 decades as our leader in progressive and expansive nursery 
 enterprise. 
 
 THE DECADE CLOSES QUIETLY 
 
 There was in the latter '80s a reaction from the intense 
 activity in both fruit planting and nursery work with which 
 the decade began. The problem in all parts of the state be- 
 came not how to plant more trees and vines, but how to sell the 
 produce of those coming largely into bearing and growers 
 co-operative selling associations began to take form, not always 
 permanent, but promising great achievements which were rea- 
 lized a decade or two later. It was the end of the first great 
 rush in land subdivision, colony building, nursery tree grow- 
 ing and fruit planting. It seems as we now look back upon 
 it, as only a riffle of the current of California's development, 
 but to those who then looked upon it seemed engulfing like 
 a tidal wave. But there were very few nursery casualties; 
 most of the men and enterprises which have been cited went 
 forward to greater things in the decade which followed. 
 
JND THE PLANT INDUSTRY 41 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 California Nursrymen of the Fifth and Sixth Decades 
 
 THE "fourth decade," (1880-1890) has already been 
 characterized as a period of great activity in propagating 
 and planting fruit trees and vines in California. It was the 
 direct result of the opening of overland railway lines and the 
 efforts for settlement, investment and development, which 
 they invited through the agencies of publication, irrigation 
 and colonization — all of which depended largely for practi- 
 cal attainment upon multiplication and extension of nursery 
 establishments. The pioneer nurserymen of the preceding 
 decades were the chief actors in the introduction and demon- 
 stration of success in growing the great world-trade fruits 
 in California; they and their younger successors were the 
 chief actors in the propagation and provision of fruit trees 
 and vines with which production could be attained to enter 
 the world trade. But producing largely and selling well are 
 two different things — a fact which began to be vividly recog- 
 nized during the closing years of the fourth decade. It had 
 much to do with the "collapse of the boom" in real estate 
 and the limitation of improvements and the result was nat- 
 urally a reduced demand for nursery stock, a fall in prices 
 and retirement of those who had too hastily entered upon 
 nursery production with exaggerated notions of its ease and 
 profitability. This fact enabled the well established 'and 
 experienced nurserymen to continue with few mishaps, for 
 the regular course of development continued and the demand 
 for trees continued with it. When the adverse wind from the 
 collapsed boom had subsided about 1890 there followed the 
 panic of 1892, which though relatively very light in its effects 
 in California, did make development dull in large and small 
 undertakings and caused some temporary contraction in nur- 
 sery production, especially as it was coincident with discourag- 
 ing failure of the early efforts at co-operative marketing of 
 
42 CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 
 fruit and fruit products which was then being striven for. The 
 slow times, to produce which all the foregoing conditions con- 
 tributed, were quite a reaction from the flush times of the pre- 
 ceding period, and the early '90s were rather discouraging 
 years, though there were plenty of better establishd nursry- 
 men who held on and were ready for the revival of large 
 planting interest which soon followed. There were, however, 
 dark shades on the picture for in 1894 one quite large nursery, 
 in January, the height of the planting season, was advertising 
 deciduous fruit trees at ninety per cent off the list prices. 
 There was something of a run in the same direction in South- 
 ern Cahfornia with citrus trees an in 1894 there were forty- 
 five nurseries in operation, more than half of them in Los 
 Angeles county, and though the prices of citrus trees was too 
 low to do their growers any good, cheap trees favored ex- 
 tension of planting in the northern citrus districts, which 
 then began to be a popular investment, as earlier plantings 
 had demonstrated the desirability of it. And so, many South- 
 ern California orchard planters, while waiting for their trees 
 to come to bearing or waiting for co-operative efforts to 
 make the selling of the fruit they already liad, profitable, be- 
 came nurserymen and were soon offering all kinds of bar- 
 gains in citrus trees, while they were prospecting for other 
 more profitable activities. The extremely dry seasons of 
 1898 and 1899 also left the nurseries with many cancelled 
 orders and much surplus stock. 
 
