History of Introduced Fruits into America - Native American Fruit Trees and Hybrid Fruit Tree Improv

Christopher Columbus in 1493 introduced citrus trees into America on the Island of Haiti, by planting the seed of the sweet orange tree, the sour orange, citron, lemon, lime, and pummelo fruit trees. Records show that citrus trees were well established by the Spanish in coastal South Carolina and Saint Augustine, Florida by the season 1563.

Historical English documents show that the Massachusetts Company in 1629 sent seeds of pear trees to plant and grow into fruit trees at the American colony ชื่อผลไม้ภาษาอังกฤษ located at Plymouth, Massachusetts. Captain John Smith reported in 1629 that seed-grown peach trees were growing in the American colony at Jamestown, Virginia. Apple trees were grown at Boston, Massachusetts, in 1629 by William Blackstone, an American colonist, and this practice of planting fruit trees rapidly spread among many other farmers there.

Other fruit tree seeds that were sent for colonist farmers to plant and grow were: cherry, peach, plum, filbert, apple, quince, and pomegranate, and according to documents, "they sprung up and flourished."

In 1707 historical Spanish mission documents show that fruit trees being grown by the Spanish-Americans were: oranges, fig trees, quince, pomegranates, peaches, apricots, apples, pear trees, mulberries, pecans and other trees.

General Oglethorpe, the initial governor of the colony of Georgia, settled at Fort Frederica, located at Saint Simons Island, Georgia, in 1733, the exact same date that the city of Savannah, Georgia was founded, with the appointed purpose of introducing fruit trees that could grow valuable food sources for the Georgia farmers. John Bartram, the famous explorer and father of William Bartram traveled extensively, after the Spanish abandoned their lands, to take an inventory of plants, trees, and vines that might be useful to farmers in the American colonies.

Henry Laurens, a President of the American Continental Congress from South Carolina, introduced: olives, limes, everbearing strawberry, red and raspberry for culture in the colonies and from the south of France, he imported and introduced apples, pears, plums, and the white Chasselas grape which bore abundantly.

The Black Mission fig tree was created famous when it had been found growing at a Spanish monastery in 1770.

The very first American fruit tree nursery was opened in 1737 by Robert Prince at Flushing, New York who sold fruit to President George Washington, who visited the nursery. Prince Nursery advertised "42 pear trees for sale" in 1771 and "33 forms of plums." 500 white mulberry trees, Morus Alba, and 1000 black mulberry trees, Morus nigra, were bought by Robert Prince in 1774. Robert Prince sold an extensive set of grafted peach trees to President Thomas Jefferson, to be planted at the Jefferson home orchard at Monticello, Virginia.

President Thomas Jefferson loved eating peaches, and he dried the peach slices into "peach chips" for his granddaughter and fermented fresh peaches into peach wine and distilled the mixture further into peach brandy. Jefferson also introduced the French combination of tea and fresh peach juice called pesche (peach) tea. 

William Bartram, in his book, Travels, wrote that he saw vigorous "two or three large apple trees" growing near Mobile, Alabama in 1773. These trees were likely grown from apple seed planted earlier by Indians, a present from earlier American colonial farmers. Bartram also reported "the wild crabapple," Pyrus coronaria, growing one of the apple trees, probably a pollinator. William Bartram wrote that he visited near Mobile Alabama the remains of "ancient habitations, being there an abundance of peach and fig trees laden up with fruit."

Bartram also reported that orange trees were grown and cultivated in large groves in 1790 and "3000 gallons of orange juice were exported." Bartram mistakenly thought that the extensive orchards of citrus trees growing in Florida were native trees, but they'd been planted by the Spanish explorers centuries before his book, Travels, was published.

Banana trees were introduced into America from Europe by the first Spanish explorers, and the plantain banana, that required cooking to eat, mutated from a natural hard fruit to a special, fresh eating, yellow banana in the season 1836. A Jamaican, Jean Francois Poujot, discovered this outstanding banana cultivar growing quite distinctively different in appearance from another plantain bananas planted in the field. Mr. Poujot multiplied this banana tree mutation into what can become the most popular and the most famous fruit tree in the world.

Perhaps the greatest developmental horticulturist and pomologist who ever lived was Luther Burbank, who settled in California and published a giant set of 10 volumes of books that outlined his fantastic experiments to improve fruit trees, berry plants, grapevines, nut trees, and many other perennials to include shade trees. Luther Burbank bred out the fuzz from peaches, which he stabilized into commercial nectarine trees.