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T h e Ox f o r d H a n d b o o k o f

T W E N T I E T H -​
C E N T U RY
A M E R IC A N
L I T E R AT U R E
The Oxford Handbook of

TWENTIETH-​
CENTURY
AMERICAN
LITERATURE
Edited by
LESLIE BOW and RUSS CASTRONOVO
 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© The several contributors 2022
The moral rights of the author s‌have been asserted
First Edition published in 2022
Impression: 1
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Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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 List of Contents

List of Figures ix
List of Contributors xi
List of Abbreviations xv

Introduction: Structures, Movements, Attachments, Imaginaries  1

Leslie Bow and Russ Castronovo

PA RT 1 ST RU C T U R E S
1. The Book of Love is Long and Boring: Reading Aloud, Care Work,
and Children’s Literature  15
Elizabeth Freeman
2. Colonization to Climate Change: American Literature and
a Planet on Fire  40
John Levi Barnard
3. Nuclear Poetry: Cultural Containment and Translational Leakage in
Robert Lowell’s For the Union Dead  59
Simon van Schalkwyk
4. Precarious Forms: Reading Labor in and beyond the
Neoliberal Novel  78
Joseph B. Entin
5. Asian Americans in the Novel of Late Capitalism: Samuel R. Delany’s
The Mad Man and Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians  98
Cynthia Wu

PA RT 2 M OV E M E N T S
6. The Hidden Voice: Indigenous Experience and Authenticity in
Twentieth-​Century American Literature  115
Sean Teuton
vi   List of Contents

7. “Jumpin’ with Symphony Sid”: Post-​1945 American Literature

and Radio  135
Lisa Hollenbach
8. Faulkner at the Speed of History  153
Mark Goble
9. Twentieth-​Century Western Man of Color: Richard Wright, Race,
and Rootlessness  171
Yogita Goyal
10. “Warm with Tipsy Embraces”: Allen Ginsberg, the US–​China
Writers’ Conferences, and Queer Internationalism  189
Harilaos Stecopoulos

PA RT 3 AT TAC H M E N T S
11. The Last Puritan in Shanghai: The Faded Romance of China Trade
Finance and the Queerly Transnational Melancholy of Emily Hahn’s
Wartime Opium Smoking  209
Kendall Johnson
12. Modernism’s Cares: Reading For and With  246
Rachel Adams
13 Black Literary History and the Problem of Identification in Ishmael
Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo  264
Aida Levy-​Hussen
14. Andrea Lee’s Europe: Race, Interracial Desire, and Transnationalism  281
Melissa Daniels-​Rauterkus
15. Where Border Meets Narrative, Where Body Meets Word: The
Animality of Border Subjectivity  299
Bernadine Hernández

PA RT 4 I M AG I NA R I E S
16. Of Canons and Cabinets: Indigenous Bodies, Epistemological
Spectacle, and an Unusual Indian in the Cupboard  321
Becca Gercken
 List of Contents    vii

17. The Liberal Imagination Revisited: Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, and
the Crisis of Democracy  337
Johannes Voelz
18. Constructing Whiteness: Faulkner, Ferber, and the American Racial
Imagination  356
Heidi Kim
19. Unidentified Flying Objects: Conceptualism, Interpretation, and
Adrian Piper  380
Rachel Jane Carroll
20. Cultural Memory Studies and the Beloved Paradigm: From
Rememory to Abolition in the Afterlives of Slavery  398
Michael Rothberg

Index  417
 List of Figures

Figure 1.1 Sound table for letters A–​L from Johan Amos Comenius,
Orbis Pictus (1887 [1685]), Facsimile Reproduction (Whitefish,
Montana: Kessinger Publishing), p. 3. Public domain. 21
Figure 1.2 The Voom from Dr Seuss (Theodor Geisel), The Cat in the Hat
Comes Back (New York: Random House, 1958), pp. 58–​59 31
Figure 1.3 From Dr Seuss (Theodor Geisel), On Beyond Zebra!
(New York: Random House, 1958). Unpaginated 32
Figure 1.4 From Dr Seuss (Theodor Geisel), On Beyond Zebra!
(New York: Random House, 1958). Unpaginated 33
Figure 1.5 “Waz” from http://​www.ihear​tspe​ech.com/​2013/​07/​skill-​focus-​writ​
ing-​cre​ate-​your-​own.html. Photo by Lauren Barnett, courtesy of
Lauren Barnett. 34
Figure 1.6 “Paxter Wanwi” from http://​www.ihear​tspe​ech.com/​2013/​07/​skill-​
focus-​writ​ing-​cre​ate-​your-​own.html. Photo by Lauren Barnett,
courtesy of Lauren Barnett. 35
Figure 8.1 Still from What Price Hollywood? (George Cukor, RKO Pictures, 1932) 156
Figure 8.2 Eadweard Muybridge from The Horse in Motion (1878). Library of
Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 164
Figure 11.1 “Russell Sturgis” from a painting by George Richmond. From Some
Merchants and Sea Captains of Old Boston (1918), p. viii 212
‘One of the best-​known merchants of his time. He was partner of
Russell & Sturgis and of Russell, Sturgis & Co.; of Russell & Co., after
the consolidation of the two latter firms. He was later partner and,
finally, head of Baring Brothers of London.
Figure 11.2 Book cover with Hahn’s Chinese name, “Sha Mei-Lee”
or 項美麗 (Xiàng Měi-lì). 233
 List of Contributors

Rachel Adams, Columbia University. Rachel Adams is Professor of English and

Comparative Literature and Provost’s Senior Faculty Teaching Scholar at Columbia
University where she teaches 20th and 21st century American literature. She is the au-
thor of three books: Raising Henry: A Memoir of Motherhood, Disability, and Discovery;
Continental Divides: Remapping the Cultures of North America; and Sideshow
U.S.A.: Freaks and the American Cultural Imagination. The chapter in this collection
comes from her current book project on dependency, care, and narrative, which was
recognized by a 2019-​2020 Guggenheim Fellowship.
John Levi Barnard, University of Illinois, Urbana-​Champaign. John Levi Barnard is
Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature and faculty affiliate with
the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment at the University of Illinois,
Urbana-​Champaign. He is the author of Empire of Ruin: Black Classicism and American
Imperial Culture (Oxford, 2018). His work on the ecological ramifications of US empire
has appeared in American Literature, American Quarterly, and Resilience: A Journal of
the Environmental Humanities.
Leslie Bow, University of Wisconsin-​ Madison. Leslie Bow is Vilas Distinguished
Achievement Professor of English and Asian American Studies and Draheim Professor of
English at the University of Wisconsin-​Madison. She is the author of the award-​winning
‘Partly Colored’: Asian Americans and Racial Anomaly in the Segregated South (New York
University Press, 2010); Betrayal and Other Acts of Subversion: Feminism, Sexual Politics,
Asian American Women's Literature (Princeton University Press, 2001); and Racist
Love: Asian Abstraction and the Pleasures of Fantasy (Duke University Press, 2022).
Rachel Jane Carroll, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Rachel Jane Carroll is
an ACLS Emerging Voices Fellow and Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow at the University
of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her work can be found in Social Text, Criticism: A
Quarterly for Literature and the Arts, ASAP/​J, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her
book, Reading for Pleasure: Race and Aesthetics in American Experimentalism, is forth-
coming with New York University Press.
Russ Castronovo, University of Wisconsin-​ Madison. Russ Castronovo is
Tom Paine Professor of English and Dorothy Draheim Professor of American
Studies at the University of Wisconsin–​ Madison. He is author of four
books: Fathering the Nation: American Genealogies of Slavery and Freedom (University
of California Press, 1995); Necro Citizenship: Death, Eroticism, and the Public Sphere
xii   List of Contributors