 If one compares the lists of nurserymen in action before 
 1895 with the lists of those of the previous decade, he will be 
 surprised with the great change in personnel — especially in 
 Southern California. Of the nurserymen whose establishments 
 had com down from the pioneer period and of those estab- 
 lished during the "fourth decade," I note a number were 
 active during the early '90s. Beginning at the south, I recall 
 Chapin and Swayne of San Diego; Hall, Cutter, Waite and 
 Simms, of Riverside; Edmonds, Chamblin, Sibley and Wil- 
 mot of Redlands ; Clark, Morris, Wilsey, and Linville of San 
 Bernardino; Armstrong of Ontario; Teague of San Dimas; 
 Dobbins of San Gabriel ; Hewitt and Rust of Pasadena ; Ford 
 of Santa Ana; Carroll of Anaheim; Cook of Ventura; Stevens 
 and Sexton of Santa Barbara. Of the pioneer nurserymen hail- 
 ing from Los Angeles, I remember only E. Germain, though 
 the city was multiplying its tree agencies and installing plant 
 
AND THE PLANT INDUSTRY 43, 
 
 and seed purveyors who have since multiplied and developed 
 a great business. Possibly the great growth of the city made 
 the pioneer nurserymen land-millionaires or the lapse of years 
 made them better "angelenos" in the sky, for they have 
 escaped my memories as plain nurserymen. Meantime sev- 
 eral establishments near Los Angeles arose during the decade 
 — like Richman of Fullerton, Ingham of San Bernardino, and 
 Chase of Riverside. 
 
 In the San Joaquin valley, which in the previous decade had 
 become the great nursery region of the state (and retains 
 that eminence to this day) I recall Jacobs and Thomas of 
 Tulare ; Roeding, Wilson, Marshall and Lewis of Fresno and 
 Kirkman of Merced and Clowes of Stockton. In the Sacra- 
 mento valley there were, C. W. Reed, Strong and Williamson 
 of Sacramento, Miles of Penryn, Silva & Son of Lincoln, 
 Boardman of Auburn, Gilet of Nevada City. Bogue of Marys- 
 ville, Bidwell of Chico, Hammon of Biggs and Treat of 
 Davisville. In the Bay region; John Rock developed his 
 great enterprise at Niles to state leadership ; Burbank at Santa 
 Rosa, Coates of Napa, Waters of Watsonville, O'Neill of 
 Haywards, Bell of Santa Rosa, Peffer and Stratton of Peta- 
 luma. True of Sebastopol, Eachus of Lakeport, were all 
 active. Trumbull and Beebe, Ludemann and Meherin con- 
 tinued in San Francisco. 
 
 Into the first decade of the present century many of those 
 already named made a good turn and even some of the earliest 
 pioneer also did so, like L. F. Sanderson of San Jose. Other 
 nurseries of later establishment also went over into the new 
 century like Ames of Napa and Elk Grove, Samson of Corn- 
 ing, Philippi of Rocklin, Gower and Nelson of Fowler; Schei- 
 decker of Sebastopol, Duane of Martinez, Elmer of San 
 Jose, Disbrow of Pasadena, Scribner and Morris of Los 
 Angeles, Zillman of Riverside and others. 
 
 Others still rose to greater prominence during the first 
 decade of the new century, such as Crow of Gilroy, Howard 
 and Payne of Los Angeles and Wheeler of San Jose. There 
 were also considerable expansions of older establishments. 
 Bergtholdt and Dudley entered and multiplied the old Silva 
 enterprises in Placer county. Powers represented the Oregon 
 interests which purchased the old Bidwell Nursery at Chico 
 and localized northern enterprises in California. The pioneer 
 Kirkman of Merced annexed his son, who established a 
 
44 CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 
 branch at Fresno which grew so fast that soon Merced became 
 the branch and then the elder Kirkman retired to sit in the 
 sun at Pasadena to watch the young man grow and has not 
 been disappointed in the sight thereof, for the junior spread 
 over the valley. Leonard Coates continued at Napa from 
 1875 to 1905, when after a recreation residence at Fresno, 
 he branched out into a fine enterprise in fruit planting and 
 nursery expansion at Morganhill, where he continued until 
 his retirement to residence on Clear Lake in 1920 — which 
 credits him with 42 years in direct personal nursery work. 
 
