Fruit fly

“ Let the fruit be ever so luscious and ever so laden with sweet sirups, it can never secure the suffrages of the higher animals if it lies hidden beneath a mass of green foliage, or clothes itself in the quiet garb of the retiring nut. To attract from a distance the eyes of wandering birds or mammals, it must dress itself up in a gorgeous livery of crimson, scarlet, and orange. The contrast between nuts and fruits is exactly parallel to the contrast between the wind fertilized and the insect-fertilized flowers. ”

“ In the spring, when the fruit buds are unfolding, the beetles begin to emerge from their winter quarters and feed to some extent on the blossoms and tender leaves of the fruit trees. Mating soon begins, and by the time the fruit is well set the beetles make this fruit the chief object of their attention. The circular punctures in the skin are feeding punctures, while the crescent-shaped ones are egg-laying punctures. A single egg is deposited in a puncture, although several may be placed in a single fruit. ”

“ It is wonderful to note, too, the methods employed to secure the distribution of the seed—how it is sometimes imbedded in a delicious edible fruit, again furnished with hooks or bristles or springs, or provided with silken sails to waft it away upon the wings of the wind. Then the insects that visit plants. It is marvelous to note how plants spread their attractions in bright colors and perfumes and offerings of honey to bees, butterflies, and moths that can carry their pollen abroad, and how they even place hindrances in the way of such as are undesirable. ”

“ Allow me to remind you that very much fruit is never picked; some gets nipped in the blossom; some gets worm-eaten and falls to the ground; some rots on the trees before it ripens; some, too slow in ripening, gets bitten by the early frosts of autumn; while some rich, rare, ripe apples hang unpicked, frozen and worthless on the leafless trees of winter! ”

“ Too often, the presence of the grub is learned only after the mischief is complete. You may have petted a strawberry plant for a year, and after it has developed into noble proportions, and awakened the best expectations from its load of immature fruit, you will, perhaps, find it wilting some morning. ”

“ Thus the bees obtain their food from the flowers and, in turn, the flowers, many of them, are incapable of producing seed or fruit unless the pollen is carried from the male flower to the female flower by bees or other agencies. ”

“ Let a person or some animal pass into a patch of these plants, and at once numerous fruits catch on wherever there is a chance, and some are shot upon or into the fleeces of animals, there to find free transportation for uncertain distances. Should there be a freshet, some of these fruits will float; or, in case of shallow currents after a rain, some of them are washed away from the parent plant. Any inquisitive person cannot fail to be pleased if he experiment with the plant when the fruit is ripe. ”

“ You have learned that insects and apple-scab and yourselves all try to see who shall own the apple fruit. Now you know that birds, and insects that feed on leaves and in the wood, are also concerned in this quarrel about the apple. ”

“ Remove the runners as they appear, and the life of the plant goes to make vigorous foliage and a correspondingly large fruit bud. The sap is stored up as a miller collects and keeps for future use, the water of a stream. Moreover, a plant thus curbed abounds in vitality and does not throw down its burden of prematurely ripe fruit after a few hot days. It works evenly and continuously, as strength only can, and leisurely perfects the last berry on the vines. You will often find blossoms and ripe fruit on the same plant—something rarely seen where the plants are crowded and the soil dry. ”

“ From low, broad spreading trees depended the grape fruit, as large as an infant's head and yellow as gold, while the orange, lime and lemon trees, bearing blossoms, green and ripe fruit all together, met the eye at every turn, and filled the garden with fragrance. ”

“ In other cases members of the animal world aid in seed-dispersal. Fruits often bear stiff hairs or small hooks, which cling to the coat of an animal or the feathers of a bird; such are fruits of cleavers (Galium Aparine) , a common hedge-row plant, Ranunculus arvensis (fig. 20) , carrot, Geum, &c.; or the fruit or seed has an often bright-coloured, fleshy covering, which is sought by birds as food, as in stone-fruits such as plum, cherry (fig. 5) , &c., where the seed is protected from injury in the mouth or stomach of the animal by the hard endocarp ”

