North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Betty Mayfield" <bmayfield@columbia-center.org>]

In the 1937 edition of the USDA Yearbook of Agriculture, Colville writes a
chapter telling of his early blueberry research in Greenfield, New
Hampshire. He also mentions later research aided by Elizabeth C. White in
New Jersey. There is a web page telling of her encouragement in finding
good blueberry varieties in Whitesbog, New Jersey, which were used for
breeding also.
<http://www.whitesbog.org/ellizabethwhite.html>

It's nice to see these early pioneers getting some recognition.

Betty


At 03:16 PM 8/23/2000 -0400, you wrote:
>Excerpted from the NH Weekly Market Bulletin...
>
>Date: Wednesday, August 16th.
>
>Story: All Cultivated Blueberries Trace Back to Greenfield, NH
>
>Every pint of cultivated blueberries harvested in the world contains a 
>little bit of New Hampshire....
>As the blueberry harvest for 2000 progresses, it's worth taking a look
>at the history of the domestication of the species, and there's nobody
>better to go to than Roger Swain, nationally acclaimed writer on the
>horticultural subjects and host of the popular PBS gardening series,
>Crockett's Victory Garden.
>Today's highbush blueberries trace their origins to an old farm in the
>NH town of Greenfield that was purchased in 1905 by a USDA botanist 
>named Frederick Vernon Coville to be a summer vacation retreat.
>Coville discovered the overgrown pastures on the farm were full of both
>highbush and lowbush blueberries which yielded plentiful fruit for his
>family to harvest. Swain writes.
>"Nobody contemplated growing them commercially until Coville began his
>famous experiments, discovering in short order that blueberries needed
>a highly acid soil to grow well. If you plant them in ordinary garden
>soil, they will yellow and die.
>"In the summer of 1908 he selected a wild highbush plant whose fruits 
>had a superior size and flavor, which he named "Brooks" after
>Fred Brooks, a neighbor on whose land the bush was growing, and a 
>lowbush he named "Russell" from Frank Russell's place on the other side
>of the road.
>"Back in Washington he crossed these two berries. They were in essence
>the Adam & Eve of the cultivated blueberry," Swain continues.
>"The first hybrid blueberry was named 'Pioneer.' It was introduced
>along with two others by the USDA in 1920, and the rest, as they say,
>is history."
>Today there are more than 150 varieties of commercially grown blue-
>berries. In the US more than 50,000 acres are in blueberry plantations,
>and the fruit is now grown around the world. Coville's experiments have
>generated value estimated at more than a billion dollars.
>And those blueberry genetics all trace back to a little hill farm in
>New Hampshire.
>
>Thanks to the, NH Weekly Market Bulletin.
>Steven H. Taylor Commissioner
>NH Dept. of Agriculture-Markets & Food.
>
>Funny most folks thought we only grew apples in NH.... : ]
>
>Best wishes,
>John
>Blueberry/NH
>
>
>
>
>

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