Sherman, Texas
Sherman is a U. S. city in and the county seat of Grayson County, Texas. The city's population in 2010 was 38,521, it is one of the two principal cities in the Sherman–Denison Metropolitan Statistical Area, it is part of the Texoma region of North Texas and southern Oklahoma. Sherman was named after a hero of the Texas Revolution; the community was designated as the county seat by the act of the Texas legislature which created Grayson County on March 17, 1846. In 1847, a post office began operation. Sherman was located at the center of the county, but in 1848 it was moved about 3 miles east to its current location. By 1850, Sherman had become an incorporated town under Texas law, it had become a stop on the Butterfield Overland Mail route through Texas. By 1852, Sherman had a population of 300, it consisted of a public square with a log court house, several businesses, a district clerk's office, a church along the east side of the square. During the 1850s and 1860s, Sherman continued to participate in regional politics.
The first flour mill was built in 1861. Because many residents of North Texas had migrated from the Upper South and only a low percentage were slaveholders, there was considerable Unionist sentiment in the region. E. Junius Foster, the publisher of Sherman's anti-secessionist Whig newspaper, the Patriot, circulated a petition to establish North Texas as an independent free state. Following Confederate passage of a conscription law, there was resistance in North Texas to conscription as large slaveholders were exempted. Slaveholders in nearby Cooke County feared that some Unionists might ally with others, in October 1862, state militia captured and arrested 150-200 suspects from the area on suspicion of insurrection. In the Great Hanging at Gainesville, the county seat, 42 men were murdered hanged by a mob, with several men sentenced by a so-called "Citizens' Court". While the court was operating, Col. William Young had been killed by unknown assailants, he had organized the jury for the court and by the time of his death, it was responsible for more than 20 deaths.
After Foster "applauded" Young's death in his newspaper, he was murdered by Capt. Jim Young, son of the colonel. Anti-Unionist state militia rounded up more suspects in Sherman, but Confederate Brigadier General James W. Throckmorton intervened, saving all but five men, lynched. During and after the Civil War, north Texas outlaw bands led by Jesse James and William Quantrill were seen in Sherman. Years James spent at least part of his honeymoon in Sherman, where he was photographed on horseback. Education developed in north Texas during this time; the Sherman Male and Female High School started accepting students during 1866, under the patronage of the North Texas Methodist Conference. It was one of three private schools in Sherman at the time; this school operated under several names until 1935. It lost Methodist support, after the opening of Southern Methodist University in 1915 in Dallas. In 1876, Austin College, the oldest continuously operating college in Texas, relocated from Huntsville to Sherman.
Sherman Female Institute known as Mary Nash College, opened in 1877 under sponsorship of the Baptist Church. It continued operation until 1901. Carr–Burdette College, a women's college affiliated with the Disciples of Christ, operated there from 1894 to 1929. Jews have had a long history in Sherman, settling in the area and meeting for the High Holidays by 1873. While there was general depression and lawlessness during Reconstruction, Sherman remained commercially active. During the 1870s Sherman's population reached 6,000. In 1875, two fires destroyed many buildings east of the square, they were rebuilt with superior materials. This included a new Grayson County Courthouse built in 1876. In 1879, the Old Settlers' Association of North Texas met near Sherman; the Old Settlers' Association of Grayson County incorporated in 1898 and completed purchase of Old Settlers' Park in 1909. On May 15, 1896, a tornado measuring F5 on the Fujita scale struck Sherman; the tornado had a damage path 400 yards wide and 28 miles long, killing 73 people and injuring 200.
About 50 homes were destroyed, with 20 of them being obliterated. In 1901 the first electric "Interurban" railway in Texas, the Denison and Sherman Railway, was completed between Sherman and Denison; the Texas Traction Company completed a 65-mile interurban between Sherman and Dallas in 1908, it purchased the Denison and Sherman Railway in 1911. Through the connections in Dallas and Denison, it was possible to travel to the Texas destinations of Terrell, Waco, Fort Worth and Denton, as well as to Durant, Oklahoma, by interurban railways. One popular destination on the Interurban between Sherman and Denison was Wood Lake Park, a private amusement park at the time. By 1948, all interurban rail service in Texas had been discontinued. During the Sherman Riot of May 9, 1930, Sherman's elegant 1876 courthouse was burned down by arson during the trial of an African American man, George Hughes. During the riot, Hughes was died in the fire. After rioters retrieved Hughes' body from the vault, it was dragged behind a car and set afire.