in the Nineteenth-​
Century United States (Duke University Press, 2001); Beautiful
Democracy: Aesthetics and Anarchy in a Global Era (University of Chicago Press, 2007);
and Propaganda 1776: Secrets, Leaks, and Revolutionary Communications in Early
America (Oxford University Press, 2014).
Melissa Daniels-​Rauterkus, University of Southern California. Melissa Daniels-​
Rauterkus is Associate Professor of English at the University of Southern California.
She is the author of Afro-​Realisms and the Romances of Race: Rethinking Blackness in
the African American Novel (Louisiana State University Press, 2020), which won the
SAMLA Studies Book Award and received Honorable Mention for the William Sanders
Scarborough Prize from the MLA. She is currently at work on a monograph about Black
expatriate women and interracial desire.
Joseph B. Entin, Brooklyn College, CUNY. Joseph B. Entin is Professor of English and
American Studies at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. He is the author of
Sensational Modernism: Experimental Fiction and Photography in Thirties America (2007),
and co-​editor of three other books: Teaching American Studies: The State of the Classroom
as State of the Field (2021) with Elizabeth Duclos-​Orsello and Rebecca Hill; Remaking
Reality: U.S. Documentary Culture after 1945 (2018) with Sara Blair and Franny Nudelman;
and Controversies in the Classroom: A Radical Teacher Reader with Robert Rosen and Leonard
Vogt (2008). His forthcoming book is, Living Labor: Fiction, Film, and Precarious Work,
examines contemporary narratives of work and struggle in the context of global economic
restructuring, transnational migration, and labor precarity.
Elizabeth Freeman, University of California, Davis. Elizabeth Freeman is Professor of
English at the University of California, Davis. She has written three books published by
Duke University Press: The Wedding Complex (2002), Time Binds (2010), and Beside You
in Time (2019). She was editor of GLQ from 2011-​2017 and her most recent book-​length
publication is Crip Temporalities, a special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly co-​edited
with Ellen Samuels.
Becca Gercken, University of Minnesota-​Morris. Becca Gercken is a Morse Distinguished
Teaching Associate Professor of English and American Indian Studies at the University of
Minnesota-​Morris. She is the co-​editor of Gambling on Authenticity: Gaming, the Noble
Savage, and the Not-​So-​New Indian (Michigan State University Press, 2017) as well nu-
merous scholarly articles and book chapters. She is currently at work on a monograph
about historical and contemporary American Indian ledger narratives.
Mark Goble, University of California, Berkeley. Mark Goble is Associate Professor
of English at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Beautiful
Circuits: Modernism and the Mediated Life (Columbia University Press, 2010), and is
currently at work on a book project entitled Downtime: The Twentieth Century in Slow
Motion. His essays have appeared ELH, MLQ, ELN, American Literature, and in volumes
on Alfred Hitchcock, Henry James, global modernism, and time and American litera-
ture. He also is a contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books.
 List of Contributors    xiii

Yogita Goyal, University of California, Los Angeles. Yogita Goyal is Professor of African
American Studies and English at University of California, Los Angeles and editor of the
journal, Contemporary Literature. Her most recent book, Runaway Genres: The Global
Afterlives of Slavery (NYU Press, 2019), received the René Wellek Prize from ACLA, the
Perkins prize from the International Society for the Study of Narrative, and Honorable
Mention for the James Russell Lowell Prize from MLA. The past president of Association
for the Study of the Arts of the Present, she is the author of Romance, Diaspora, and
Black Atlantic Literature (2010), editor of the Cambridge Companion to Transnational
American Literature (2017), and the Cambridge Companion to Contemporary African
American Literature (2022).
Bernadine Hernández, University of New Mexico. Bernadine Hernández is Assistant
Professor of American Literary History at the University of New Mexico. She specializes
in transnational feminism and the sexual economies of the US-​Mexico borderlands,
American literary and empire studies, border and migration history and theory,
and Chicana/​Latina literature. Her forthcoming book with UNC press is Border
Bodies: Racialized Sexuality, Sexual Capital, and Violence in the Nineteenth Century
Borderlands.
Lisa Hollenbach, Oklahoma State University. Lisa Hollenbach is an Assistant Professor
of English at Oklahoma State University. Her work on post-​1945 U.S. poetry and sound
culture has been published in American Literature, Modernism/​modernity Print Plus,
and the Chicago Review. She is currently writing a book about American poetry and the
FM revolution.
Kendall Johnson, University of Hong Kong. Kendall Johnson is Professor of American
Literature at the University of Hong Kong where he researches material print culture
in transnational and global historical frames of race, national, religion, and culture.
He is the author of The New Middle Kingdom: China and the Early American Romance
of Free Trade (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017) and Henry James and the Visual
(Cambridge University Press, 2007). He is the editor of Narratives of Free Trade: The
Commercial Cultures of Early US-​China Relations (HKU Press, 2012) and, with Yuan Shu
and Otto Heim, a contributing co-​editor of Oceanic Archives, Indigenous Epistemologies,
and Transpacific American Studies (HKU Press, 2019). His work has appeared in Modern
Fiction Studies, American Literary History, American Literature, American Quarterly,
Literature & History.
Heidi Kim, University of North Carolina at C ​ hapel Hill. Heidi Kim is Professor in the
Department of English and Comparative Literature at University of North Carolina at​
Chapel Hill and Director of the Asian American Center. Her publications include Illegal
Immigrants/​Model Minorities: The Cold War of Chinese American Narrative (Temple UP,
2021), Invisible Subjects: Asian America in Postwar Literature (Oxford UP, 2016), and
Taken from the Paradise Isle: The Hoshida Family Story (UP Colorado, 2015). Her current
project is entitled Beyond Reparations.
xiv   List of Contributors