 THE GREAT OLIVE RUSH 
 
 In view of the current trouble with the ripe olives which 
 has led to such startling discoveries about botulism and the 
 precautions necessary to avoid it, it is interesting to remember 
 that It Is but a recrudescence of an old trouble In a new form. 
 In the early '90s propagation and plan^tlng of the olive ex- 
 ceeded anything attained before or since though recent activ- 
 ity in that line has been very brisk. The idea then prevailed 
 that olives could be produced on land too poor and dry for 
 any other fruit and speculative plantations were promoted 
 on all kinds of dry hill sides and out upon the deserts. Not 
 only were olive trees multiplied in all old line nurseries, but 
 half a dozen special olive nurseries were started — one of 
 the smaller ones offering half a million trees in 1892. They 
 were all making olive trees of tooth-pick cuttings and It did 
 not take much of a back lot to hold a million of them. While 
 this propagating and planting was going on, great success 
 was had in creating a demand for California ripe pickled 
 olives by marketing the product of a few old trees and the 
 outlook for profitable production seemed to be unlimited. But 
 disaster came when the attempt was made to hold ripe olives 
 In the casks In which they were shipped to eastern distributors; 
 they spoiled and they spoiled badly and quickly — except in the 
 hands of those who had mastered preservative processes. 
 Some years later the canning of olives appeared as the way 
 to avoid disasters of the past and to bring the ripe olives 
 through in large production. Then came botulism in its dan- 
 gerous forms. It is not the same trouble which destroyed 
 the ripe olive twenty-five years ago and did no harm then, 
 because the decay germs had so much air In the casks that they 
 could quickly turn the fruit into such offensive form that no 
 
AND THE PLANT INDUSTRY 45 
 
 one could eat it Hermetically sealed, a new breed of germs, 
 which escaped because of imperfect sterilization, developed 
 more obscurely and slowly and made the olives dangerous be- 
 fore they became offensive to the senses. The old trouble 
 with the ripe olives going bad in casks nearly stopped the 
 planting about 1895, closed the olive nurseries and littered 
 up the general nurseries with dehorned scrags, some of which 
 even survived .until planting began again a few years later 
 on the new basis. Now after a brilliant career, the olive is 
 now going through the dark days, but is again headed toward 
 a reasonable revival. 
 
 THE EUCALYPTUS SENSATION 
 
 One of the most interesting incidents of the period under 
 examination was the "eucalyptus craze," due to promotion 
 which the tree received from the paper presented at the Han- 
 ford Fruit Growers Convention of 1906, by Dr. W. H. Miller 
 in which he said, "If the San Joaquin valley from Tracy to 
 Tehachepi was avenued and blocked off with these trees what 
 a delightful ride it would be through it, besides yielding an 
 income of $2,000.00 per acre every six years." This declara- 
 tion of possible profit touched off the big cannon of the 
 boomers which had been silent for a decade and its rever- 
 beration covered the interior deserts and the coast dunes 
 and awakened the land sharks of the towns to unprecedented 
 activity in land-subdivision and company organization. All 
 kinds of publications were made to announce that the eucalyp- 
 tus needed neither good land nor water but under any con- 
 dition would shower the state with gold and investors were 
 more keen for eucalyptus acreage and stock than they ever 
 had been for wild-cat mining projects — in spite of the fact 
 that the University and the Forestry Divisions, both of the 
 State and the United States, promptly issued warnings against 
 expecting the tree to do more than it had previously done 
 in rapid growth and profitable growth, as could be learned by 
 observation in all parts of the State. Still the demand for 
 eucalyptus trees was phenomenal and gave the nursery busi- 
 ness a strong trend for a while. Back yard, amateur nursery- 
 men multiplied like mushrooms, eucalyptus peddlers swarmed 
 over the state and even the most conservative old time nur- 
 seryman had swollen gums for a time, from biting off more 
 than they could chew. W. A. T. Stratton of Petaluma, who 
 
46 CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 
 had been growing eucalyptus trees as a specialist conserva- 
 tively urged their planting for about forty years previously, 
 offered a. quarter of a million trees in 1907; half a million 
 in 1908 and dropped back to his old line in 1909, and other 
 propagators did about the same as the fever had burned out. 
 The young trees disappeared by drouth, neglect and frost and 
 it is doubtful if the strange sensation has really had much 
 effect on the California landscape. Still, of course, the eucalyp- 
 tus remains as perhaps the most important shade and fuel 
 trees ever introduced in California even though it be not a 
 good thing to gamble with. 
 
