AMERICAN PLANT HUNTERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2914, 19 January 1910, Page 87

AMERICAN PLANT HUNTERS.

■SOME OF THEIR DISCOVERIES. The Agricultural Department of the United States has had its investigators for many years scouring the whole world for plants that may be expected to thrive in the States and improve the farms of Americans who have the enterprise to try novelties. Dr Frank N. Meyer is at present in Manchuria or Korea, and has sent Horae 'a report which promises great things. He found a frost-proof peach at Kirin. Cuttings of it were sold to him by a Buddhist priest for Bs, the seller impressing upon the doctor that the transaction he kept a profound secret. In the province of Shantung he secured the bud wood of the most remarkable peach in the world. The fruit weighs 11b each, and are so delicious in flavour that 100.000 of them are sent each year to Peking for the special use of the Imperial, Court. In the same province he found watermelons—not the ordinary kind with red pith inside, but salmon-coloured and white. He also found a seedless delicious date, which, after all, is not a date at all, is not the fruit of the palm, but of a small thorny tree. It, however, looks like a date. It has a delicious flavour, and is highly prized by the Chinese, Another novelty is a giant ser-

simmon, so hardy that it is expected to grow in the States as far north as New York and New Jersey. It is both seedless and “pucker].ess,” and the Chinese dry it after the manner of figs. He has also obtained a kind of walnut, with a shell like a peanut; a “strawberry tree ” which bears small, round, wine-red fruit of delicious taste ; a red lily, and a rose | that produces not only flowers, but bunches of large scarlet berries. This rose runs over the ground, .and Dr Meyer thinks it will prove useful as a binder of the soil. Another remarkable thing which he discovered was a giant radish, as big as a child’s head, and tender and superior in flavour to the radishes with which we are familiar. In the mountains separating Manchuria and Korea he is said to have discovered, amongst other things which will stand the rigours af the Northern American climate, a hull-less oat and a hull-less barley. They came from the province of Shantung, at an elevation of two miles above the sea. In Northern China he accidentally stumbled on a cabbage which, when full grown, weighed 401 b, and it had a flavour that puts to shame the flavour of the cabbage with which we are familiar. He secured seeds of this cabbage, and they Hire already being tried experimentally at the Government Plant Bureau. Another kind of cabbage unknown to us grows on a tall stalk. Dr Meyer expects to find wonders in Turkestan, and says that grapes larger and more luscious than any known in the Western world grow there. The quality of the fruit is superior to the most prized fruits or grapes of France and Spain, hut efforts to introduce them to the Western world have so far - proved failures. There is a large soft-shelled almond peculiar to this country ; there are also other nuts; the region is rich in different apples, with which we in the Occident are unfamiliar, and the same may be said of melons, peaches, and various fruits. There are also various forage crops which will form subjects of investigation. Among other things which Dr Meyer remarks concerning the countries he' has visited in Northern Asia is this:—“The climate more nearly resembles that of the United States than that of any other portion of the globe, it being remarkable for the absence of moisture, which characterises the whole of Western Europe, and presenting much the same extremes of cold and heat as does a. great portion of the American Ufiion.”