Historically, three individuals who lived in the greater Los Angeles area stand out for their contributions to fruit growing in this part of the world. The first is Eliza Tibbets who planted a Washington navel orange in Riverside in 1873. Clonal propagation of navel oranges courtesy of buds from that tree led to a booming orange industry that made a significant contribution to the prosperity of this state in its early years. And, by the way, Elizs’s tree is still producing fruit at the corner of Arlington and Magnolia Avenues in Riverside.
The year 1911 was a pivotal one in establishing California’s other two signature tree crops. That was the year when Fred Popenoe, proprietor of the West India Gardens nursery in Altadena, sent an emissary to Mexico with the task of bringing back budwood cuttings for the purpose of grafting them onto avocado seedlings, with the hope that some would become commercially successful varieties. The strongest of those grafted plants was named Fuerte, the variety which became the foundation of California’s avocado industry and then its mainstay for years to come.
It was also in 1911 that Popenoe sent his two sons to the Middle East to import offshoots for date palm propagation. He even made sure one of his sons learned Arabic for the task at hand. After visiting Iraq and Oman, where some of the date orchards could only be reached by camel, the brothers shipped thousands of offshoots, harvested from the base of date palm trunks, back to the United States. They arrived in Galveston, Texas, where they were transported in 17 train cars to California and their final destination in the Coachella Valley.
The last in this trio of illustrious fruit-growing pioneers was Rudolf Hass. In 1925, Hass (rhymes with pass) was 33 years old and earning 25 cents an hour as a mail carrier in Pasadena. Originally from Wisconsin, he had decided to come West to seek his fortune. But Hass, who had a young family to support, was barely surviving on his post office paycheck when he saw a picture in a magazine of a tree with green fruit and dollar bills hanging from it. The picture, it turned out, was of an avocado tree and the accompanying article promoted the idea that growing its fruit could be a profitable enterprise. So Hass took every cent he had and, together with a loan from his sister, purchased a one-and-a-half acre plot of land in La Habra Heights. It was there that an avocado seedling he planted — and rejected attempts to be grafted with Fuerte budwood — eventually bore fruit with dark, pebbly skin that would immortalize the Hass name. Because it was difficult to collect royalties on all the subsequent clones propagated from his namesake tree, Hass earned only $4800 from his patented avocado variety and continued working for the post office until his dying day.
Enter Ronni Kern. If not the discoverer of a new crop for Southern California, she is slowly gaining recognition for bringing a formerly successful one back into the public eye by validating its suitability for cultivation in our area. Kern had grown up in Rhode Island where some of her fondest childhood memories revolved around dipping rhubarb stems in sugar for a tasty treat. Through research conducted on the subject around the time of the pandemic, Kern learned that Southern California was home to 1,000 acres of commercially grown rhubarb in the 1920s. Slowly, however, that acreage, including a last plot in Orange County, was sold to housing developers.
Kern also learned that Luther Burbank, the legendary plant breeder in Santa Rosa, had enthusiastically endorsed growing rhubarb (Rheum rhabarbarum) in California based on his success with varieties he had imported from New Zealand. Of course, Santa Rosa is in Northern California which is considerably chillier than Southern California and who’s to say if that rhubarb, which is generally considered in need of chilly winter weather to thrive, would grow as well in our warmer winter climate.
In any event, Kern was inspired to look for rhubarb varieties that had been successfully grown in New Zealand or Australia and she eventually came upon what she was seeking at Frencharvest.com.au. Here she found the story of the Clayton family, who had been growing rhubarb in Australia for four generations. It was just around four years ago that Kern began germinating rhubarb seeds that she ordered from the Claytons. She distributed some of the seeds to other members of the West Los Angeles chapter of the California Rare Fruit Growers as well. Together with them, she has had impressive success and has been harvesting tasty crops from plants growing in a morning sun exposure at the entrance to her Santa Monica home. You can purchase more than a dozen varieties of rhubarb seed at the French harvest site and most of them are available for $15 per hundred seeds. Kern cautions that some of the seeds are often crushed in transit but plenty will arrive intact and germinate with ease.
While the Success variety is more tender and sweeter than other varieties she has sampled, Kern recommends Tina Noble for producing a reliable crop. Red Surprise and Crimson Sunrise are other varieties worthy of her praise. Kern waters her rhubarb twice a week via drip irrigation, increasing the watering time as temperatures warm. As for soil preparation, she says “like any plant, it likes loose soil with a lot of organic content. My patch is where a birch tree lived for almost 100 years. When it died, I had it chipped and planted my seedlings in that chip-enriched soil. A lot of people add manure once a year. I use Bio-Live, a Down to Earth product, mixed with compost.” Kern sells rhubarb seedlings once a year and looks forward to doing so again next fall. By visiting the website of the local rare fruit growers chapter, where Kern serves as chair, at wla.crfg.org, you can stay abreast of this close-to-home rhubarb story as it unfolds. For rhubarb novices, you should know that the stems are cut into small pieces and softened by boiling or stewing with sugar, whereupon they are famously used for making pies. The word rhubarb comes from the Greek for “not around here” and alludes to the plant’s origins in cold climate regions of China and Mongolia.
California native of the week: Early blue or western dog violet (Viola adunca) flowers heavily from April until August and will bloom sporadically thereafter through the fall. It has a wide distribution and is impervious to cold as its habitat stretches up to Alaska. Dog violets can grow in sunny locations along the coast but will need some shade inland. Their need for moisture must be constantly addressed although they will withstand some dryness once established. Rhizomes allow dog violets to spread without human assistance while exploding seed capsules may result in new plants popping up a considerable distance from mother plants. In horticultural parlance, plants without fragrance in comparison to fragrant relatives carry the “dog” or “horse” epithet. Thus, this violet, lacking fragrance, is a “dog” compared to sweet violet (Viola odorata), its close relative. It is still attractive to a host of butterflies and moths, including Myrtle’s silverspot butterfly, an endangered species that would vanish in the absence of this native violet. Find its seeds and potted specimens for sale at Etsy.com.
Has anyone reading this had success growing rhubarb? If so, send an email about your experience to [email protected]. Your questions, comments, gardening challenges and successes are always welcome.