The black business section was destroyed. Texas Ranger Frank Hamer was in Sherman during this riot and reported the situation to Texas Governor Dan Moody. Governor Moody sent National Guard troops to Sherman on May 9 and more on May 10 to control
ZIP Code
A ZIP Code is a postal code used by the United States Postal Service in a system it introduced in 1963. The term ZIP is an acronym for Zone Improvement Plan; the basic format consists of five digits. An extended ZIP+4 code was introduced in 1983 which includes the five digits of the ZIP Code, followed by a hyphen and four additional digits that reference a more specific location; the term ZIP Code was registered as a servicemark by the U. S. Postal Service, but its registration has since expired; the early history and context of postal codes began with postal district/zone numbers. The United States Post Office Department implemented postal zones for numerous large cities in 1943. For example: The "16" was the number of the postal zone in the specific city. By the early 1960s, a more organized system was needed, non-mandatory five-digit ZIP Codes were introduced nationwide on July 1, 1963; the USPOD issued its Publication 59: Abbreviations for Use with ZIP Code on October 1, 1963, with the list of two-letter state abbreviations which are written with both letters capitalized.
An earlier list in June had proposed capitalized abbreviations ranging from two to five letters. According to Publication 59, the two-letter standard was "based on a maximum 23-position line, because this has been found to be the most universally acceptable line capacity basis for major addressing systems", which would be exceeded by a long city name combined with a multi-letter state abbreviation, such as "Sacramento, Calif." along with the ZIP Code. The abbreviations have remained unchanged, with the exception of Nebraska, changed from NB to NE in 1969 at the request of the Canadian postal administration, to avoid confusion with the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Robert Moon is considered the father of the ZIP Code; the post office only credits Moon with the first three digits of the ZIP Code, which describe the sectional center facility or "sec center." An SCF is a central mail processing facility with those three digits. The fourth and fifth digits, which give a more precise locale within the SCF, were proposed by Henry Bentley Hahn Sr.
The SCF sorts mail to all post offices with those first three digits in their ZIP Codes. The mail is sorted according to the final two digits of the ZIP Code and sent to the corresponding post offices in the early morning. Sectional centers do not deliver mail and are not open to the public, most of their employees work the night shift. Mail picked up at post offices is sent to their own SCF in the afternoon, where the mail is sorted overnight. In the case of large cities, the last two digits coincide with the older postal zone number thus: In 1967, these became mandatory for second- and third-class bulk mailers, the system was soon adopted generally; the United States Post Office used a cartoon character, which it called Mr. ZIP, to promote the use of the ZIP Code, he was depicted with a legend such as "USE ZIP CODE" in the selvage of panes of postage stamps or on the covers of booklet panes of stamps. In 1971 Elmira Star-Gazette reporter Dick Baumbach found out the White House was not using a ZIP Code on its envelopes.
Herb Klein, special assistant to President Nixon, responded by saying the next printing of envelopes would include the ZIP Code. In 1983, the U. S. Postal Service introduced an expanded ZIP Code system that it called ZIP+4 called "plus-four codes", "add-on codes", or "add-ons". A ZIP+4 Code uses the basic five-digit code plus four additional digits to identify a geographic segment within the five-digit delivery area, such as a city block, a group of apartments, an individual high-volume receiver of mail, a post office box, or any other unit that could use an extra identifier to aid in efficient mail sorting and delivery. However, initial attempts to promote universal use of the new format met with public resistance and today the plus-four code is not required. In general, mail is read by a multiline optical character reader that instantly determines the correct ZIP+4 Code from the address—along with the more specific delivery point—and sprays an Intelligent Mail barcode on the face of the mail piece that corresponds to 11 digits—nine for the ZIP+4 Code and two for the delivery point.