Aida Levy-​Hussen, University of Michigan. Aida Levy-​Hussen is Associate Professor

of English at the University of Michigan and the author of How to Read African
American Literature: Post-​Civil Rights Fiction and the Task of Interpretation (NYU, 2016).
Her teaching and research foreground modern and contemporary African American
literature, histories and theories of academic field formation, and memory studies and
psychoanalysis.
Michael Rothberg, University of California, Los Angeles. Michael Rothberg is the
1939 Society Samuel Goetz Chair in Holocaust Studies and Professor of English and
Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. His latest book is
The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators (2019), published by Stanford
University Press in their “Cultural Memory in the Present” series. Previous books in-
clude Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization
(2009), Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation (2000), and, co-​
edited with Neil Levi, The Holocaust: Theoretical Readings (2003).
Harilaos Stecopoulos, University of Iowa. Harilaos Stecopoulos is Associate Professor
of English at the University of Iowa where he teaches US literature and creative writing.
He is the author of Reconstructing the World: Southern Fictions and U.S. Imperialisms,
1898-​1976 (Cornell University Press, 2008). His new monograph is tentatively titled
Telling America’s Story to the World: Literature, Internationalism, Cultural Diplomacy.
Sean Teuton, University of Arkansas. Sean Teuton is Professor of English and Director
of Indigenous Studies at the University of Arkansas, and the author of Red Land, Red
Power: Grounding Knowledge in the American Indian Novel (Duke University Press,
2008) and Native American Literature: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University
Press, 2018). He is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.
Simon van Schalkwyk, University of the Witwatersrand. Simon van Schalkwyk is a lec-
turer in the English department at the University of the Witwatersrand. He also serves as the
academic editor for the Johannesburg Review of Books. His research focuses on American
and World Literature with an emphasis on poetry, travel, and transnational modernism.
Johannes Voelz, University of Frankfurt. Johannes Voelz is Heisenberg Professor
of American Studies, Democracy, and Aesthetics at Goethe University Frankfurt,
Germany. He is the author of Transcendental Resistance: The New Americanists and
Emerson’s Challenge (UP New England, 2010), and The Poetics of Insecurity: American
Fiction and the Uses of Threat (Cambridge UP, 2018). He is currently working on two
book projects, one on the aesthetics of populism, the other on the transformation of
privacy in contemporary American literature.
Cynthia Wu, Indiana University. Cynthia Wu is Professor of Gender Studies and Asian
American Studies and Director of the Program in Race, Migration, and Indigeneity at
Indiana University. She is the author of Chang and Eng Reconnected: The Original Siamese
Twins in American Culture (Temple, 2012) and Sticky Rice: A Politics of Intraracial Desire
(Temple, 2018).
 List of Abbreviations

ARCO Atlantic Richfield Company

AWC Art Works Coalition
BIA Bureau of Indian Affairs
#BLM #Black Lives Matter
CCF Congress of Cultural Freedom
CIA Central Intelligence Agency
CIO Congress of Industrial Organizations
CWA Chinese Writers’ Association
EIC East India Company
MAD Mutually Assured Destruction
NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
PRC People’s Republic of China
UCLA University of California, Los Angeles
UCRI University of California Research Institute
UN United Nations
USIA United States Information Agency
 I n t rodu ction
Structures, Movements, Attachments, Imaginaries

Leslie Bow and Russ Castronovo

Diversity is the American brand. The poet William Carlos Williams famously turned
this maxim inside out, distorting it in a poem that begins, “The pure products of
America/​go crazy.” The fact that the subject at the center of Williams’s ode is a mixed-​
raced woman named “Elsie” suggests how the ideological parameters of American
diversity are borne more acutely and traumatically by some than by others. For Max
Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, writing as German-​Jewish emigrés from Nazi
Germany, these “products” would be the commodities of consumer capitalism, which,
in all their shining and dazzling array, find unity under the homogenizing sameness
of the American marketplace. Since then, the revival of rhetoric around the idea of an
American “homeland” would combine with liberal multiculturalism, especially in its
corporate and neoliberal forms, to emphasize diversity as a national brand that gives the
United States a competitive economic, social, and even moral edge over other nations.
This volume sits astride the tensions of diversity and unity, fragmentation and coher-
ence, as they are expressed in national as well as global contexts.
The Oxford Handbook of Twentieth-​Century American Literature is designed around
an impossibility: that of representing the diversity of the texts and methodologies that
comprise—​as well as trouble—​the field. Rather than attempt a compilation of 100 years’
worth of novels, poetry, autobiography, and other forms of narration and writing that
would provide an illusory notion of coverage or representation, this volume seeks to
foreground the interstitial, the fissures, the “in-​between” spaces within established
histories, canons, genres, and ideologies. We suggest that the “in-​between” represents
a rich and productive site of literary inquiry, one that makes visible the multiple
oppositions that structure and inspire literary and critical imaginaries. In challenging
North/​South, Black/​white, urban/​rural, national/​transnational, high-​culture/​popular-​
culture, Indigenous/​settler, or citizen/​noncitizen binaries, for example, this anthology
engages any number of continuums clustered around both realities and fantasies of
difference. Highlighting these intersecting continuums—​ whether socio-​ political,
2    Leslie Bow and Russ Castronovo

generic, or identity-​ based—​ simultaneously maps and displaces, assembles and

disassembles, locates and makes strange the body of texts and approaches that both con-
stitute and defamiliarize the field of twentieth-​century American literature.
The Oxford Handbook of Twentieth-​Century American Literature testifies to the
startling variety of content, approaches, and visions of US literature over the past
100 years. It registers pluralism at the level of form and genre as well: in addition to
engaging established literary genres and canonical texts that readers might expect, it
also devotes critical attention to film, performance art, children’s books, memoir, and
literary and cultural theory. These forms of expression might be taken, in part, as the
equivalent of the sociological diversity that exists in conflict with demands for national
coherence. These tensions over representation animate multiple questions: can one
discern an aesthetic equivalent to the political principle of e pluribus unum in which
the centripetal forces of canonization and liberal pluralism organize this diversity into
a singular tradition? If the twentieth century was indeed “the American Century” as
Henry Luce proposed, how does the nation’s literature reflect this grandiose, inflated,
and quintessentially American sentiment? And who exactly is left out, subsumed, or
crushed on the pathway to fulfilling it? If the twentieth century has been partitioned
into the Lost Generation, the counterculture, baby-​boomers, the nuclear generation,
and Gen X, it is surely the case that the nation’s literature also reflects a far less coherent,
less grandiose story. Ironically, the very idea of American exceptionalism has become
exceptional.
The standard response to such tensions has been to map the literary landscape with re-
spect to formal, stylistic, temporal, and geographic markers. Naturalism, realism, mod-
ernism, and postmodernism are among the most recognizable points on this mapping.
But so too are the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s or the Chicago Renaissance
of the 1940s. Likewise, the power of the Southern gothic links William Faulkner to Toni
Morrison, while genres such as “the Western,” despite its deformation by the inclusion
of Indigenous and feminist writing, illustrate how any number of regionalisms retain
their explanatory sway. Other approaches fall back on formal omnibus categories such
as “the American novel” or seek to account for the continuing force of a literary tech-
nique such as irony or pastiche. Whether the nation’s literature takes shape as American
tragedy or as American pastoral, as titles of novels by Theodore Dreiser and Philip Roth
might suggest, perspectives on the field also rely on genre as a means of representing the
literary history of the United States across the twentieth century.
Yet these modes of charting have been exploded by the emergence of new methods
of literary classification following social movements of the 1960s and 1970s: Asian
American, American Indian, Latinx, and gay and lesbian literature turned the con-
cept of a single American canon on its head. Identity-​based creative categories be-
came indistinguishable from the critical methods that they inspired: disability studies,
postcolonial discourse, and ecofeminism, to name a few, emerged as modes of analytic
thinking indistinguishable from, and no longer tethered to, their original archives. As
these methods called for new objects of study and prioritized social justice concerns,
the white male canon and its fascination with adventure became upended. Jack London
 Introduction   3

