Fruit stand

“ 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. ”

“ Indeed, we are at a loss to decide which we value the more, the apple-blossoms or the apples which follow. Nature is not content with bulk, flavor, and nutriment, but in the fruit itself so deftly pleases the eye with every trick of color and form that the hues and beauty of the flower are often surpassed. ”

“ Orchard fruits are conveniently divided into large and small fruits, the large fruits being represented by the apple, pear, peach, quince, etc., and the small fruit by the cherry and plum. Fruits were doubtless among the earliest foods of man, and this leads to another classification of fruits, namely, wild and cultivated. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the fruit market were many familiar bright-coloured fruits. Fat, jet-black negresses, wearing turbans on their heads, strings of coloured beads on their necks and arms, and single long white garments, which appeared to be continually slipping off their shoulders, presided over glittering piles of oranges, bananas, pine-apples, passion-fruit, tomatoes, apples, pears, capsicum and peppers, sugar-canes, cabbage-palms, cherimoyas, and bread-fruit. ”

“ Plant running, not of stocky habit, but healthy and vigorous; fruit obtusely conical, three inches broad at the stem, and two inches and a half in depth; skin yellowish-white, thin and tender while the fruit is young, hard and shell-like when ripe; flesh dry and well flavored in its green state, and often of good quality at full maturity. ”

“ Againe, the largenesse and goodnesse of fruite consists in the age of the tree: for as the tree increaseth, so the fruite increaseth in bignesse, beauty, taste, and firmnesse: and otherwise, as it decreaseth.
Transporting fruit by water. If you be to transport your fruit farre by water, then prouide some dry hogges-heads or barrells, and packe in your apples, one by one with your hand, that no empty place may be left, to occasion sogging ”

“ The luxuriance of the peach, the plum, the pear and the apple, is such, in this region, as to afford the most perfect possible specimens. The vigor of fruit-trees, in such a soil and under a heaven so congenial, produces fruits which are very large without being coarse-fleshed; the flavor concentrated, and the color very high. It is the constant remark of emigrants from the East, that our apples surpass those to which they have been accustomed. ”

“ A similar line of argument holds good with fruits; that a ripe strawberry or cherry is as pleasing to the eye as to the palate; that the gaily coloured fruit of the spindle-wood tree, and the scarlet berries of the holly, are beautiful objects,—will be admitted by every one. ”

“ 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? ”

“ But, in such seasons as it has occurred to any one to go in for more extensive gardening, we rejoice in a profusion of carrots, turnips, parsnips, onions, taro, beet-root, and sundry other things.
Fruit can hardly be looked on as a food; it is merely an ornamental accessory to it, in our opinion. We are great fruit-consumers, but we look on such trifles as only refreshers for odd moments, and not as having anything to do with the serious business of eating. ”

“ It is the tendency of the present age to ask what is, not what has been or shall be. And yet, on the part of some, as they deliberately enjoy a saucer of strawberries and cream,—it is a pleasure that we prolong for obvious reasons,—a languid curiosity may arise as to the origin and history of so delicious a fruit. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If, in the circle of our acquaintance, there are those shut up to the weariness and heavy atmosphere of a sick-room, in no way can we send a ray of sunlight athwart their pallid faces more effectually than by placing a basket of fragrant fruit on the table beside them. ”

“ Keep the fruit from being injured by lying on the ground; and if slate, blackened shingles, or any dry, dark material, be placed beneath it, by attraction of the sun's rays, the fruit will ripen earlier and better. ”

“ We have in like sort such workmen as are not only excellent in grafting the natural fruits, but also in their artificial mixtures, whereby one tree bringeth forth sundry fruits, and one and the same fruit of divers colours and tastes, dallying as it were with nature and her course, as if her whole trade were perfectly known unto them: of hard fruits they will make tender, of sour sweet, of sweet yet more delicate, bereaving also some of their kernels, other of their cores, and finally enduing them with the savour of musk, amber, or sweet spices, at their pleasures. ”

“ When they are to be eaten, the skin, or rather flesh, must be taken off, under which are found six or seven white kernels, placed in a circular order, and the pulp with which these are enveloped, is the fruit, than which nothing can be more delicious: It is a happy mixture of the tart and the sweet, which is no less wholesome than pleasant; and with the sweet orange, this fruit is allowed in any quantity to those who are afflicted with fevers, either of the putrid or inflammatory kind. ”

“ They excel in the art of preparing fruit, and they can remove the hard kernels from all stone fruit, with such skill that when placed upon the table, the eye fails to discover from its external appearance, that the natural condition of the fruit has been in any way altered. ”