For Post Office Boxes, the general rule is. The add-on code is one of the following: the last four digits of the box number, zero plus the last three digits of the box number, or, if the box number consists of fewer than four digits, enough zeros are attached to the front of the box number to produce a four-digit number. However, there is no uniform rule, so the ZIP+4 Code must be looked up individually for each box; the ZIP Code is translated into an Intelligent Mail barcode, printed on the mailpiece to make it easier for automated machines to sort. A barcode can be printed by the sender, it is better to let the post office put one on. In general, the post office uses OCR technology, though in some cases a human might have to read and enter the address. Customers who send bulk mail can get a discount on postage if they have printed the barcode themselves and have presorted the mai
Metropolitan area
A metropolitan area, sometimes referred to as a metro area or commuter belt, is a region consisting of a densely populated urban core and its less-populated surrounding territories, sharing industry and housing. A metro area comprises multiple jurisdictions and municipalities: neighborhoods, boroughs, towns, suburbs, districts and nations like the eurodistricts; as social and political institutions have changed, metropolitan areas have become key economic and political regions. Metropolitan areas include one or more urban areas, as well as satellite cities and intervening rural areas that are socioeconomically tied to the urban core measured by commuting patterns. In the United States, the concept of the metropolitan statistical area has gained prominence. Metropolitan areas may themselves be part of larger megalopolises. For urban centres outside metropolitan areas, that generate a similar attraction at smaller scale for their region, the concept of the regiopolis and regiopolitan area or regio was introduced by German professors in 2006.
In the United States, the term micropolitan statistical area is used. A metropolitan area combines an urban agglomeration with zones not urban in character, but bound to the center by employment or other commerce; these outlying zones are sometimes known as a commuter belt, may extend well beyond the urban zone, to other political entities. For example, New York on Long Island is considered part of the New York metropolitan area. In practice, the parameters of metropolitan areas, in both official and unofficial usage, are not consistent. Sometimes they are little different from an urban area, in other cases they cover broad regions that have little relation to a single urban settlement. Population figures given for one metro area can vary by millions. There has been no significant change in the basic concept of metropolitan areas since its adoption in 1950, although significant changes in geographic distributions have occurred since and more are expected; because of the fluidity of the term "metropolitan statistical area," the term used colloquially is more "metro service area," "metro area," or "MSA" taken to include not only a city, but surrounding suburban and sometimes rural areas, all which it is presumed to influence.
A polycentric metropolitan area contains multiple urban agglomerations not connected by continuous development. In defining a metropolitan area, it is sufficient that a city or cities form a nucleus with which other areas have a high degree of integration. See the many lists of metropolitan areas itemized at § Lists of metropolitan areas; the Australian Bureau of Statistics defines Greater Capital City Statistical Areas as the areas of functional extent of the seven state capitals and the Australian Capital Territory. GCCSAs replaced "Statistical Divisions" used until 2011. In Brazil, metropolitan areas are called "metropolitan regions"; each State defines its own legislation for the creation and organization of a metropolitan region. The creation of a metropolitan region is not intended for any statistical purpose, although the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics uses them in its reports, their main purpose is to allow for a better management of public policies of common interest to all cities involved.
They don't have political, electoral or jurisdictional power whatsoever, so citizens living in a metropolitan region do not elect representatives for them. Statistics Canada defines a census metropolitan area as an area consisting of one or more adjacent municipalities situated around a major urban core. To form a CMA, the metropolitan area must have a population of at least 100,000, at least half within the urban core. To be included in the CMA, adjacent municipalities must have a high degree of integration with the core, as measured by commuter flows derived from census data. In Chinese, there used to be no clear distinction between "megalopolis" and "metropolitan area" until National Development and Reform Commission issued Guidelines on the Cultivation and Development of Modern Metropolitan Areas on Feb 19, 2019, in which a metropolitan area was defined as "an urbanized spatial form in a megalopolis dominated by supercity or megacity, or a large metropolis playing a leading part, within the basic range of 1-hour commute area."
The European Union's statistical agency, has created a concept named Larger Urban Zone. The LUZ represents an attempt at a harmonised definition of the metropolitan area, the goal was to have an area from a significant share of the resident commute into the city, a concept known as the "functional urban region". France's national statistics institute, the INSEE, names an urban core and its surrounding area of commuter influence an aire urbaine; this statistical method applies to agglomerations of all sizes, but the INSEE sometimes uses the term aire métropolitaine to refer to France's largest aires urbaines. In German definition, metropolian areas are eleven most densely populated areas in the Federal Republic of Germany, they comprise the major German cities and their surrounding catchment areas and form the political and cultural centres of the country. For urban centres outside metropolitan areas, that generate a similar attraction at smaller scale for their region, the concept of the Regiopolis and regiopolitan area or regio was introduced by German professors in 2006.