“ He very soon discovered, from his own observations in the orchard, that one of the greatest difficulties we all have to contend against in fruit-growing, was the ravages committed upon our fruits and fruit-trees by hosts of noxious insects. ”

“ Birds need thickets, hedge-rows and shrubbery for nesting places, hiding places, and shelter from storms.
Every farmer who kills the birds on his place justifies the destruction by the evidence that they eat fruit. True, some of them do. But if water is provided many of them prefer it to fruit juice. To preserve our strawberries and cherries, we should plant June berry and Russian mulberry, which the birds like better. Chokeberry, buckthorn, elder berry, and mulberry will attract birds away from blackberry and raspberry patches. ”

“ A fruit, on the other hand, lays itself open in every way to attract the attention of animals, and so to be dispersed by their aid, often amid the nourishing refuse of their meals. It is true that, with the fruit as with the nut, to digest the actual seed itself would be fatal to the life of the young plant. But fruits get over this difficulty by coating their seeds first with a hard, indigestible shell, and then with a soft, sweet, pulpy, and nutritious outer layer. ”

“ Although, during the summer months, myriads of insects are killed and eaten by the cedar waxwings, yet these birds are preeminently berry eaters,—choke-cherries, cedar berries, blueberries, and raspberries being preferred. Watch a flock of these birds in a cherry tree, and you will see the pits fairly rain down. We need not place our heads, à la Newton, in the path of these falling stones to deduce some interesting facts,—indeed to solve the very destiny of the fruit. ”

“ CHAPTER XVII PRUNING, SPRAYING, HARVESTING The day has gone, probably forever, when setting out fruit trees and giving them occasional cultivation, "plowing up the orchard" once in several years, would produce fruit. Apples and pears and peaches have occupied no preferred position against the general invasion of the realm of horticulture by insect and fungous enemies. The fruits have, indeed, suffered more than most plants. ”

“ Every part is flower, (or fruit,) such is its superfluity of color,—stem, branch, peduncle, pedicel, petiole, and even the at length yellowish purple-veined leaves. Its cylindrical racemes of berries of various hues, from green to dark purple, six or seven inches long, are gracefully drooping on all sides, offering repasts to the birds; and even the sepals from which the birds have picked the berries are a brilliant lake-red, with crimson flame-like reflections, equal to anything of the kind,—all on fire with ripeness. ”

“ In this country the large majority of our favorite fruits, of whatever species or kind, seem to have originated by accident, that is, they have been discovered in seedling orchards, or even in hedge-rows. These have no doubt, however, been produced by accidental crosses of good kinds, and this may occur through the intervention of insects in any orchard of good fruit, where there may chance to be some varieties that have the tendency to progress. ”

“ The taking off a circular piece of the bark from a branch of a pear-tree causes the fruit of that branch to ripen sooner by a fortnight, as I have more than once observed. The wounds made in apples by insects occasion those apples to ripen sooner ”

“ We owe our fruits largely to the birds. This statement anyone may prove by simple experiment. First drive the birds from your garden because you think they are eating the buds and blossoms, instead of the insects which sting the buds. You will be rewarded with a scanty and stunted fruit crop. Next conclude that you won't get fruit anyway, and so let the birds do as they please. You will be pretty sure to harvest a fairly good crop at least. Lastly, encourage the birds to visit your garden and orchard in their northward passage, as well as during the summer season. ”

“ But fruit also literal: for what joy of vegetation is lacking to the man who every month in the year can look through his study-window on a green lawn, and have strawberries and cream for his breakfast,—who can sit down to this royal fruit, and at the same time to apricots, peaches, nectarines, blackberries, raspberries, melons, figs both yellow and purple, early apples, and grapes of three kinds? ”