and Ernest Hemingway now share space with Alison Bechdel and Louise Erdrich. To
preview an example from John Levi Barnard’s chapter, London’s and Hemingway’s
stories might now be productively reinterpreted from the perspective of anthropogenic
climate change. Or, to invoke Heidi Kim’s chapter in this volume, a modernist innov-
ator such as William Faulkner cedes space to a popular novelist such as Edna Ferber. By
turning a critical eye on matters of representation, identity, and authority, new methods
and the new canons that they helped to engender shattered projections of national unity
along with the fetishized political boundaries that they once relied upon. With that dis-
placement, the very ways of seeing that marked the national literary enterprise in all its
mythic, youthful, aggressive, and often tone-​deaf muscularity were rendered suspect.
Could literature reflect “the American Experience” if one no longer existed?
Near the end of the twentieth century, notions of what constitutes “American” and
“literature” have undergone radical challenge and revision. Among critics, the very
term “American literature” has ceded to “US literature,” signaling a self-​critical and self-​
conscious orientation in the field while imparting a modicum of geographic modesty
and expanding objects of study beyond national borders. The scope of “American” has
widened to include hemispheric, diasporic, and archipelagic texts or has collapsed into
the “postnational” under global capitalism. And yet each of these moves is haunted by
the aggrandizing gesture to claim terrain as “American”—​including the literary terrain, a
tendency that José Martí sought to accent differently by writing about “Nuestra América.”
In this volume, “literature” variously encompasses lyrics, spoken-​word poetry, historio-
graphic accounts, biography, mass-​market fiction, and other popular culture texts and
is widely recognized to be in conversation with film, performance art, radio, and other
sonic and visual forms. Thus, even as this anthology’s approach necessarily recognizes the
indispensability of “American literature,” it places both these terms under contestation.
In this regard, then, the chapters gathered here do not establish a singular field so
much as they register the ongoing shocks and shifts to its putatively organizing
principles. Not to be confused with a rejection of the category tout court, the interstitial
approaches suggested in this volume instead at once expand, revise, reposition, inter-
rogate, and seek new combinations among the texts that contour the field of twentieth-​
century American literature. One obvious sign of this critical energy is manifested by the
fact that several contributions overflow temporal borders by extending their mediations
to twenty-​first-​century transnational identities, social justice movements such as #Black
Lives Matter, and the context of neoliberal capital. In Bernadine Hernández’s chapter in
this volume, literal borders assume new and expanded urgency in the context of the
human/​animal divide, while in Rachel Adams’s chapter, “care work” provides a new lens
for interpreting the modernist canon. At a broader level, then, the task is to understand
not what twentieth-​century American literature means but rather what it means to read,
study, and teach twentieth-​century American literature in the twenty-​first century.
Familiar ways of organizing literature around schools, movements, traditions, and
styles that gave ascendancy to temporal, spatial, and generic considerations take new
form as they enmesh with emerging approaches. Comparative racialization, affect theory,
queer theory, transnational studies and glocalism, new materialisms, and performance
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the Yellow Egg with which this variety is usually compared. Golden
Drop is seemingly fit for all purposes to which plums are put—for
dessert, cooking, canning, preserving and prune-making. For the last
named purpose it is unsurpassed for a light colored prune of large
size, readily selling at a fancy price in delicatessen stores. The fruit
when carefully picked and handled keeps for a month or more,
shrivelling somewhat but retaining its flavor and pleasing flesh-
characters. A task for the plant-breeder is to breed a plum, of which
one of the parents should be Golden Drop, which will give to this
region a plum as good as the Golden Drop in regions where it is at
its best. With all of its defects in the North and East, it is yet worth
growing for the home and often for the late market.
Jervaise Coe, a market gardener, at Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk,
England, raised Golden Drop from a seed about 1809. Lindley
(References, 5) says, “He [the originator] informed me it was from
the stone of Green Gage, the blossom of which, he supposed, had
been fertilized by the White Magnum Bonum, the two trees of which
grew nearly in contact with each other in his garden.” From a study
of the fruit-characters this supposition is very probable. C. M. Hovey
in discussing the synonyms of this variety writes, “The French have
disseminated it considerably under the name of Waterloo; trees
received under that name have fruited in our collection this year, and
proved to be the Golden Drop.” Robert Hogg, in his Fruit Manual,
published in 1884, described Waterloo as a separate variety, found
at Waterloo, Belgium, and introduced by Dr. Van Mons; the
descriptions of the two are practically identical. The Silver Prune,
well known on the Pacific Coast, at one time supposed to be a new
variety, turned out upon investigation to be Golden Drop, though the
growers there continue to call it by the new name they have given it.
The variety under discussion came to America in 1823, when Knight,
of England, sent a tree of it to John Lowell of Massachusetts. In
1852, the American Pomological Society valued it sufficiently to
place it on the list of the fruits worthy of general cultivation.
 Tree medium to large, vigorous, spreading or roundish, open-topped,
hardy, productive; branches ash-gray, roughish, with few, large lenticels;
branchlets short, stout, with internodes variable in length, greenish-red
changing to dull brownish-red becoming drab on the older wood, glabrous
early in the season but becoming pubescent at maturity, with numerous,
small lenticels; leaf-buds large, long, pointed, free.
Leaves folded upward, oval or obovate, one and three-eighths inches
wide, two and three-quarters inches long, thickish; upper surface dark
green, slightly rugose, pubescent, with the midrib but faintly grooved;
lower surface silvery-green, pubescent; apex abruptly pointed or acute,
base acute, margin serrate, eglandular or with small, dark glands; petiole
one-half inch long, pubescent, tinged red, with from two to three globose,
greenish-yellow glands usually at the base of the leaf.
Season of bloom medium, short; flowers appearing after the leaves, one
inch across, white, borne in clusters on lateral spurs, singly or in pairs;
pedicels five-eighths inch long, lightly pubescent, greenish; calyx-tube
green, narrowly campanulate, pubescent; calyx-lobes obtuse, sparingly
pubescent on both surfaces, glandular-serrate, reflexed; petals oval,
dentate, tapering to short, broad claws; anthers yellowish; filaments five-
sixteenths inch long; pistil glabrous, equal to the stamens in length.
Fruit very late, season of average length; two inches by one and one-
half inches in size, oval, tapering at the base to a short neck, slightly
compressed, halves equal; cavity very shallow and narrow, abrupt; suture
shallow and wide; apex depressed; color golden-yellow, occasionally with
a faint bronze blush, showing greenish streaks and splashes before full
maturity, overspread with thin bloom; dots numerous, small, russet,
conspicuous; stem three-quarters inch long, thinly pubescent, adhering
well to the fruit; skin tough, rather adherent; flesh light golden-yellow, juicy,
intermediate in firmness and tenderness, rather sweet, mild, pleasant
flavor; good to very good; stone free, one and three-eighths inches by
three-quarters inch in size, oval or ovate, slightly flattened, irregularly
ridged and roughened, acute at the base and apex; ventral suture wide,
often conspicuously winged; dorsal suture widely and deeply grooved.