In India, a metropolitan city is defin
Doc Holliday
John Henry "Doc" Holliday was an American gambler and dentist, a good friend of Wyatt Earp. He is best known for his role in the events leading up to and following the Gunfight at the O. K. Corral, he developed a reputation as having killed more than a dozen men in various altercations, but modern researchers have concluded that, contrary to popular myth-making, Holliday killed only one or two men. Holliday's colorful life and character have been depicted in many books and portrayed by well-known actors in numerous movies and television series. At age 21 Holliday earned a degree in dentistry from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery, he set up practice in Atlanta, but he was soon diagnosed with tuberculosis, the same disease that had claimed his mother when he was 15, having acquired it while tending to her needs while she was still in the contagious phase of the illness. Hoping the climate in the American Southwest would ease his symptoms, he moved to that region and became a gambler, a reputable profession in Arizona in that day.
Over the next few years, he had several confrontations. While in Texas, he saved Wyatt Earp's life and they became friends. In 1879, he joined Earp in Las Vegas, New Mexico and rode with him to Prescott and Tombstone. In Tombstone, local members of the outlaw Cochise County Cowboys threatened him and spread rumors that he had robbed a stage. On October 26, 1881, Holliday was deputized by Tombstone city marshal Virgil Earp; the lawmen attempted to disarm five members of the Cowboys near the O. K. Corral on the west side of town, which resulted in the 30-second shootout. Following the Tombstone shootout, Virgil Earp was maimed by hidden assailants and Morgan Earp was murdered. Unable to obtain justice in the courts, Wyatt Earp took matters into his own hands; as the appointed deputy U. S. marshal, Earp formally deputized Holliday, among others. As a federal posse, they pursued, they found Frank Stilwell lying in wait as Virgil killed him. The local sheriff issued a warrant for the arrest of five members of the federal posse, including Holliday.
The federal posse killed three other Cowboys during late March and early April 1882, before they rode to the New Mexico Territory. Wyatt Earp learned of an extradition request for Holliday and arranged for Colorado Governor Frederick Walker Pitkin to deny Holliday's extradition. Holliday spent the few remaining years of his life in Colorado, died of tuberculosis in his bed at the Glenwood Springs Hotel at age 36. Holliday was born in Georgia, to Henry Burroughs Holliday and Alice Jane Holliday, he was of Scottish ancestry. His father served in the Mexican–American War and the Civil War; when the Mexican–American War ended, Henry brought home an adopted son named Francisco and taught Holliday to shoot. Holliday was baptized at the First Presbyterian Church of Griffin in 1852. In 1864, his family moved to Valdosta, where his mother died of tuberculosis on September 16, 1866; the same disease killed his adopted brother. Three months after his wife's death, his father married Rachel Martin. Holliday attended the Valdosta Institute, where he received a classical education in rhetoric, mathematics and languages—principally Latin, but some French and Ancient Greek.
In 1870, 19-year-old Holliday left home for Philadelphia. On March 1, 1872, at age 20, he received his Doctor of Dental Surgery degree from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery. Holliday graduated five months before his 21st birthday, so the school held his degree until he turned 21, the minimum age required to practice dentistry. Holliday moved to St. Louis, Missouri, so he could work as an assistant for a classmate, A. Jameson Fuches, Jr. Less than four months at the end of July, he relocated to Atlanta, where he joined a dental practice, he lived with his family so he could begin to build up his dental practice. A few weeks before Holliday's birthday, dentist Arthur C. Ford advertised in the Atlanta papers that Holliday would substitute for him while he was attending dental meetings. There are some reports that Holliday was involved in a shooting on the Withlacoochee River, Georgia, in 1873; the earliest mention is by Bat Masterson in a profile of Doc he wrote in 1907. According to that story, when Holliday was 22, he went with some friends to a swimming hole on his uncles' land, where they discovered it was occupied by a group of African-American youth.
Susan McKey Thomas, the daughter of Doc's uncle Thomas S. McKey, said her father told her: "'They rode in on the Negroes in swimming in a part of the Withlacoochee River that "Doc" and his friends had cleared to be used as their swimming hole; the presence of the Negroes in their swimming hole enraged "Doc," and he drew his pistol-shooting over their heads to scare them off. Papa said, "He shot over their heads!"'" According to Masterson's story, Holliday leveled a double-barreled shotgun at them, when they exited the swimming hole, killed two of the youths. Some family members thought it best that Holliday leave the state, but other members of Holliday's family dispute those accounts. Researcher and historian Gary Roberts searched for contemporary evidence of the event for many months without success. Earp author Allen Barra searched for evidence corroborating the incident and found no credibility in Masterson's story. Shortly after beginning his dental practice, Holliday was diagnosed with tuberculosis.
