USPP1811P - hamilton - Google Patents

Description

Feb. 17, 1959 J. D. HAMILTON, 5 Plant Pat. 1,811

RED DELICIOUS APPLE TREE Filed Jan. 2, 1958 United States Patent RED DELICIOUS APPLE TREE John Duncan Hamilton, Sr., Wenatchee, Wash., assignor to The J. D. Hamilton Orchard Company, Incorporated, Wenatchee, Wasln, a corporation of Washington Application January 2, 1958, Serial No. 706,884

1 Claim. (CI. 47-62) The drawing is a painting showing in true color the ripe fruit which characterizes my new variety of apple tree.

The apple tree of my discovery originated as a sport found by applicant on a parent variety of Red Delicious Apple tree, said sport having been discovered and propagated by applicant on his property located near Chelan, in the State of Washington.

This new variety of Red Delicious Apple tree has been asexually reproduced and propagated by the process of bud-grafting from the original tree discovered by applicant onto young apple tree roots in applicants orchards near Manson and Chelan, Washington. In the spring, about a year and a half after the grafts were initially made, the first young trees were planted in applicants orchards. A number of those young trees survived, and in due course bore fruit identical with the parent tree. During succeeding seasons, buds from the young initially grafted trees were grafted onto young apple tree roots as in the initial grafting. The resulting young trees were duly planted and in turn bore fruit. These second generation trees, in turn, have been propagated by bud-grafting to produce a third generation. The treesof the second and third generations have borne fruit substantially identical with that of the original parent tree and the first generation of young trees propagated therefrom. The distinctive characteristics have thus been reproduced through successive generations, and are now accepted as fixed characteristics.

The new variety of Red Delicious Apple tree of my discovery is characterized by a number of distinctive features whereby it is distinguishable from Red vDelicious apples Plant Pat. 1,811 Patented Feb. 17, 1959 of the strains heretofore known and identified. The chief distinguishing characteristic is the color of the fruit. The fruit, as it ripens, becomes a very deep shade of ox-blood red or maroon. The color identified as Hays Maroon shown in Plate XIII in Color Standards and Nomenclature, published by Robert Ridgway in Washington, D. C., in 1912, most closely approximates the color of the fruit of my new variety of apple tree. The color appears solid over the entire surface of the apple, including the area inside the calyx, which in other Delicious apples is often yellow. This solid color distinguishes it from strains known commercially as the Starking, Red King (Pat. No. 1,411), Hi-Red and Early Red strains, which, so far as applicant is informed, except as indicated, are unpatented. The color is slightly shaded, but not striped. No stripes of any kind occur on the fruit of the apple tree of the present invention, not even the so called chimera-stripes of an accidental nature. The type of color and appear ance is best described as ranging from solid through shaded to blushed deep-red maroon. This characteristic shade and early coloring distinguishes applicants Red Delicious strain from the Richared (unpatented) and Royal Red (Pat. No. 1,278) strains.

The fruit of the tree of applicants invention is further characterized by its early coloring. In this regard, the fruit begins to color, quite early, usually by August 1st and reaches full color about two weeks earlier than other strains of solid color Red Delicious apples.

The fruit has the long, pointed shape typical of the Delicious-type of apple grown in the Chelan-Manson district of Washington. The fruit is square shouldered at the stem end, and has the five large pronounced points at.-

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