 HORTICULTURAL SERVICES OF NURSERYMEN 
 
 In addition to building up the fruit interests by their business 
 service of propagating trees and vines, some of the most 
 notable contributions to the advancement of the horticultural 
 industry were made by California nurserymen. The partici- 
 pation of several of them In the organization of the executive 
 horticulture of the state, as noted in the fourth decade, was 
 continued by others in later years. In 1890, L H. Thomas, 
 of Visalia, who was first to make public the discovery at 
 Fresno of the efficiency of the lime-sulphur wash which is 
 now world repute, was appointed member of the State Board 
 of Horticultural Commissioners, and one of his associates 
 was Fred C. Miles of Penryn, one of the early propagators 
 and distributors of citrus fruit trees in the Sierra foothill dis- 
 trict. At the Fruit Growers Conventions prominent parts 
 were always taken by nurserymen from different parts of the 
 state. At the thirteenth Convention in 1890 four notable 
 papers were presented by them, viz. by T. A. Garey of Los 
 Angeles on "Citrus Fruits;" by Byron O. Clark, of Pasadena 
 on "Ornamental Trees and Vines." Mr. Clark In 1908, 
 extended his public services by becoming Secretary of Agri- 
 culture of Hawaii and has now returned to California after 
 honorable deeds across the water and is now living In Para- 
 dise, California, which he deserved to do. George W. Ford 
 of Santa Ana had a paper on the "Culture of Soft Shell 
 Walnuts" and Felix Glllet of Nevada City on "Foreign Walnut 
 Varieties." These papers were the foundation of the pro- 
 motive walnut work of the state which has since that time 
 accomplished so much. 
 
AND THE PLANT INDUSTRY 47 
 
 In 1892, J. E. Cutter of Riverside served as chairman of 
 the California fruit committee for the Chicago World's Fair. 
 Mr. Cutter also led in two items which have proved of great 
 local importance; the value of the Valencia Late orange and 
 the superiority of Florida sour stock as a root for citrus fruits 
 in this state. In the latter movement against sweet seedling 
 roots he was ably supported by A. D. Bishop, of Orange, 
 who declared this prophetic truth in the escape from gum dis- 
 ease : "Because of the natural condition under which sour 
 stock grows it will endure similar conditions which we create 
 by irrigation." 
 
 In 1890, J. T. Bogue introduced Phillip's Cling peach. 
 In 1891, J. P. Onstaott of Yuba City made public "Thompson 
 Seedless grape," after growing it for several years from cut- 
 tings which he secured from the Thompson place. Old Mr. 
 Thompson was pleased when Onstaott named the grape, 
 "Thompson's Seedless. In 1896, Luther Burbank introduced 
 his Wickson plum, which within a decade became the leading 
 shipping plum, but more recently has been surpassed by others 
 in such popularity. As the namesake of this plum, the writer 
 has inherited both joy and embarassment. To read in some 
 eastern horticultural reports that "Wickson is a worthless 
 cross-bred Japanese" has caused him some anxiety lest he 
 might be deported to Tokio. 
 
 During the period under review in this chapter there entered 
 the commercial phase of propagation two influential factors 
 from the esthetic side. W. S. Lyon, who did professional for- 
 estry very successfully came out of the tall trees and published 
 a brochure on "Gardening in California" which was perhaps 
 the first comprehensive publication on the ornamental side of 
 the State, and though many years out of print its influence 
 toward better laying out and planting of parks and door yards 
 is still to be discerned in the older undertakings in these lines. 
 Mr. Lyon established the plant business of Lyon and Cobbe 
 in Los Angeles before his departure for foreign parts. 
 
