A Capri Which Will Not Caprify[Written for Pacific Bnral Press.]
To the Editor: Will you please look into the question of the vitality of the pollen of the Pseudocarica
Capri fig? There were comments in the Press a few years ago, favorable. I tried one thousand of them in my orchard last May and the Smyrna figs all dropped off as usual. Prof. Rixford says that there is a female of the Pseudocarica that ripens? This Pseudocarica gave off wasps for several days.—G. C. A., San Francisco. I .Answer by G. P. Rixford, United State* i Department of Agriculture. I The Ficus pseudocarica is a native of northeastern Africa, in Abyssinia and the Italian colony of Eritrea. It was introduced into California from Italy by Dr. Franceschi of Santa Barbara. Five or six years ago Walter T. Swingle of the United States Department of Agriculture, called attention to the fact the mamme (over winter) crop contained stamens and that it might furnish pollen sufficiently early to caprlfy the first crop of Smyrna figs. This discovery attracted attention for the reason that the mamme crop of the Smyrna capri does not, except very rarely, contain stamens, and that the Smyrna profichi crop is too late for the purpose and therefore the first Smyrna crop, for lack of pollination, was always lost. Attempts to use the mamme of F. pseudocarica have met with so many failures during the past season that the question of the viability of the pollen of the mamme of the species has been raised. Besides the failure mentioned by your correspondent, others have been called to my attention. I have not yet had an opportunity to test the vitality of that pollen,, but propose to do so when the next crop becomes available.
The female of the species is now established in California and is bearing in the Maslin orchard at Loomis. It is evident that the fruits secured were pollenized by insects from the Smyrna profichi. This raises the interesting question, which' is sometimes met with by plant breeders, that one species may refuse to take the pollen of another of the same genus, but that the reciprocal pollenation is sometimes successful. A striking instance of this has developed in the wonderful work Dr. Frederick V. Coville, botanist of the United States Department of Agriculture, has done in breeding blueberries until he has increased the fruit to three or four times its normal size. In his efforts to get a cross of our California Vaccinium ovatum and the eastern Vaccinium eorymbosum he found that he could not secure a setting of fruit on V. eorymbosum with the pollen of V. ovatum, but succeeded With the reciprocal pollinations of corymbosum pollen on ovatum.