He was given only a few months to live, but was told that a drier and warmer climate might slow the deterioration of his health. Afte
Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad
The Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railway is a former Class I railroad company in the United States, with its last headquarters in Dallas. Established in 1865 under the name Union Pacific Railway, Southern Branch, it came to serve an extensive rail network in Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri. In 1989, it merged with the Missouri Pacific Railroad. In its earliest days, the MKT was referred to as "the K-T", its stock exchange symbol; the Katy was the first railroad to enter Texas from the north. The Katy's core system would link Parsons, Fort Scott, Junction City and Kansas City, Kansas. An additional mainline between Fort Worth and Salina, was added in the 1980s after the collapse of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad. At the end of 1970, MKT operated 3,765 miles of track; the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway was incorporated in May 1870 in Kansas. The company received government land grants to build a supply railroad connecting the frontier military bases of Fort Riley, Fort Gibson and Fort Scott.
Upon its incorporation, the MK&T acquired the Union Pacific Railway, Southern Branch and its 182 miles of track in Kansas. At the time of its 1870 incorporation, consolidations were made with the Labette & Sedalia Railway Co. and the Neosho Valley & Holden Railway Co.. Combined with the UP Southern Branch, these small, newly built railroads formed the foundation on which the Katy would build. In the late 1890s, a subsidiary once called the Missouri-Kansas-Eastern railroad was established to run from existing MKT rails approaching Kansas City into St Louis via the Missouri River basin. Congress had passed acts promising land grants to the first railroad to reach the Kansas border via the Neosho Valley; the Katy portion of the former UP Southern Branch, which had begun building from Fort Riley just north of Junction City, was in a heated competition for the prize. On June 6, 1870, Katy workers laid the first rails across the Kansas border. Congress' promised land grants were never made, as the courts overturned the grants because the land was in Indian Territory and was the property of the Indian tribes.
The Katy continued its push southward, laying track through the territory and reaching Texas in 1872, acquiring other small railroads while extending its reach to Dallas in 1886, Waco in 1888, Houston in April 1893 and to San Antonio in 1901. When the Katy railroad reached Houston, its joint ownership of the Galveston and Henderson Railroad gave it immediate access to the Port of Galveston and its ocean-going shipping on the Gulf of Mexico. In 1896, as a publicity stunt set up by William Crush, the Katy crashed two locomotives head-on, pulling loaded trains, at a site that came to be known thereafter as Crush, Texas; the collision occurred before more than 40,000 spectators, three of whom died by debris from the exploding boilers. The ragtime composer and pianist Scott Joplin, performing in the area at the time, commemorated the event in his song "The Great Crush Collision March". In 1911, the MKT purchased railroad lines held by the industrialist Joseph A. Kemp of Wichita Falls, Texas; these included the Wichita Falls Railway, an 18-mile line between Wichita Falls and Henrietta in Clay County.
Kemp's brother-in-law, Frank Kell, was a partner in some of these lines, including the Wichita Falls and Southern Railroad, which remained a Kemp-Kell property until it was abandoned in 1954. In 1923, the Katy acquired another Kemp/Kell property, the Wichita Falls and Northwestern Railway, which extended from Wichita Falls to Forgan in the Oklahoma Panhandle; the route to Forgan, the Northwestern District of the MKT Railway, was abandoned in January 1973, Altus, became the northern terminus of the branch. The remaining 77-mile link between Wichita Falls and Altus was absorbed in 1991 by the Wichita and Jackson Railway; the Katy acquired the Beaver and Englewood Railroad in 1931. This trackage, like the length between Altus and Forgan, was abandoned in January 1973. From 1915 until January 4, 1959, the Katy, in a joint venture with the St. Louis – San Francisco Railway, operated the Texas Special from St. Louis to Dallas, Ft. Worth, San Antonio, it sported rail cars with names including Sam Houston, Stephen F. Austin, David Crockett, James Bowie after prominent men of the state.
