Hammer is one of the best native plums. On the Station grounds the
trees of this variety make the best orchard plants of any of the native
varieties, being large, vigorous, shapely and hardy, falling short only
in being a little uncertain in bearing. The fruits are good in quality,
handsome in appearance and keep and ship well, but crack badly in
unfavorable weather and, according to some writers, are quite subject to
brown-rot. Hammer extends the season of the Americana plums considerably,
for though a hybrid, it may best be ranked with the Americanas, and is
well worth planting in home orchards in New York, where the native plums
are too seldom found; in particular, this variety can be recommended for
the colder parts of this State where Domestica and Insititia plums are
not hardy.
Hammer is one of H. A. Terry’s numerous productions and was grown from a
seed of the Miner evidently fertilized by an Americana. The blood of the
latter is shown by its hardiness and its broad, Americana-like foliage.
The variety first fruited in 1888 and was sent out in 1892.
Tree very large, vigorous, round-topped, widely spreading,
hardy at Geneva, an uncertain bearer; trunk and larger limbs
shaggy; branches long, rough, brash, thorny, dark ash-gray,
with many, large lenticels; branchlets thick, very long,
with long internodes, green changing to dull reddish-brown,
glabrous, with raised lenticels of medium number and size;
leaf-buds small, short, obtuse, plump, free.
Leaves folded upward, oval or slightly obovate, two and
one-eighth inches wide, four inches long, thin; upper surface
somewhat rugose; lower surface pale green, very lightly
pubescent along the midrib; apex taper-pointed, base obtuse,
often unsymmetrical, margin coarsely and doubly serrate,
eglandular; petiole three-quarters inch long, sparingly
pubescent along one side, tinged red, glandless or with from
one to four small, globose, greenish-brown glands on the stalk.
Blooming season medium to late, long; flowers appearing after
the leaves, fifteen-sixteenths inch across, white, with a
disagreeable odor; borne in clusters on lateral buds and spurs,
in twos or in threes; pedicels five-eighths inch in length,
slender, glabrous, greenish; calyx-tube green, campanulate,
glabrous; calyx-lobes narrow, obtuse, thinly pubescent within,
glandular-serrate and with marginal hairs, somewhat reflexed;
petals ovate or oval, irregularly crenate, tapering below
into claws of medium length and breadth; anthers yellowish;
filaments seven-sixteenths inch in length; pistil glabrous,
equal to or shorter than the stamens in length.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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