“ Male and female influence necessary in animals, insects, and vegetables, both in production of seeds and buds; does the embryon seed produce the surrounding fruit, like insects in gall-nuts?
NOTE XXXIX ... VEGETABLE GLANDULATION. Vegetable glands cannot be injected with coloured fluids; essential oil; wax; honey; nectary, its complicate apparatus; exposes the honey to the air like the lacrymal gland; honey is nutritious; the male and female parts of flowers copulate and die like moths and butterflies, and are fed like them with honey; anthers supposed to become insects ”

“ Over twenty species of the bird of paradise are said to live here.
All kind of tropical fruit grow wild and in great abundance. Bread fruit trees grow quickly and furnish 500 to 1,000 pounds of food each, substance about equal to oatmeal. ”

“ Wild fruits such as grape and pokeberry also showed up in trace amounts. Elsewhere, investigators have found wild fruit forming a major source of food in winter. However, it was not readily available in this area. ”

“ But there will not be seventy-four fruits; some of the flowers are small and weak; others, as the petals fall, show unmistakable signs of failing. A few of them show the plump form of an embryo apple: I think there are a score of such promises. But I know that others will fail later from physiological causes, and others probably from onslaught of insects or disease or from accidents. If six fair fruits mature on a branch like this, the crop will be good; and probably the branch would not have vigor enough to set as many fruit-buds the following year or to bear as many fruits. ”

“ Are there many runners, or few, or none? Do the new runners bear blossoms and fruit? If so, when do they commence to bud and bloom? When do the berries begin to ripen? Notice the size and shape of the fruit, also the color. You can tell much from the taste of the berry. No two varieties taste exactly alike. Some are real sweet and some kinds real sour. ”

“ As it produces new bunches every month, there are always some quite ripe, some green, some just beginning to button, and others in full flower. The fruit is three-lobed and of a greenish hue, of different sizes, from the size of an ordinary tennis-ball, to that of a man's head, and is composed of two rinds. ”

“ But when the fruit of every plant is maturing, it draws to itself a large part of the prepared sap, which, when it has entered the kernel, is still farther elaborated, and made to produce the peculiar qualities of the fruit, whether corn or wheat, apple or pear. It is plain from this explanation that a plant stripped of its leaves is like a chemist robbed of his laboratory, or like a man without lungs. ”

“ They often smash all the bushes in a berry patch, gathering the fruit with half-luxurious, half-laborious greed, sitting on their haunches, and sweeping the berries into their mouths with dexterous paws. So absorbed do they become in their feasts on the luscious fruit that they grow reckless of their safety, and feed in broad daylight, almost at midday ”

“ The grape-vine in particular, the cherry, plum, and apple-trees, have annually suffered by their depredations; many other fruit-trees and shrubs, garden vegetables and corn, and even the trees of the forest, and the grass of the fields, have been laid under contribution by these indiscriminate feeders, by whom leaves, flowers, and fruits are alike consumed. ”

“ The blight, under this aspect, is nothing but ringing or decortication, effected by diseased sap, destroying the parts in which it lodges, and then itself drying up. The branch will grow, fruit will set, and frequently become larger and finer flavored than usual. ”

“ Many persons have written about the delicate discrimination of birds for choice fruit, asserting that only the finest and costliest varieties are selected. This is contrary to all careful scientific observation. Birds, unlike human beings, seem to prefer fruit like the mulberry, that is sweetly insipid, or that has some astringent or bitter quality like the chokecherry or holly. ”

“ Its vegetable food consists of seeds and small wild fruits, but no complaint on this score is known to have been made. So far as observation goes, the bird never touches either cultivated fruit or grain; in fact, it is too shy and retiring even to stay about gardens for any length of time. ”

“ Strictly speaking, the small seeds scattered over the surface of the berry are the fruit, and it is to perfect these seeds that the plants blossom, the stamens scatter, and the pistils receive the pollen on the convex receptacle, which, as the seeds ripen, greatly enlarges, and becomes the pulpy and delicious mass that is popularly regarded as the fruit. So far from being the fruit, it is only "the much altered end of the stem" that sustains the fruit or seeds ”