Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916

Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.8
Word count
1.4M words
Chapters
142

Tags

English Originals Natural Sciences Gardening KnowledgeChange of SeasonsFruit Trees and FlowersPlant GuideScience EnlightenmentNature ObservationIllustrated GuidePractical GuideRegional WritingMinnesota Flora

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 by A. W. LathamAuthor: ,Language: English, Class: SB: Agriculture: Plant culture, Release Date: Apr 15, 2006

Editor's review

This is a 1916 informational text on the trees, fruits and flowers of Minnesota, digitized by Project Gutenberg as a public-domain ebook and credited to A. W. Latham. Its core value is as a historical slice: readers can see how the early twentieth-century American Upper Midwest approached plant cultivation, orchard management and ornamental horticulture, including the varieties discussed at the time, cultivation experience and local observations. It is not a modern horticultural manual and lacks updated contemporary taxonomy and practical illustrations, but precisely for that reason it suits original research in horticultural history, regional agricultural history and plant culture studies, and lets today's gardeners sense the concerns of gardeners a century ago. Read it with a verifying mindset, comparing its advice with today's climate, varieties and growing conditions rather than applying it directly. It is suited to slow reading, excerpting and topic-based browsing rather than a single cover-to-cover read.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. First browse the table of contents or headings and jump between the three themes of trees, fruits and flowers rather than reading page by page in order.
  2. Note unfamiliar variety names and cultivation claims as you read, then compare them with modern sources to distinguish period experience from content that still applies.
  3. If using it for writing or a course, make excerpt cards organized as "local climate—variety selection—cultivation experience" for easy citation.
  4. Pay attention to the author's period perspective and regional limits, and avoid applying century-old advice directly to today's planting.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

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FAQ

Can this book be used as a modern gardening guide? It is not recommended as a direct modern how-to guide. It is historical material from 1916, and its varieties, climate judgments and cultivation advice carry the limits of its time and region and lack modern taxonomic updates. It is better read as historical source material for comparison, while specific planting decisions should still rely on contemporary local horticultural resources.
Is the content aimed at academic research or popular science? From the material, it is a compilation of regional plant and horticultural topics with the practical flavor of agricultural and horticultural writing of its time; it is neither a modern academic monograph nor an illustrated popular science book. Readers should treat it as a historical text to consult and excerpt by topic.
Is the original English edition difficult to read? The text is in English and covers plant names and cultivation terminology, so it may be harder going than ordinary narrative English. Readers with basic English reading ability who are willing to look up words can try it; if you only want an overview, you can first learn the background from modern horticultural sources and then read the chapters that interest you.
Does the ebook include illustrations or modern annotations? As is usual for Project Gutenberg public-domain ebooks, this book is primarily text; it is not guaranteed to include the original illustrations and usually has no modern editor's notes or introduction. If you need to identify plants or verify varieties while reading, it is advisable to have modern illustrated guides and taxonomic references at hand.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Project Gutenberg Author

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