GOLIATH
Prunus domestica

1. Prince Treat. Hort. 26. 1828. 2. Lond. Hort. Soc. Cat. 147, 153. 1831.
3. Kenrick Am. Orch. 260. 1832. 4. Mag. Hort. 9:164. 1843. 5. Downing Fr.
 Trees Am. 300. 1845. 6. Floy-Lindley Guide Orch. Gard. 287, 383. 1846.
7. Thomas Am. Fruit Cult. 343. 1849. 8. McIntosh Bk. Gard. 2:531. 1855.
9. Hooper W. Fr. Book 245. 1857. 10. Cultivator 8:25 fig. 1860. 11. Am.
Pom. Soc. Cat. 86. 1862. 12. Hogg Fruit Man. 363. 1866. 13. Mas Pom.
Gen. 2:15, fig. 8. 1873. 14. Mathieu Nom. Pom. 432. 1889. 15. Waugh
Plum Cult. 105 fig. 1901.
Caledonian 1, 2, of some 5 & 8, 11, 12, 13, 14. Emperor 9. Goliath 1, 3.
Goliath 9, 13. Nectarine 1, of some 2 & 8, 11 & 14 incor. Pfirschenpflaume
14. Prune-Pêche? 14. Saint Cloud 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 12, 13, 14. Steer’s
Emperor 2. Steers’ Emperor 4, 5, 8, 12, 13, 14. Wahre Caledonian 13, 14.
Wilmot’s Late Orleans 2, 5, 8, 12, 13, 14.

This old English plum has never been popular in America and is
now scarcely known on this continent. It is a large, handsome, purple
plum, as the illustration well shows, but seldom fit for dessert.
“Seldom fit” because it is quite variable in quality in some seasons
and under some conditions. It is an excellent culinary plum and its
firm, thick, meaty flesh fits it well for shipping. On the grounds of this
Station the trees behave very well in all respects and usually bear
very full crops of plums that would tempt purchasers in any market. It
has all of the characters usually ascribed to a money-maker variety
of any fruit and why not more grown in commercial orchards cannot
be said.
Nothing is known of the origin of this plum except that it is English.
William Prince, in 1828, wrote: “This plum is of very large size, and
has attracted much notice in England; but it is only recently
introduced to this country, where it has not yet produced fruit that I
am aware of.” The Nectarine plum was confused with the Goliath in
the early part of the Nineteenth Century, but Robert Thompson,[215]
the English horticulturist, separated them so satisfactorily that they
have ever since remained distinct in plum literature. He found that
this variety had pubescent shoots and fruit-stalks, while the same
parts of the Nectarine were glabrous, and that the season of Goliath
is considerably later. The American Pomological Society placed
Goliath on its fruit list in 1862, but dropped it in 1871.

Tree large, vigorous, round-topped, dense, hardy, very productive;

branches stocky, with fruit-spurs numerous, ash-gray, smooth except for
the large, raised lenticels; branchlets somewhat thick, short, with
internodes of medium length, green changing to dull brownish-drab,
heavily pubescent throughout the season, with few, inconspicuous, small
lenticels; leaf-buds of average size and length, conical, free.
Leaves somewhat flattened, obovate, two inches wide, three and five-
eighths inches long; upper surface dark green, nearly glabrous, with a
grooved midrib; lower surface heavily pubescent; apex obtuse or acute,
base acute, margin finely serrate, eglandular or with few, small dark
glands; petiole one-half inch long, thick, heavily pubescent, with a faint red
tinge, glandless or with from one to three large, globose, greenish-yellow
glands usually at the base of the leaf.
Blooming season early to medium, short; flowers appearing after the
leaves, one inch across, white; borne on lateral spurs, singly or in pairs;
pedicels nine-sixteenths inch long, pubescent, greenish; calyx-tube green,
campanulate, lightly pubescent; calyx-lobes, broad, obtuse, somewhat
pubescent, glandular-serrate, erect; petals unusually large, roundish,
finely crenate, not clawed; anthers yellowish; filaments five-sixteenths inch
long; pistil glabrous, longer than the stamens, with a large style and
stigma.
Fruit mid-season, ripening period short; one and five-eighths inches by
one and one-half inches in size, roundish-oblong, somewhat oblique,
truncate, compressed, halves unequal; cavity narrow, abrupt, usually
russeted; suture a line; apex flattened or depressed; color dark purplish-
red, lighter colored on the shaded side, overspread with thick bloom; dots
characteristic, numerous, large, russet, conspicuous, clustered about the
apex; stem thick, three-quarters inch long, thickly pubescent, adhering
well to the fruit; skin thin, sour, separating readily; flesh golden-yellow,
rather dry, firm, sweet, of mild, pleasant flavor; fair to good; stone free,
seven-eighths inch by three-quarters inch in size, roundish-oval,
somewhat flattened, blunt at the base and apex, roughened and irregularly
furrowed; ventral suture wide, winged, heavily furrowed; dorsal suture with
a wide groove variable in depth.

GONZALES
 GOLIATH

Prunus triflora ×

1. Kerr Cat. 1899-1900. 2. Vt. Sta. Bul. 67:13. 1898. 3. Ohio Sta. Bul.
162:252. 1905. 4. Penin. Hort. Soc. Rpt. 36. 1905. 5. Stark Bros. Cat.
1906.
 Gonzales 5. Red Gold 4. Red Gold 5.

