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VOL. I., NO. 17.
PINEHURST, N. C, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1898.
PRICE THREE CENTS.
I
DM
NATIVE FRUITS.
Many of Fine Flavor Growing
Wild About Pinehurst.
The Prickly Pear and the Maypop Among
Those That Are Sure to Please.
An Abundance of Berries and Other Small
Fruits and Famous Scuppernong Grape.
In a former copy of this paper I began
to describe a home-grown dinner I
once feasted upon in our woods, by giv
ing the receipt of my piece ile resistance
the persimmon. I shall continue now
and give a short account of the sweets
with which 1 ended my meal. Now, the
prickly pear is not a pear, of course, as
little as the peanut is a nut, or even as
the rose has thorns, but this etymological
mistake ought not to prejudice us against
it. We might give it a trial, anyway.
In order to find it we go out in our "old
fields," where they are oldest, poorest
and most desolate. There we will see a
low-growing, succulent, sometimes deep
green, oftener shriveled, peculiarly
shaped plant a cactus covered at this
time of the year with pinkish or dull red
pear-shaped fruits about two inches long.
Let us pick one of these fruits and try it;
but look out that we keep proper distance
between us and the seemingly insignifi
cant hairs with which the plant is covered.
From that time we will like prickly
pears almost as well as persimmons.
As I said before, the plant is a cactus
( Opuntia vulgaris). It belongs to a very
large family, representatives of which
grow wild in America exclusively. No
other class of plants is so strict ly con
lined to a so closely circumscribed ter
ritory as the cacti. They are called very
properly "the humorists of the vegetable
kingdom," and whoever has had an op
portunity to study their strange, uncan
ny and often weird forms in the far West
or in collections only,will agree that that
name is well chosen. As a rule they
hive no leaves whatever, but all the
branches are leaf-like fiat expanded disks,
resemble immense candelabra, or stand
straight up against the horizon like enor
,n,)'is candles. These branches are
covered with bundles of prickles and
t'Uts of hair, in the midst of which the
'lowers appear. I have warned already
adnst the prickles, but these innocent
looking grayish hair bundles are so
vicious that it may not be amiss to con
sjfcr them a little closer. As we look at
e ilat branches of the opuntia we notice
spllflat tufts of simple flexible hair
!l 1 over, and among these are scattered
- bundles of somewhat longer prickles.
)!l our species they are very thin and
e-
brittle and are covered ail over with 1
clining diminutive hairs. Upon the least
touch these prickles will break off im
mediately and thanks to the reclining
hooks will fasten themselves into the
skin. Any endeavor to rub them away
will break them again and the rubbed off
particles will have been inserted into
other parts of the epidermis. There
they will remain and create a very an
noying itching for several hours or some
times even longer. The further west,
the more formidable are these prickles.
The Indians used to make arrows of some
of them and it is said that buffaloes run
ning into such cacti are instantly stabbed
and killed by the prickles. For the na
tives of South America these prickles
serve as needles, nails or for similar pur
poses. Nobody looking at these curiously
shaped plants will suppose that they
will produce flowers that are counted
equal if not superior to the most fa
mous orchids. Often they are super
naturally delicate; often again they
glow like fiery suns in the brightest
shades of red. Anyone who has seen a
"Queen of the Night' (Cereus grandi-
flarus ) in full bloom has witnessed a pic
ture he will treasure among his most cher
ished remembrances. Imagine an enor
mous, magnificent, cream-colored, deli
cately fragrant flower, with stamens that
seem to move gracefully a flower that
will open in the dark of the night on an in
significant ugly plant, and you will have
a faint idea of the looks of that queenly
cactus bloom. Our friend the prickly
pear will not stand back, and though its
yellow blossoms that open in the spring
are lacking the tropical splendor, a plant
fairly covered with flowers is a sight well
worth seeing. The fruits of the opuntia
ripen in late fall, have a peculiar acid
taste, and if fully ripe they will resem
ble somewhat a gooseberry or a currant.
In the West and the tropics the fruits are
counted among the most desirable delica
cies, and attain a much larger size than
our prickly pear.
The whole plant serves man in many
different ways. The starving traveler
through the deserts and sierras of the
West highly values the cacti because their
succullent branches are filled with a
watery acid liquid which has an enliven
ing and refreshing effect upon him. The
cacti are given the name of "springs of
the desert" on that account. The phy
sician claims that the juice has a healing
influence against a number of diseases.
The farmer of the Far West forms im
penetrable fences around his property
with them and uses their dead bodies in
the place of unobtainable firewood. The
most valuable employment, nowevei, uie
nmmtia finds in Mexico and South Ameri
ca, where enormous fields planted with the
Nopal or Tuna cactus (Opuntia cocninei
Ufera) serve as homes to the cochineal
insect, out of which the, cochineal car
mine is made. How immensely extended
these -fields must be, we can imagine
when we learn from Humboldt that it
takes 60,000 to 70,000 insects to obtain
one pound of the ready product, which
was sold in his time at $10 per pound.
