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• 1 2022-06-27T12:39:13-04:00 The Glorious (Fruit Tree) Glossary 117 plain 20012 2022-07-06T12:47:28-04:00

  First, let's prepare the soil.

  Trees are always in conversation with one another. We cannot know what the trees classified in the 1793 registers were saying (did they bicker? recite poetry?), how tall they were, or what they smelled like, but we know an astonishing amount about gardens that existed more than two hundred years ago. We know, for example, that they tended to be very small: most were less than a quarter of an acre. In fact, of the 732 plots for which we have information, the smallest was one-thousandth of an acre - a space that somehow managed to be big enough to host a fig, a walnut, two pears, and a mulberry tree.
  
  We also know that on average the gardens contained 28 trees (with counts ranging from 1 to 673). And because three of the registers recorded both the quantity and type of trees present in each garden (well, to be more precise, they recorded the quantity and type of fruit trees) we can piece together a tree-scape of 15,742 plants.
  
  The classification scheme at work in the registers is reproduced in this glossary. To give the entries depth, we have drawn on the work of Karl Gablits (1752-1821), a naturalist and geographer whose Physical description of Tavrida Province (1785) revealed the botanical world of Crimea to curious audiences in Russia and throughout Europe. To what extent do these sources complement one another? Consider this:
  • Gablits' study came on the heels of annexation (1783); the garden registers were compiled a decade later (1793).
  • Gablits' work was designed to make the Crimean tree-scape recognizable to the reading public (elites in St. Petersburg, members of the European scientific community, etc.); the registers were designed to secure property claims and profits for the imperial government.
  • Gablits' work is qualitative and textual; the registers are tabular and quantitative.
  To bring the colors and textures of Crimea's orchards into sharp relief, the glossary includes botanical illustrations. They are sourced, whenever possible, from the Атлас плодов (Atlas of Fruits) - a collection of chromolithograph illustrations of plant varieties published by the Imperial Russian Society of Fruit Cultivators in 1906.

  Now, let's dig in.

  The Glossary includes all 16 fruit-bearing trees named in the registers. Click a tree name from the list below to open a page chock-full of information. (The list follows Gablits' order of trees.)
  
  Or, click on any red dot to see which villages contained gardens with that tree type. Click a second red dot to see which villages had both trees in common. You can compare trees or villages, as you like. Drag the dots around to reveal connections, and simply click any dot again to "close" it. You can "open" as many as you like. Curious what this might look like?
• 1 2022-06-27T22:04:52-04:00 The Tasting Board 78 or, "The Atlas of Fruits" structured_gallery 2022-07-12T17:28:30-04:00

  Return to "Gardens of Crimea"

  Pomology - the science of growing fruit - was all the rage in the nineteenth century.

  Herbal dictionaries (like the one pictured at right, by the incomparable Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau), botanical collections, and pomological publications supported the work of horticulturalists across North American and Europe. Agricultural journals addressed the topic. Societies formed. Local knowledge flowed through an increasingly robust global network of correspondents.
  
  In Russia, the apex of this activity arrived in the form of the Atlas of Fruits, edited by Adam Stanislavovich Grebnitskii on behalf of the Imperial Russian Society of Fruit Cultivators. The society was established in 1857; Grebnitskii, who would become a leading botanist and horticulturalist, was born the same year. In 1900 he published an edition of Andrei Bolotov's classic "Illustration and description of all sorts of apples" and this work led into the production of the Atlas.
  
  The Atlas - think of it as a pomological encyclopedia - focuses on fruits grown for market (primarily apples and pears). It extends across 675 pages organized into four sections. It contains an index of fruits and an index of the individuals who contributed articles and commentaries.

  This gallery contains the 32 entries associated explicitly with Crimea. 

  In some cases, Crimea is mentioned in the opening paragraph as a primary cultivation site. In other cases it is mentioned in the commentaries submitted by society members throughout the empire. Correspondents from Simferopol, Odessa, and Moscow (where the biggest fruit markets were located) tend to be the best sources of information regarding Crimean fruits.
  
  The entries contain detailed descriptions of the features of each fruit (size, shape, flavor, details about skin, flesh, and pit) as well as information about the trees that bear them. The notes attached to each illustration in this project focus mainly on taste and market presence.
  
  Best of all? Keep an eye out for whether a particular fruit is "table-worthy" (sweet and eye-catching) or... well... best suited for candy or jam production. The commercial canning industry was taking off, doing its best to keep up with the sweet-tooths in Moscow and St. Petersburg! 
  
  Wait, who invented pomology?

  Option 1: Scroll through a timeline of fruit cultivation in Crimea

  The Atlas contains notes on when varieties were identified or introduced. The dates are often approximate, and we have adapted them as well as possible to give a rough sense of when fruits were identified as market-worthy. Remember, Crimea was (and is) full of local varieties that were less suitable for large-scale production - they are not represented in the Atlas (or on the timeline). 
  
  

  Option 2: Page through a flip-book

  Page through a collection of pear varieties or apple varieties.

  Option 3: Sample from the full tasting board

  Click on an image to learn more. Close the image to return to this page.