“ It is a common thing for us to send to the States for choice fruit, and the pomologist who receives our orders cuts off scions from the best fruit trees, and sends to us the summer, the fall and the winter apples, and we also get the pear, the plum, the cherry and the peach. We graft those various kinds of good fruit into our seedlings, and then the tree produces fruit according to the kind that was grafted into it, and in this way we procure good fruit. ”

“ In botany we have no such word as fruit. What you call fruit is in some trees the seed. In all species of nuts, for instance, the fruit and the seed are one and the same thing—that is to say, the kernel of the nut is both fruit and seed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now, I dearly love flowers and fruit, as I did the giver, but ten pounds of great, fat blackberries and an armful of sweet peas in a cramped stuffy Pullman caused my heart to resound in the minor chords. We rallied again and again to demolish the fruit as we voyaged, and sat with one foot on top of the other to avoid crushing the lovely pea blossoms as we fidgeted about, but the results of our efforts, messy fruit in hopeless abundance and withering leaves in dreary profusion, were discouraging. ”

“ Generally, every fruit, on ripening, and just before it falls, when it commences a more independent and individual existence, requiring less nourishment from any source, and that not so much from the earth through its stem as from the sun and air, acquires a bright tint. ”

“ Of fruit trees the apple, pear, plum, cherry, medlar, pomegranate, fig, quince, as well as two kinds of vine, grow wild; oranges, sweet and bitter, and other Aurantiaceae thrive well in gardens and plantations. ”

“ of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells. ”

“ Similar contrivances are observed in respect to a multitude of other plants.
Some seeds, as those of apples, peaches, plums, pears, cherries, currants, &c., are covered up in a fleshy or pulpy substance, which we call fruit. Here a double purpose is answered. The seeds are nicely taken care of, while mankind, with many other creatures, are provided with an ample store of delicious food. But lest the seed should be destroyed before it is brought to maturity, the fruit is very sour or bitter, until the seeds are quite ripe. ”

“ Fig. 796.—Three-celled capsule.
Fruit, in botany, is by no means limited to the juicy products of trees or plants which are so refreshing in the summer weather, and so acceptable in any form. In plant life the herb yielding seed produces a fruit equally with the orange or the apple. The fruit is the outcome of the varied processes of the plant. We may trace the plant from its tiny, sometimes very minute seed, through stem to flower and seed again. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Which is the better fruit, that which ripens early—which is, perhaps, favoured with some little forcing apparatus, or which, at least, is backed by the warmth of a southern wall; or that fruit of slower growth, as to which nature works without assistance, on which the sun operates in its own time,—or perhaps never operates if some ungenial shade has been allowed to interpose itself? The world, no doubt, is in favour of the forcing apparatus or of the southern wall. The fruit comes certainly, and at an assured period. It is spotless, speckless, and of a certain quality by no means despicable. ”

“ The tendency to fruitage may be met in different ways, a few of which will now be pointed out, and all planters are urged to observe and to practice some of these plans for reducing the exuberance of this kind of fruit. ”

“ In our oranges and grape-fruit and in a score of other fruits, the elimination of seeds is exactly one of the modifications we have bred and selected for, in order to make the fruits less troublesome in their eating. ”

“ You must boyle your Fruit, whether it be Apple, Cherry, Peach, Damson, Peare, Mulberry, or Codling, in faire water, and when they be boyled enough, put them into a bowle, and bruise them with a ladle, and when they be cold straine them, and put in red wine, or Clarret wine, and so season it with sugar, cinamon, and ginger. ”

“ The bread-fruit grows on a tree that is about the size of a middling oak: Its leaves are frequently a foot and an half long, of an oblong shape, deeply sinuated like those of the fig-tree, which they resemble in consistence and colour, and in the exuding of a white milky juice upon being broken. ”

“ The fruit that follows is yellow, being near ripe, and covered with a white freeze, or cotton; thick set on the younger, and growing less as they grow to be thorough ripe, bunched out oftentimes in some places, some being like an apple, and some a pear, of a strong heady scent, and not durable to keep, and is sour, harsh, and of an unpleasant taste to eat fresh; but being scalded, roasted, baked, or preserved, becomes more pleasant. ”

“ When I see the fruit vender on the street corner stamping his feet and beating his hands to keep them warm, and his naked apples lying exposed to the blasts, I wonder if they do not ache, too, to clap their hands and enliven their circulation. ”

“ To do it earlier, impairs the growth. Do it gradually, at two different times. Thinning the fruit is important, as tending to increase its size and flavor, and also to promote the longevity of the tree. ”

“ The bread-fruit-tree is especially interesting, with its deeply serrated, feathery leaves, and its melon-shaped fruit, weighing from three to four pounds. This the natives prepare for eating in many ways, and as the tree bears fruit continually for nine months of the year, it forms a most important food supply. ”