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HISTORY OF HORTICULTURE IN MICHIGAN BY J. C. HOLIES, OF DETROIT
In the spring of 1833 I came to Michigan, then a territory, to select a place for establishing a nursery, and selected the above location. In the fall of 1833 my brother, Z. K. Lay, and myself came to Ypsilanti and brought with us about twenty five thousand cultivated trees, mostly of one season's growth, from the nursery of Asa Rowe, near Rochester, New! York. They consisted of one hundred and thirty varieties of apples, seventy five varieties of pears, forty of peaches, three of apricots, three of nectarines, twenty of cherries, twenty of plums; three of quinces, fifteen of strawberries, forty of grapes, native and foreign, together with currants, gooseberries, raspberries, &c, also a large assortment of ornamental shrubs, evergreens, roses, peonies, herbaceous, perennial flowering plants.
In the autumn of 1834 we erected a small greenhouse and filled it with plants. I think this was the first greenhouse built in Michigan. In the autumn of 1836 we erected a larger greenhouse and filled it with a choice collection of tropical plants. I do not know that there was any nursery of fruit trees in Michigan at the time we started ours on the plains, near
Ypsilanti.
The leading varieties of apples cultivated at that time were the Baldwin, Bellefleur, Tart Bough, Canada Red, Snow, Rhode Island Greening, Fall Pippin, Summer Pippin, Green Newton Pippin, Porter, Rambo, Golden Russet, Talman's Sweet, Green Sweet, Esopus Spitzenburg, Swaar and Twenty Ounce
Apple.
The leading varieties of pears were the Bartlett, Buffum, White Doyenne,
Flemish Beauty, Seckel and Stevens' Genesee.
Of peaches, the Early Anne, Sweetwater, Royal Kensington, Prince's Red Rareripe, Orange, Pound, Barnard, Early York, Malta and Red Cheek
Melocoton.
HORTICULTURE
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