 Another esthete who began about 1900 and has gone con- 
 tinuously forward in his enterprise is Theodore Payne of Los 
 Angeles, who accepted it as his chief mission to propagate na- 
 tive ornamental plants and the love of them, and he has done 
 great things in both lines. It is largely due to Mr. Payne that 
 we have now such a widespread appreciation of the wild beau- 
 ties of California and have materials in such amplitude to 
 
48 CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 
 gratify our desire for them in the environment of our homes. 
 His reports on native plants in the publications of your associa- 
 tion (which appeared later than the period covered by this 
 sketch) are full demonstrations of his devotion and practical 
 wisdom. 
 
 During the nineties Dr. F. FranceschI, a native of Italy and 
 a man thorughly familiar with plant life and Imbued with the 
 scientific spirit, came to California and at once exercised to the 
 full the natural bent of his mind. As a plantsman and an en- 
 thusiastic investigator he at once commanded recognition. 
 Possibly no other nurseryman of that period did more to In- 
 troduce new and little known plants, both economic and orna- 
 mental, to the California landscape, while his sympathetic and 
 scholarly attainments (expressed both in plants and his trade 
 publications) proved gratifying to the amateur yearning for 
 the unusual in plant possession and the proper adornment of 
 home grounds. California is Indebted to Italy for the benefits 
 of his sojourn In this State; and really suffered a loss when 
 Italy called him to return to accept honors and service from 
 his native land. 
 
 THE SMYRNA FIG AND CAPRIFICATION 
 
 Among the many contributions to the science and practice 
 of California pomology which have been made by our nur- 
 serymen, none can compare In Insight, devotion, persistence 
 and expenditure with George C. Roedlng's pursuit of the 
 Smyrna fig and the bug thereof. Mr. F. Roeding of San 
 Francisco established Fancher Creek Nurseries In 1884, 
 largely to furnish rural activity for his sons and to draw 
 them away from the snares of metropolitan life. His son, 
 George, seemed to take this bait readily but he carried Into 
 his retirement a passion for figs, and a purpose to make trouble 
 for the Turks by forcing the Smyrna product into competition 
 with California grown figs of the same variety. Probably 
 George desired to beard the prophet himself, but his father 
 was not so "easy" as to expose his son to the allurements of 
 the Levant after his successful rescue from the attractions of 
 San Francisco, so George ran the nursery while an older man 
 was sent to Smyrna in 1887, and he secured the cuttings with 
 which the Fancher Creek orchard was planted and did some 
 cutting up also on his account, from which George was saved — 
 but that Is not a part of this story. These trees bore fruit 
 
AND THE PLANT INDUSTRY 49 
 
 which would not stick on and repeated the behavior of the 
 trees brought from Smyrna about five years before for Leland 
 Stanford, G. P. Rixford, W. B. West and James Shinn, the 
 two latter being pioneer nurserymen. In IB90, the younger 
 Roeding decided to determine whether pollination would 
 make the Smyrna figs stick and so he took pollen from wild 
 or capri figs, which had also been brought from Smyrna in 
 1887, and tooth-picked it into the eye of the young Smyrna 
 figs, and this caused four figs to stay on their perches, to grow 
 to full size and to have seeds with kernels in them. In 1891 
 he repeated the operation with a glass tube blowing the pollen 
 into the eyes of the figs which caused one hundred of them to 
 behave — thus showing himself to be some blower and fore- 
 casting his expansive abilities in other things than figs. How- 
 ever, this reference has only to do with figs, and I remember 
 distinctly receiving a call from young George in 1890 or 1891, 
 carrying a mysterious looking parcel which he opened care- 
 fully and disclosed to my admiration a full-sized Smyrna fig 
 which he had succeeded in making himself — ^but whether it 
 was a tooth-pick of a glass tube I cannot remember, but I 
 recall very well the satisfaction which his face revealed, though 
 his words had no reference to his own performance. To 
 him it is simply signified that it was demonstrated that Cali- 
 fornia could now grow the true "fig of commerce" if we 
 could get the bug for caprification, and he started in at once 
 to do that. He interested in the effort all agencies and 
 influences, patriotic, scientific and commercial and the details 
 of the chase and the many failures which preceded the ulti- 
 mate success in 1900 are given in his own voluminous writ- 
 ings on the- subject and the publications by the U. S. Depart- 
 ment of Agriculture — to the representative of which the actual 
 introduction of the insects alive and ready to establish them- 
 selves in California to be credited, but the initiative, insis- 
 tence and liberal expenditure by Mr. Roeding were indispen- 
 sable to the achievement. It was June, 1899 that the fig insect 
 made known its acceptance of California life and crowned 
 with success the efforts of nearly twenty years by many people 
 to establish it. Whether its kind reached California many 
 years previously without being recognized does not disturb 
 the serenity of this well-conceived, well-planned and long con- 
 tinued undertaking. It is certainly the most unique 'and 
 
