THE CANE FRUITS.
Brambles, we call the long-armed plants of the genus Rubus, which cannot hold themselves erect, but sprawl on the ground, and make a thicket by sending up suckers or by striking root at the tips of the arching canes. The difficulties of walking through or past such plants are increased by the prickles that turn their points backward.
The raspberries of our gardens are descendants of wild brambles that are abundant in the wilds of North America, Europe, and Asia. The rough surface of the fruit suggested the name. Black, white, red, and yellow varieties are grown. The wild "black caps" are our native raspberries, often very fine fruit in rich, woodland soil, but usually the better for cultivation.
Blackberries are a famous wild fruit in many parts of this country. The bush blackberry of the eastern states has many cultivated forms, widely distributed. The dewberry is a trailing blackberry with sweet, large, fine-flavored fruit. It is known in several fine varieties.
The loganberry is a wonderful large blackberry with the flavor of the red raspberry, and some of its color. It was a chance hybrid, produced in
i881, by crossing the wild blackberry of the Pacific Slope with one of the red raspberries cul tivated in a California garden. The new form is splendidly vigorous in growth, and produces more and better and bigger berries than had been known on any cane fruit.
Judge Logan, of Santa Cruz, was honored for his discovery. The loganberry is one of the great gifts to horticulture. It is grown in California most abundantly, but has been established in the east, and other countries will have it in course of time.
Next comes "the Wizard of Santa Rosa," Luther Burbank, and crosses the native dewberry with a red raspberry. The result is a new fruit that outdoes the loganberry in all its good points. It is called the Phenomenal. The Primus is another Burbank triumph. It is a huge, fine raspberry, the size of a large thimble, but the centre is pulpy and sweet. The parents of this fruit are a blackberry and a raspberry.