He reports further that from one port of
Mexico alone cochineal valued at three
million dollars was exported annually.
While the cochineal industry is still im
portant the modern chemist can produce
a carmine that equals the true cochineal
by using coal tar and aniline. In South
America the young tips of the cochineal
cactus are regarded as a delicacy, their
taste resembling asparagus.
The opuntias are of a startling vitality
and if a cat is said to indulge in nine
lives a prickly pear deserves credit for at
least a hundred, To state an example, I
myself took a plant up with its roots last
summer, chopped it into a number of
pieces which I hung separately on a tree
for about three months. After that time
I let them drop on the sand and at once
every slip began to grow again just as
if nothing uncommon had happened.
This persistence makes the plant a dreaded
foe to the farmer upon whose fields it
has taken hold. He, of course, will care
nothing for its fair blossom or refreshing
fruit, but will burn up the whole crop of
it as thoroughly as possible. Whole
farms have been ruined, where the opun
tias were given free room to spread.
The landscape gardener will heartily
grant the opuntia its value as a pictur
esque plant in its way, and will find good
use for it in rockeries and arid places as
is shown by the accumulation of prickly
pears on the pile of resin in front of the
store at Pinehurst, or on the embankment
back of the Holly Inn. Our prickly pear
is quite hardy in New England.
PASSION FLOWER.
Along fences and over low shrubs
there grows a climber witli most be.iuti
ful pinkish and white flowers that open
in June. It has prettily lobed light
green foliage and later on in the fall it
bears an egg-shaped fruit of yellowish
green hue and sweetish taste. It is the
passion flower (Passiflra incamata) or
as we call it here, the maypop. It re
ceived its true name from the supersti
tious idea that in the several parts of its
flowers the martyrdom of Christ was
shown, while the five petals and five
sepals represented ten apostles. Peter
who denied and Judas who betrayed were
left out in the count.
Our maypop, fine as it is, is
but a faint representation of the
gorgeous splendor the passion flow
er develops in the western tropics
and in South America. There the
flowers often attain gigantic size, glare
in all shades of red and blue and have
the shapes of long tubes or wide saucers.
The fruits of at least one kind (Passijlora
macrocarpa) growing in South America
weigh from seven to eight pounds and
are of gourd-like oblong form. The
o-ranadilla of California and South Africa
are fruits of passion flowers of exquisite
flavor, while the curubas of South Ameri
ca fruits of nearly related plants (the
tacsonias) are said to be better yet.
SMALL FRUITS.
But rccenons a nos moutons from the
far away tropics to our piney woods. It
seems hard luck after our contemplation
of juicy cactus fruits, of granadilla,
curubas and similar unobtainable things
to find simple huckleberries, blackberries
and dewberries growing for us. How
ever, they make good eating, too, as all
of us well know. All these berries are
not strictly "chilluns of de Souf," but
flourish as well in the cold North.
While the wild berries do not attain any
larger size, our cultivated black and dew
berries produce enormous fruits of most
distinguished flavor. The growing of
these small fruits has developed into an
important industry in this vicinity dur
ing the last few years, and carloads of
the juicy berries are shipped every May
from Southern Pines to the market
centres of the North and West. They
are greatly appreciated there and gener
ally bring very satisfactory and often
even fancy prices. Canning factories
and wine dealers, too, take up large
quantities of berries to can or press them
into delicious blackberry juice or wine.
SCLPPEUNOXU.
The queen of all our native berry fruits,
however, is doubtlessly the scuppernong
grape. It does not grow spontaneously
just here but has to be planted. On
some locations of the lower districts of
this state, only, it will occur wild.
Here it is generally grown on arbors
or over trees, and one plant will
often cover a marvelous space. This
grape does not require any pruning or
other cultivation but when fall sets in,
the vines will just be covered with the
good-sized, single, greenish-yellow ber
ries. A stranger has first to educate his
taste before he likes them, but after the
acquaintance is made he will fairly revel
in them and pass the August and Sep
tember evenings on his piazza eating un
counted quantities of scuppernongs as
they are brought in by the natives. The
prejudice that the berries would not
stand shipment was disposed of last season
by the fact that a few crates of scup
pernongs sent from Pinehurst to New
York arrived there in faultless condition.
In several places, notably in Fayetteville,
N. C, scuppernongs are planted in enor
mous vineyards and the crop is worked
into a very famous beverage the scup
pernong wine.
VARIOUS GRAPES.
A few other grapes the fox grape
( Vitis labrusca) and the muscadine ( Vitis
vitlpina) are the best known of them
are actually growing wild around Pine
hurst, and are found rambling over tall
trees and shrubbery. They are the par
ents to many of our most desirable garden
varieties of grapes, and while they do
not attain the refined flavor of their
children they are by no means detestable,