On August 12, 1988 the Missouri Pacific Railroad and its owner, Union Pacific Corporation, purchased the Katy with approval from the Interstate Commerce Commission. The merging and restructuring of railroads during the 1980s had cost the Katy much overhead traffic, it had been seeking a merger partner. On December 1, 1989 the Katy was merged into the MoPac, now part of the Union Pacific Railroad system. In the "rails to trails" program, much of the
Horticulture
Horticulture has been defined as the culture of plants for food and beauty. A more precise definition can be given as "The cultivation and sale of fruits, vegetables, ornamental plants, flowers as well as many additional services", it includes plant conservation, landscape restoration, soil management and garden design and maintenance, arboriculture. In contrast to agriculture, horticulture does not include large-scale crop production or animal husbandry. Horticulturists apply their knowledge and technologies used to grow intensively produced plants for human food and non-food uses and for personal or social needs, their work involves plant propagation and cultivation with the aim of improving plant growth, quality, nutritional value, resistance to insects and environmental stresses. They work as gardeners, therapists and technical advisors in the food and non-food sectors of horticulture. Horticulture refers to the growing of plants in a field or garden; the word horticulture is modeled after agriculture, comes from the Latin hortus "garden" and cultūra "cultivation", from cultus, the perfect passive participle of the verb colō "I cultivate".
Hortus is cognate with the native English word yard and the borrowed word garden. The major areas of Horticulture include: Arboriculture is the study of, the selection, plant and removal of, individual trees, shrubs and other perennial woody plants. Turf management includes all aspects of the production and maintenance of turf grass for sports, leisure use or amenity use. Floriculture includes the marketing of floral crops. Study of flower cultivation. Landscape horticulture includes the production and maintenance of landscape plants. Olericulture includes the marketing of vegetables. Pomology includes the marketing of pome fruits. Viticulture includes the marketing of grapes. Oenology includes all aspects of winemaking. Postharvest physiology involves maintaining the quality of and preventing the spoilage of plants and animals. Horticulture has a long history; the study and science of horticulture dates all the way back to the times of Cyrus the Great of ancient Persia, has been going on since, with present-day horticulturists such as Freeman S. Howlett and Luther Burbank.
The practice of horticulture can be retraced for many thousands of years. The cultivation of taro and yam in Papua New Guinea dates back to at least 6950–6440 cal BP; the origins of horticulture lie in the transition of human communities from nomadic hunter-gatherers to sedentary or semi-sedentary horticultural communities, cultivating a variety of crops on a small scale around their dwellings or in specialized plots visited during migrations from one area to the next. In the Pre-Columbian Amazon Rainforest, natives are believed to have used biochar to enhance soil productivity by smoldering plant waste. European settlers called it Terra Preta de Indio. In forest areas such horticulture is carried out in swiddens. A characteristic of horticultural communities is that useful trees are to be found planted around communities or specially retained from the natural ecosystem. Horticulture differs from agriculture in two ways. First, it encompasses a smaller scale of cultivation, using small plots of mixed crops rather than large fields of single crops.
Secondly, horticultural cultivations include a wide variety of crops including fruit trees with ground crops. Agricultural cultivations however as a rule focus on one primary crop. In pre-contact North America the semi-sedentary horticultural communities of the Eastern Woodlands contrasted markedly with the mobile hunter-gatherer communities of the Plains people. In Central America, Maya horticulture involved augmentation of the forest with useful trees such as papaya, cacao and sapodilla. In the cornfields, multiple crops were grown such as beans, squash and chilli peppers, in some cultures tended or by women. Since 1804 The Royal Horticultural Society, a UK charity, leads on the encouragement and improvement of the science and practice of horticulture in all its branches and shares this knowledge through its community and learning programmes, world class gardens and shows; the oldest Horticultural society in the world, founded in 1768, is the Ancient Society of York Florists. They still have four shows a year in York, UK.