Judging from the several published descriptions, Gonzales is a

very promising plum, for the South at least. The writers have not
seen the variety in the North, but there appear to be no reasons why
it should not succeed in some northern soils and climates. It is a
chance seedling found in Gonzales, Texas, about 1894, and was
introduced by F. T. Ramsey, Austin, Texas, in 1897. About all that
can be determined regarding its parentage is that it is the product of
some Japanese variety pollinated by a native. In 1901, Waugh used
this variety to typify a new species, Prunus hortulana robusta,
composed of a number of hybrids between Prunus triflora and native
species. The following description is compiled:

Tree vigorous, upright-spreading, open; leaves narrow, oval, tapering at

both ends; upper surface glabrous; margin minutely glandular, finely
crenulate; petiole short and slender, with two glands.
Fruit mid-season; resembles Burbank in size and shape; skin toughish;
color bright red, sometimes striped and splashed with dark red; flesh
yellow, tinged red, firm, sweet; good; stone of medium size, oval, clinging.

GRAND DUKE
 GRAND DUKE

Prunus domestica

1. Hogg Fruit Man. 703. 1884. 2. Mathieu Nom. Pom. 432, 434. 1889. 3.
W. N. Y. Hort. Soc. Rpt. 39:100. 1894. 4. Can. Hort. 18:117, Pl. 1895. 5.
Cornell Sta. Bul. 131:186, fig. 40 IV. 1896. 6. W. N. Y. Hort. Soc. Rpt.
 42:83. 1897. 7. Am. Pom. Soc. Cat. 25. 1897. 8. Mich. Sta. Bul. 169:245.
1899. 9. Ohio Sta. Bul. 113:159, Pl. XVI. 1899. 10. Can. Exp. Farm Bul.
2nd Ser. 3:52. 1900. 11. Waugh Plum Cult. 106 fig. 1901. 12. Ohio Sta.
Bul. 162:243 fig., 244, 254, 255. 1905.
Grossherzog’s Pflaume 2. Grand-Duc 2. Grand Duke 2.

Grand Duke, now probably the favorite late shipping plum in this
region, is, as stated in the history given below, a comparatively new
plum in America. Its great popularity, gained in less than a quarter of
a century, is due to much advertising by nurserymen coupled with
such intrinsic qualities as large size, the true prune shape which
seems most pleasing in some markets, handsome plum-purple and
more than all else a firm, meaty flesh which fits the variety
excellently for shipping. The flavor, as seems most often to be the
case with these large blue plums, is not pleasant and the plum is not
more than a second rate dessert fruit though it is very good in
whatever way cooked for the table. The trees grow poorly in the
nursery and even in the orchard are seldom large and vigorous
enough to be called first class, though usually hardy. Some years
ago plum-growers were advised to top-work this and other weak-
growing plums on stronger stocks, but those who have tried such
top-working usually condemn it because it is expensive and
ineffective and because it so often gives a malformed tree. The trees
come in bearing slowly but bear regularly and abundantly and hold
the crop well, the plums being unusually free from rot and hanging in
good condition a long time. Grand Duke deserves its popularity as a
market plum and probably no better variety can be selected in New
York for the last of the season.
Grand Duke is another of the many valuable plums produced by
Thomas Rivers, of Sawbridgeworth, England. It was grown from an
Autumn Compote stone and was sent out in 1876. When it was first
introduced into America is not known, but in 1888 cions of it were
distributed by Ellwanger and Barry[216] of Rochester, New York. In
1897, the American Pomological Society added this variety to its fruit
catalog list and recommended it for this State and neighboring
regions with similar climatic conditions.
 Tree above medium in size, moderately vigorous, upright to slightly
spreading, usually hardy, productive; branches ash-gray, with small,
numerous lenticels; branchlets slender, short, with internodes of medium
length, greenish-red changing to brownish-red, many twigs retaining a
tinge of green, shining, glabrous, with numerous, small lenticels; leaf-buds
large, long, pointed, strongly appressed; leaf-scars large.
Leaves nearly flat, obovate, one and one-half inches wide, three inches
long, thick; upper surface shining, slightly rugose, pubescent only along
the grooved midrib; lower surface yellowish-green, lightly pubescent; apex
taper-pointed, base acute, margin serrate, eglandular or with small, dark
glands; petiole three-quarters inch long, nearly glabrous, slightly tinged
red along one side, glandless or with from one to three globose yellowish
glands on the stalk and base of the leaf.
Blooming season intermediate, short; flowers appearing after the
leaves, one inch across, white; borne in clusters on short lateral spurs and
buds, singly or in pairs; pedicels one-half inch long, slender, glabrous,
greenish; calyx-tube green, campanulate, glabrous; calyx-lobes lightly
pubescent, glandular-ciliate, slightly reflexed; petals obovate, entire, short-
clawed; anthers yellowish; filaments one-quarter inch long; pistil
pubescent at the base, longer than the stamens.
Fruit late, season medium; unusually large when well grown, two and
one-eighth inches by two inches in size, elongated-oval or slightly
obovate, halves unequal; cavity shallow, narrow, abrupt; suture wide,
variable in depth; apex flattened, somewhat depressed or occasionally
with a short, blunt tip; color dark reddish-purple or purplish-black,
overspread with thick bloom; dots numerous, small, brownish,
inconspicuous; stem three-quarters inch long, adhering well to the fruit;
skin variable in toughness, somewhat astringent, separating readily; flesh
golden-yellow, juicy, firm, sweet, mild, not high in flavor; good; stone
clinging, sometimes tinged red, one and one-eighth inches by seven-
eighths inch in size, irregularly oval, slightly flattened, roughish, acute at
the base and apex; ventral suture broad, slightly winged; dorsal suture
with a broad, shallow groove.

GUEII
 GUEII

Prunus domestica

1. Downing Fr. Trees Am. 3rd App. 181. 1881. 2. Can. Hort. 14:293, Pl.
1891. 3. Mich. Sta. Bul. 103:34, fig. 6. 1894. 4. Cornell Sta. Bul. 131:187.
1897. 5. Ont. Fr. Exp. Sta. Rpt. 120. 1898. 6. Mich. Sta. Bul. 169:242, 245.
 1899. 7. Ohio Sta. Bul. 113:159. 1899. 8. Am. Pom. Soc. Cat. 39. 1899. 9.
Waugh Plum Cult. 107. 1901. 10. Va. Sta. Bul. 134:42, 43 fig. 14. 1902.
Big Blue 1. Blue Magnum Bonum 1, 9. Bradshaw 1 incor. Geuii 3. Gueii
1. Guii 1, 6. Gweii 1.