50 CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 
 long-sustained effort ever put forth by a nurseryman to make 
 contribution to pomological progress and I am not sure that 
 any kind of a man ever made a greater pomological achieve- 
 ment, considering both the subjective and objective phases 
 of it. 
 
 THE QUARRELS OF QUARANTINE 
 
 During the closing decade of the last century there was 
 considerable friction between the nurserymen and the state 
 and county horticultural officers over the inspection of nurser- 
 ies and shipment of trees and the relations between the nursery- 
 men and tree planters who supporetd the laws and regulations 
 in these lines became somewhat strained. There was ill-nature 
 and ill-feeling on both sides and for a time there was little 
 recognition of nurserymen in the proceedings of the annual 
 fruit growers conventions. About 1900 there began to pr«- 
 vail a better feeling, resulting from better discernment by each 
 side of the sincerity of purposes and the points of view of the 
 other. Among those who assisted toward this end, none was 
 more earnest and reasonable than Commissioner H. P. Stabler, 
 of Sutter County, who was the first to announce that the war 
 was over, and a league of nurserymen and planters had arisen. 
 In 1901 at the twenty-sixth Fruit Growers' Convention, Mr. 
 Stabler said this: "It is not many years since some nursery- 
 men considered all inspection of their stock an intrusion on the 
 part of the County Commissioners and occasionally resorted 
 to unfair methods in avoiding inspection, but today the nursery- 
 man realizes more than ever the advantages of being able to 
 offer clean stock for sale and invites the closest examination of 
 his trees before placing them on the market." 
 
 After this, however, there arose sharp issues over local 
 quarantine regulations which condemned certain geographical 
 divisions without determination of whether the nursery stock 
 offered for sale was free from pest or disease or not, but even 
 this discrimination which was often unjust did not discourage 
 nursery progress although it was often very hard to bear. 
 Out of these trials, which were often trials by fire, the nursery- 
 men emerged with sprouting wings. It was at the Fruit 
 Growers' Convention of 1910, that Mr. Roeding, represent- 
 ing the nurserymen voiced this lofty sentiment: 
 
 "I hope to live to see the time when the stigma which is 
 attached to a man engaged in the nursery business may be 
 
AND THE PLANT INDUSTRY 51 
 
 revoked, and when the nurseryman and the horticultural 
 commissioner will join hand in hand in the upbuilding of 
 this great garden spot of ours, by making better, finer, cleaner 
 fruit and maintaining a standard which will make us a world 
 power in every branch of horticulture." 
 
 This sentiment has since that day widely prevailed, and 
 it has been of great value in the development of the California 
 fruit industries. 
 
 It is an interesting fact that the agitation for 'a National 
 Quarantine began in California in 1899, and was supported 
 by California nurserymen in opposition often to the attitude of 
 the National Association — ^but the details of that movement 
 belong to the decade later than the period covered by this 
 writing. 
 
 In 1892, California established a quarantine against intro- 
 duction of fruit trees from other states and California has 
 since that date been largely dependent upon home-grown nur- 
 sery stock. This action has promoted the local nursery busi- 
 ness and the propagating and planting of varieties which are 
 especially suited to our commercial uses instead of filling the 
 ground with exploited varieties from other states, which have 
 a strange attraction for beginners. Eastern nurserymen 
 threatened to boycott Calffornia fruits and fruit products 
 which we shipped to their markets, but it was a vain threat 
 because eastern buyers paid little or no attention to it. The 
 immediate effect of the state quarantine was the institution 
 of a number of suits for damages, but the law was maintained 
 by the courts in 1899 it was re-enacted with greater powers 
 to inspectors and quarantine officers. Since that time further 
 improvements have been made in exclusion methods and 
 regulations. 
 
