There are few native American Fruit trees .... not Apples, not Pears, or Peaches or Sweet Cheries, but the North American Plum is one and we here are at one of the fingers of it's northern extent. Maybe the Cayuga had them in their orchards along with the Pears and Apples and Peaches and so on introduced to them by the early Jesuit missionaries, but here are a couple thriving here on ?Dog's Plot through no intervention of our own and, since one can graft cultivated Plum types onto it, we will be doing that.
The floor of the woods around Dog's Plot is covered with Pear blossom petals, Pears are non- native invasive opportunists in abandoned farmland such as ours....was. We owe the Pears to Jesuit Missionaries who traveled with their gardens, and came here a couple of hundred years before the British, by way of Canada and set up missions near here. By the time the American Revolutionaries burnt down the Cayuga Village in Aurora and cut down their orchards, the Cayuga were living in wood-frame houses, just like the colonists, many of them practicing Catholics of a sort, and, in addition to their own Corn, Squash, and Beans, were growing many European crops, including Pears and Apples, neither of which are native, and maybe Broccoli for all we know .....but conspicuously, blessedly now, Pears. A great virtue of the Pear tree is that when you cut it down it sprouts form the stump and roots, matures, and goes to seed. The naturalized trees vary as seedling trees do, and they would mostly make a good Perry Wine or Brandy, but I graft cultivated types onto the saplings that come up on Dog's Plot.
