North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Lee Reich <garden@leereich.com>]

Quoting from the black currant chapter in my book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden, 

The most widely grown clove currant was found in the wild by R. W. Crandall of Newton, Kansas, in 1888. ‘Crandall’, as it was called, had the virtue of bearing tasty fruits up to three-quarters of an inch in diameter. Unfortunately, many plants sold as ‘Crandall’ were seedlings, so plants were variable, leading some writers to report the flavor as good, others to report “tough skin, unpleasant flavor” (fruits on my plants have tender skins and a very nice flavor).

Lee Reich, PhD

http://leereich.com/

Books by Lee Reich:

The Pruning Book

Weedless Gardening

Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden

A Northeast Gardener's Year

On May 5, 2008, at 3:45 PM, Lon J. Rombough wrote:

The following story has been in POMONA in one form, but I'm repeating it because it bears on the Crandall black currant.

In the early 1960's in Salem, Oregon we had a neighbor with a currant bush next to the fence separating his property from my father's office.  We used the office property for garden as the house we lived in had no place for one.  The man's name was Leland Shinn.  I don't know where he got the currant.  The currant suckered under the fence and it was interesting enough that when we had a place to garden, I took some of the suckers  along.  I eventually identified it as Crandall.  

The 1937 USDA Yearbook of Agriculture indicated that when the original Crandall was selected, many nurseries grew seedlings of it, instead of rooting cuttings or selling divisions.  I have since seen the plant growing wild in Colorado that was very similar to that old "Crandall" that I had.

The point of this story is that in the 1980's I worked for Weeks' Berry Nursery in Salem, Oregon and took them several plants from my own bush of the apparent Crandall.  They propagated and sold them to nurseries and garden centers all over the U.S.  For all I know, they may still be selling them.  What's important is that there is a good likelihood that much  of Crandall in the trade is descended from this stock, so if you want to get separate selections to serve as pollinators, you may need to be sure of the source or you'll wind up with the same clone.

Ironically, I lost my plants of it a few years ago to a spray accident, trying to clean blackberries out of the patch.

-Lon Rombough

Grapes, writing, consulting, my book, The Grape Grower, at http://www.bunchgrapes.com  Winner of the Garden Writers Association "Best Talent in Writing" award for 2003. 

For even more grape lessons, go to  http://www.grapeschool.com

For all other things grape,   http://www.vitisearch.com

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