 NURSERYMEN BOUND-OVER 
 
 It was a matter of some chagrin to nurserymen that they 
 should be bound-over by the law to do straight business when 
 both their honest purposes and business interests required therh 
 to do it whether there was a law commanding it or not. How- 
 ever, there was such a strong conviction among the planters 
 that they need protection against careless propagators and 
 against crooked tree-peddlers that the California legislature 
 in 1907 passed an act making it "unlawful to sell fruit trees 
 representing them to be a certain kind and afterwards to 
 
52 CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 
 deliver another kind. To do this is a misdemeanor, punish- 
 able by fine and imprisonment. Action may be begun at any 
 time within seven years after date of delivery of such trees." 
 This law has been in operation for fourteen years and 
 whether it has suppressed an evil or whether such an evil did 
 not exist to such an extent as was conceived of, I do not know. 
 I only know that though I am always watching the contacts 
 between nurserymen and fruit planters, I cannot recall a case 
 of notable importance under this law. 
 
 NURSERYMENS' BUD SELECTION 
 
 In view of the recent action and organization in the direc- 
 tion of bud-selection in nursery propagation, it is interesting to 
 remember that the public agitation to establish such practice 
 was begun at the Fruit Growers Convention of 1906, by the 
 pioneer nurseryman, Leonard Coates, who "urged bud selec- 
 tion and cited instances of variety improvement by selection 
 of the finest fruits from the best trees with a view to securing 
 and purpetuating of variants" — within the types proven to be 
 best for various purposes. Mr. Coates was then practicing 
 what he preached and was on the trail of improved varieties 
 of the French prune and in such pursuit of the right line 
 that probably the best variety of French prune we now have, 
 fifteen years after his initial proclamation, is one of his selec- 
 tion. The systematic effort of the present day is but the out- 
 growth of an earlier effort, also by nurserymen, for a pre- 
 vailing practice which is now conceded to be of incalcuable 
 potential value. 
 
 The meeting in 1906, at which Mr. Coates made his declara- 
 tion for selection in budding nursery stock, was a joint assembly 
 of fruit growers and nurserymen and it is only proper that a 
 fruit grower's declaration should also be recalled and this is 
 what A. N. Judd of Watsonville said about it: "Did you 
 even see a nurseryman around any orchard during fruiting 
 season, noting or marking trees of special strength or merit 
 with a view to securing scions for the best types of true 
 varieties for the purpose of improving his stock." 
 
 I am sure that some nurserymen had been doing that some 
 time before but no one replied to Mr. Judd's arraignment 
 and as no claim was made that nurserymen had paid atten- 
 tion to get the best of the name we must conclude that the idea 
 was new to commercial nursery practice. 
 
AND THE PLANT INDUSTRY 53 
 
 The interest of the planters in the proposition of better 
 trees of the best possible varieties was continuous. Marshall 
 De Mott, who graduated from fruit growing into statesman- 
 ship and is now the head of our State Board of Control, 
 addressed the Fruit Growers' Convention of 1910 in this 
 manner: "The nurseryman and his stock needs to be stand- 
 ardized. A few years ago pedigreed nursery stock was un- 
 known; a standard could not be set and chance ruled results 
 but it is known and appreciated now that nursery stock can 
 and therefore must be standardized and we will soon find a way 
 to test a man's stock by known standards and make him live 
 up to the name and variety in harmony with his claimed pedi- 
 gree." 
 