Gueii is one of the standard plums of its season in New York,

ranking among the first half-dozen in number of trees growing in the
State, with many growers holding that it is the best general purpose
plum of all Domesticas. The popularity of Gueii is due to its being a
money-maker, as few would care to grow it for home consumption.
The quality of Gueii is poor, especially for dessert, and it cannot even
be called a particularly good-looking plum, though the illustration
scarcely does the plum justice, especially in size. But the variety
bears early and abundantly; the trees are large, vigorous, healthy
and hardy and the plums are hardly surpassed for shipping,
especially at the time at which the crop comes upon the market,
about mid-season, the best shipping plums maturing a little later. The
fruit is quite subject to brown-rot, a matter of more moment in other
regions than in New York, and yet in some seasons very important in
this State. The stone, curiously enough, sometimes clings rather
tightly and under other conditions is wholly free. It could be wished
that so popular a market plum were better in quality, but since high
quality is seldom correlated in plums with fitness to ship well, it would
be unfair to condemn Gueii for a market fruit because it cannot be
eaten with relish out of hand.
This plum, according to all accounts, originated with a Mr.
Hagaman, Lansingburgh, New York, about 1830. It was brought to
notice by John Goeway (Gueii) and was soon called by his name.
For years it was not much grown and it was not until 1899 that it was
placed on the fruit catalog list of the American Pomological Society.

Tree large, vigorous, spreading, open-topped, hardy, very productive;

branches ash-gray, roughened by longitudinal cracks and by numerous,
conspicuous, raised lenticels of various sizes; branchlets thick, of medium
length, with short internodes, green changing to dark brownish-drab, dull,
thickly pubescent throughout the season, with numerous, inconspicuous,
small lenticels; leaf-buds short, conical, free.
 Leaves obovate or oval, one and seven-eighths inches wide, four inches
long, thick; upper surface dark green, with scattering fine hairs and with a
grooved midrib; lower surface silvery-green, thickly pubescent; apex
abruptly pointed or acute, base variable but usually acute, margin doubly
crenate, with small black glands; petiole five-eighths inch long, thick,
pubescent, tinged red.
Blooming season short; flowers appearing after the leaves, one and
one-eighth inches across, whitish; borne in clusters at the ends of spurs,
singly or in pairs; pedicels thirteen-sixteenths inch long, pubescent,
greenish; calyx-tube green, campanulate, pubescent towards the base;
calyx-lobes broad, obtuse, pubescent on both surfaces, glandular-serrate,
reflexed; petals roundish, entire, with very short, blunt claws; anthers
yellow; filaments three-eighths inch long; pistil glabrous, equal to the
stamens in length.
Fruit intermediate in time and length of ripening season; medium to
above in size, somewhat ovate, halves equal; cavity below medium in
depth and width, abrupt, rarely sutured; apex bluntly pointed; color dark
purplish-black, overspread with thick bloom; dots numerous, small, russet,
inconspicuous, clustered about the apex; stem medium in thickness and
length, pubescent, adhering well to the fruit; skin thin, tender, slightly
astringent, separating readily; flesh greenish-yellow changing to light
golden-yellow, dry, firm but tender, sweet, mild, somewhat astringent
towards the center; fair in quality; stone variable in adhesion but usually
clinging, large, ovate or oval, blunt at the base and apex, strongly
roughened and pitted; ventral suture faintly winged; dorsal suture acute or
lightly grooved.

GUTHRIE LATE
Prunus domestica

1. McIntosh Bk. Gard. 2:532. 1855. 2. Downing Fr. Trees Am. 919.
1869. 3. Hogg Fruit Man. 705. 1884. 4. Mathieu Nom. Pom. 434. 1889. 5.
Rivers Cat. 1898. 6. Am. Gard. Mag. 21:173. 1900.
Guthrie’s Minette 1. Guthrie’s Late Green 6. Guthrie Green 6. Guthrie’s
Late Green 2, 3, 4. Minette 2, 3, 4. Verte Tardive de Guthrie 4.

Guthrie Late has never attained commercial importance in the

United States, being found only in collections; but in England,
according to Hogg, it is a very fine dessert plum, rivalling the Reine
Claude in quality and ripening a month later. On the grounds of this
institution it has failed because the fruits are small, dull in color and
do not keep well. Of the several varieties produced from seed of
Reine Claude by Charles Guthrie, Taybank, Dundee, Scotland, about
the middle of the last century, Guthrie Late is the best known.

Tree large, vigorous, round-topped, dense, productive; branches stocky;

branchlets pubescent; leaf-buds large, short, with a peculiar brush-like
apex; leaves folded upward, oval, one and seven-eighths inches wide,
three and one-half inches long, thick, rugose; margin crenate, eglandular
or with small, dark glands; petiole thick, glandless or with from one to four
globose glands; blooming season short; flowers appearing after the
leaves, one inch across, white tinged with yellow at the apex of the petals;
borne on lateral buds and spurs, singly or in pairs.
Fruit mid-season, ripening period long; of medium size, roundish-
truncate, dull greenish-yellow, often irregularly splashed and striped with
green, overspread with thin bloom; skin thin, slightly astringent; flesh light
golden-yellow, rather dry, fibrous, somewhat tender, sweet, pleasant in
flavor; of good quality; stone free, seven-eighths inch by five-eighths inch
in size, ovate or oval, medium turgid, with rough surfaces.

HALE
 HALE

Prunus triflora

1. Burbank Cat. 19. 1893. 2. Ibid. 1894. 3. Cornell Sta. Bul. 106:52.
1896. 4. Ga. Hort. Soc. Rpt. XI. 1897. 5. Am. Pom. Soc. Cat. 41. 1899. 6.
Cornell Sta. Bul. 175:147, 148, fig. 37. 1899. 7. Am. Gard. 21:36 1900. 8.
 Waugh Plum Cult. 136. 1901. 9. Mich. Sta. Bul. 187:77, 79. 1901. 10. W.
N. Y. Hort. Soc. Rpt. 89. 1902. 11. Ohio. Sta. Bul. 162:254, 255. 1905. 12.
Ga. Sta. Bul. 68:10, 30. 1905. 13. Mass. Sta. An. Rpt. 17:160. 1905.
J 1. J 3. Prolific 2. Prolific 3, 8, 12.

It is doubtful if the average person who grows the Hale would

recognize it as shown in The Plums of New York, as it is supposed to
be a yellow plum; nevertheless the illustration is a good one so far as
the fruits go at least. When mature on the trees the fruits are yellow
with a faint blush, but in storage the color quickly changes into a pale
red, becoming, when the plum is at its best in appearance and
quality, a light currant-red. Hale, though large and handsome of fruit,
is of questionable value, failing both in fruit and tree. The flavor of
this plum is good in the judgment of most fruit connoisseurs, but
others find it a little too sweet and somewhat mawkish near the skin
and close about the pit. All agree, however, that the flesh clings too
tightly to the stone for pleasant eating and that the texture is too
tender for good shipping. But it is the tree that fails most markedly.
Even on the grounds of this Station, where the peach is practically
hardy, Hale is but semi-hardy, failing most often because with the
best of care the wood does not ripen properly. The habit of growth is
not particularly good, the trees are slow in coming in bearing, are not
regularly productive and are readily infected by brown-rot and the
fruits much infested by curculio. On the whole, it is to be regretted
that Mr. Hale did not choose a better plum to bear a name so
distinguished in horticulture.
Luther Burbank offered this plum, a cross between Kelsey and
Satsuma, for sale under the name J, in 1893, and the following year
as Prolific. J. H. Hale, South Glastonbury, Connecticut, purchased
the variety in 1894, and introduced it as the Hale in 1896. In 1899,
the American Pomological Society considered it worthy a place on its
fruit catalog list.