The professional body representing horticulturists in Great Britain and Ireland is the Institute of Horticulture. The IOH has an international branch for members outside of these islands; the International Society for Horticultural Science promotes and encourages research and education in all branches of horticultural science. The American Society of Horticultural Science promotes and encourages research and education in all branches of horticultural science in the Americas; the Australian Society of Horticultural Science was established in 1990 as a professional society for the promotion and enhancement of Australian horticultural science and industry. The National Junior Horticultural Association was established in 1934 and was the first organisation in the world dedicated to youth and horticulture. NJHA programs are designed to help young people obtain a basic understanding of, develop skills in, the ever-expanding art and science of horticulture; the New Zealand Horticulture Institute. The Global Horticulture Initiative (GlobalHo
Phylloxera
Grape phylloxera. These microscopic, pale yellow sap-sucking insects, related to aphids, feed on the roots and leaves of grapevines. On Vitis vinifera, the resulting deformations on roots and secondary fungal infections can girdle roots cutting off the flow of nutrients and water to the vine. Nymphs form protective galls on the undersides of grapevine leaves of some Vitis species and overwinter under the bark or on the vine roots. American vine species have evolved to have several natural defenses against phylloxera; the roots of the American vines exude a sticky sap that repels the nymph form when it tries to feed from the vine by clogging its mouth. If the nymph is successful in creating a feeding wound on the root, American vines respond by forming a protective layer of tissue to cover the wound and protect it from secondary bacterial or fungal infections. There is no cure for phylloxera and unlike other grape diseases such as powdery or downy mildew, there is no chemical control or response.
The only successful means of controlling phylloxera has been the grafting of phylloxera-resistant American rootstock to more susceptible European vinifera vines. The phylloxera aphid has a complex life-cycle of up to 18 stages, that can be divided into four principal forms: sexual form, leaf form, root form, winged form; the sexual form begins with male and female eggs laid on the underside of young grape leaves. The male and female at this stage lack a digestive system, once hatched, they mate and die. Before the female dies, she lays one winter egg in the bark of the vine's trunk; this egg develops into the leaf form. This nymph, the fundatrix, climbs onto a leaf and lays eggs parthenogenetically in a leaf gall that she creates by injecting saliva into the leaf; the nymphs that hatch from these eggs may move to other leaves, or move to the roots where they begin new infections in the root form. In this form they perforate the root to find nourishment, infecting the root with a poisonous secretion that stops it from healing.
This poison kills the vine. This nymph reproduces by laying eggs for up to seven more generations each summer; these offspring spread to other roots of the vine, or to the roots of other vines through cracks in the soil. The generation of nymphs that hatch in the autumn hibernate in the roots and emerge next spring when the sap begins to rise. In humid areas, the nymphs develop into the winged form, else they perform the same role without wings; these nymphs start the cycle again by either staying on the vine to lay male and female eggs on the bottom side of young grape leaves, or flying to an uninfected vine to do the same. Many attempts have been made to interrupt this life cycle to eradicate phylloxera, but the aphid has proven to be adaptable, as no one stage of the life cycle is dependent upon another for the propagation of the species. In the late 19th century the phylloxera epidemic destroyed most of the vineyards for wine grapes in Europe, most notably in France. Phylloxera was introduced to Europe when avid botanists in Victorian England collected specimens of American vines in the 1850s.
Because phylloxera is native to North America, the native grape species are at least resistant. By contrast, the European wine grape Vitis vinifera is susceptible to the insect; the epidemic devastated vineyards in Britain and moved to the European mainland, destroying most of the European grape growing industry. In 1863, the first vines began to deteriorate inexplicably in the southern Rhône region of France; the problem spread across the continent. In France alone, total wine production fell from 84.5 million hectolitres in 1875 to only 23.4 million hectolitres in 1889. Some estimates hold that between two-thirds and nine-tenths of all European vineyards were destroyed. In France, one of the desperate measures of grape growers was to bury a live toad under each vine to draw out the "poison". Areas with soils composed principally of sand or schist were spared, the spread was slowed in dry climates, but the aphid spread across the continent. A significant amount of research was devoted to finding a solution to the phylloxera problem, two major solutions emerged: grafting cuttings onto resistant rootstocks and hybridization.
By the end of the 19th century, hybridization became a popular avenue of research for stopping the phylloxera louse. Hybridization is the breeding of Vitis vinifera with resistant species. Most native American grapes are phylloxera resistant but have aromas that are off-putting to palates accustomed to European grapes; the intent of the cross was to generate a hybrid vine, resistant to phylloxera but produced wine that did not taste like the American grape. The hybrids tend not to be resistant to phylloxera, although they are much more hardy with respect to climate and other vine diseases; the new hybrid varieties have never gained
United States
Texas
. The New Student's Reference Work. 1914.