 Ten years later than these declarations California nursery- 
 men organized for the purposes thus impressed upon them, 
 and growers are watching to see how they get along with it 
 under the leadership of Mr. Kirkman, who is the father of the 
 systematic movement. 
 
 nurserymen's associations 
 
 The first association of California nurserymen was organ- 
 ized in 1858 to adopt a scale of prices which mould knock 
 out the tree peddlers and establish direct trade with planters. 
 It does not appear that this first association ever reassembled 
 after it reached the understanding for which it convened. 
 About twenty-five years later there was a Southern California 
 Nurserymen's Association which had chiefly to do with recom- 
 mending varieties for planting. Another one-act play in nur- 
 sery organization was put on the boards in San Francisco in 
 1893 in which the following nurserymen were actors: A. F. 
 Boardman, Auburn; John Rock, Niles; J. T. Bogue, Marys- 
 ville ; Leonard Coates, Napa ; J. F. English, San Jose ; F. Gon- 
 zales, San Francisco ; B. Godfrey, Davisville ; L. F. Sanderson, 
 San Jose ; W. C. Hammon, Biggs ; Duane Brothers, Martinez ; 
 W. Kelly, San Jose; C. C. Royce, Chico; J. O. O'Neil, Hay- 
 wards'; F. M. Tenny, San Jose; G. C. Roeding, Fresno; R. D. 
 Fox, San Jose and T. L. Bohlander, Chico. 
 
 At this meeting a continuous association was contemplated 
 but not realized. A welcome was provided for the Ameri- 
 can Pomological Society which met in California in January, 
 1894. There was discussion of several technical nursery mat- 
 ters and reference made to committees which never made any 
 reports. 
 
54 CALIFORNIA NURSERYMEN 
 
 In 1903, the Pacific Coast Association of Nurserymen was 
 organized in Portland and has been since that time enthu- 
 siastically supported by its California membership. During 
 the period covered by this writing it held a notable meeting in 
 California, viz. at Hanford in 1906. Since then it has met 
 twice in California, viz., in 1911 and 1915, which are beyond 
 our present view. The success of the Pacific Coast Associa- 
 tion stimulated the establishment of a permanent Association 
 of California Nurser5mien which was undertaken in San Jose 
 in 1911 and completed in Los Angeles some months later 
 and of which we are now holding the tenth annual session. 
 The reports of this association embody a better history of a 
 decade of California nursery points of view and achieve- 
 ments and business policies than any other state possesses, 
 and it has been chiefly to secure a pedestal upon which to in- 
 stall the decade of 1911 to 1920 that I have been endeavoring 
 to preserve the history of the preceding sixty years of nursery- 
 mens' activities in California. The continuous life of the Cali- 
 fornia Association of Nurserymen and the excellence of its 
 series of annual reports are at the same time most valuable 
 contributions to the present standing of horticulture in this 
 state and the best assurances of greater success to come. Both 
 are a testimony to the talent and tireless devotion of your 
 secretary, (Mr. Kruckeberg) who has not only labored dili- 
 gently himself for the good of the cause, but has kept a good 
 supply of goat-glands always ready for a shot into the psychol- 
 ogy of all others who may seem to be wearying of their duty 
 to justify the past and insure the future of the nursery, in- 
 dustry of California. 
 
 WHAT THE FIGURES DECLARE 
 
 I have hastily sketched a history full of vicissitudes and 
 have perhaps not sufliiciently glorified achievements while sug- 
 gesting the difficulties which beset the attainment of them. Let 
 it be clearly understood then that no difficultis have arrested 
 the forward movement of the nurserymens' industry. The 
 United States Census placed the value of nursery products 
 grown in California in 1899 at $558,329; in 1909 at 
 $2,212,788. In the latter year only the ancient and honorable 
 nursery state of New York surpassed California in this line of 
 production, with a product-value of $2,750,957. Since that 
 time the greatest decade in nursery production that California 
 
AND THE PLANT INDUSTRY 55 
 
 has ever experienced has been completed; it will be some- 
 thing of a disappointment if the census of 1920 does not 
 place California in the leadership of all the states by a good 
 margin. These figures do not include the products of our 
 florists and seedmen, nor do the sketches I have attempted 
 cover their great and growing activities and achievements. 
 They deserve separate historical and analytical treatment 
 which I trust will be undertaken while those whose memories 
 reach far toward the beginnings, can still make priceless con- 
 tributions of experience and observation.