Tree above medium in size, vigorous, vasiform, open-topped, semi-

hardy, variable in productiveness; branches smooth except for the
numerous, small, raised lenticels, somewhat thorny, dark ash-gray, the
fruit spurs numerous; branchlets willowy, of medium thickness and length,
with short internodes, greenish-red changing to light brown, shining,
glabrous; lenticels numerous, small; leaf-buds small, short, obtuse, plump,
free.
Leaves sparse, folded upward, oblanceolate or narrowly obovate, one
and three-quarters inches wide, three and one-half inches long, thin;
upper surface glabrous except for scattering hairs, with a grooved midrib;
lower surface light green, glabrous except along the midrib and larger
veins; apex acute or abruptly pointed, base acute, margin finely serrate or
crenate, eglandular; petiole nine-sixteenths inch long, slender, tinged red,
glandless or with from one to four globose or reniform, greenish-yellow
glands on the stalk.
Blooming season early and of medium length; flowers appearing before
the leaves, white; borne in thin clusters on lateral buds and spurs, singly
or in pairs; pedicels long, glabrous, greenish; calyx-tube green,
campanulate, glabrous; calyx-lobes obtuse, with numerous hair-like
glands, nearly glabrous, erect; petals roundish-ovate, entire, not clawed;
anthers yellowish; filaments short; pistil glabrous except at the base, much
longer than the stamens.
Fruit early, season short; one and three-quarters inches in diameter,
roundish, halves equal; cavity of medium depth and width, abrupt, regular;
suture a line; apex roundish; color light or greenish-yellow, more or less
blushed with red on one side, becoming red at maturity, mottled, with thin
bloom; dots numerous, small, whitish, conspicuous only where the skin is
blushed; stem slender, five-eighths inch long, glabrous, detaching easily
from the fruit; skin thin, tough, adhering; flesh yellowish, very juicy, fibrous,
tender, melting next the skin but firmer at the center, sweet except near
the pit; good in quality; stone adhering, three-quarters inch by five-eighths
inch in size, roundish-oval, flattened, blunt but with a small, sharp tip,
rough; ventral suture narrow and rather conspicuously winged; dorsal
suture grooved.

HAMMER
 HAMMER

Prunus hortulana mineri × Prunus americana

1. Cornell Sta. Bul. 38:79. 1892. 2. Ia. Hort. Soc. Rpt. 275, 448. 1893. 3.
Ibid. 334. 1894. 4. Wis. Sta. Bul. 63:24, 39. 1897. 5. Colo. Sta. Bul. 50:36.
1898. 6. Ia. Sta. Bul. 46:274. 1900. 7. Waugh Plum Cult. 150. 1901. 8.
 Ont. Fr. Gr. Assoc. 144. 1901. 9. Ga. Sta. Bul. 67:274. 1904. 10. S. Dak.
Sta. Bul. 93:18. 1905. 11. Ohio Sta. Bul. 162:254, 255. 1905.

Hammer is one of the best native plums. On the Station grounds

the trees of this variety make the best orchard plants of any of the
native varieties, being large, vigorous, shapely and hardy, falling
short only in being a little uncertain in bearing. The fruits are good in
quality, handsome in appearance and keep and ship well, but crack
badly in unfavorable weather and, according to some writers, are
quite subject to brown-rot. Hammer extends the season of the
Americana plums considerably, for though a hybrid, it may best be
ranked with the Americanas, and is well worth planting in home
orchards in New York, where the native plums are too seldom found;
in particular, this variety can be recommended for the colder parts of
this State where Domestica and Insititia plums are not hardy.
Hammer is one of H. A. Terry’s numerous productions and was
grown from a seed of the Miner evidently fertilized by an Americana.
The blood of the latter is shown by its hardiness and its broad,
Americana-like foliage. The variety first fruited in 1888 and was sent
out in 1892.

Tree very large, vigorous, round-topped, widely spreading, hardy at

Geneva, an uncertain bearer; trunk and larger limbs shaggy; branches
long, rough, brash, thorny, dark ash-gray, with many, large lenticels;
branchlets thick, very long, with long internodes, green changing to dull
reddish-brown, glabrous, with raised lenticels of medium number and size;
leaf-buds small, short, obtuse, plump, free.
Leaves folded upward, oval or slightly obovate, two and one-eighth
inches wide, four inches long, thin; upper surface somewhat rugose; lower
surface pale green, very lightly pubescent along the midrib; apex taper-
pointed, base obtuse, often unsymmetrical, margin coarsely and doubly
serrate, eglandular; petiole three-quarters inch long, sparingly pubescent
along one side, tinged red, glandless or with from one to four small,
globose, greenish-brown glands on the stalk.
Blooming season medium to late, long; flowers appearing after the
leaves, fifteen-sixteenths inch across, white, with a disagreeable odor;
borne in clusters on lateral buds and spurs, in twos or in threes; pedicels
five-eighths inch in length, slender, glabrous, greenish; calyx-tube green,
campanulate, glabrous; calyx-lobes narrow, obtuse, thinly pubescent
within, glandular-serrate and with marginal hairs, somewhat reflexed;
petals ovate or oval, irregularly crenate, tapering below into claws of
medium length and breadth; anthers yellowish; filaments seven-sixteenths
inch in length; pistil glabrous, equal to or shorter than the stamens in
length.
Fruit mid-season, ripening period of average length; one and one-
quarter inches in diameter, roundish-oval, slightly compressed, halves
equal; cavity very shallow, narrow, flaring; suture an indistinct line; apex
roundish; color crimson overspread with thick bloom; dots numerous, very
small, light russet, inconspicuous; stem slender, five-eighths inch long,
glabrous, not adhering to the fruit; skin thick, tough, inclined to crack under
unfavorable conditions, separating readily; flesh golden-yellow, juicy,
fibrous, tender and melting, sweet, strongly aromatic; good; stone semi-
free, three-quarters inch by five-eighths inch in size, flattened, roundish-
oval, somewhat compressed at the base, abruptly pointed at the apex,
rough; ventral suture rather narrow, faintly ridged; dorsal suture with a
narrow, shallow groove.

HAND
 HAND

Prunus domestica

1. Horticulturist 2:436. 1847. 2. Ibid. 6:21 fig., 187, 294. 1851. 3. Am.
Pom. Soc. Rpt. 190, 214. 1856. 4. Downing Fr. Trees Am. 382. 1857. 5.
Hogg Fruit Man. 362. 1866. 6. Mas Pom. Gen. 2:19, fig. 10. 1873. 7. Ont.