George Christian Roeding

Background

George Christian Roeding was born in San Francisco, California, of German parentage. His father, Frederick Christian Roeding (Dec. 31, 1824 - July 18, 1910), was a native of Hamburg who went to Chile in 1846 and thence, in 1849, to California. He engaged briefly in mining but soon became a successful banker. In 1867 he married Marianna Lazarus, who had emigrated from Germany the year before. George Christian was the eldest of their five children. Shortly after his birth, his father, with some compatriots, bought 80, 000 acres of land in the San Joaquin Valley; subsequently, some 1200 acres of this tract, given by the elder Roeding to the Southern Pacific Railroad, became a part of the city of Fresno.

George's early years were spent mostly in San Francisco, but his summer vacations were passed on a farm in Contra Costa County. His interests in plants dated from childhood and is said to have been aroused by botanizing trips taken with Dr. H. H. Behr.

Education

He graduated from the Boys' High School in San Francisco, California in 1885

Career

In 1886 he began work with the three-year-old Fancher Creek Nurseries at that time owned by his father and Dr. Gustavus Eisen. He soon became manager and eventually owner of these nurseries, to which were added others in various parts of the state. In 1910 he was president of the Pacific Coast Association of Nurserymen and in 1911 organized the California Association of Nurserymen, of which he was an active member until his death. He was an ardent advocate of plant quarantine and of a protective tariff on agricultural products. Roeding has been called the father of Smyrnafig culture in California, and undoubtedly his greatest single contribution to American horticulture was the part he took in establishing that industry. Figs had been grown in California since the time of the early missionaries but none of these early introductions were equal in quality to figs of the Smyrna type. In 1887 Roeding's father imported fig cuttings from Smyrna with the hope of producing a fig to compete with the imported fruit. These first plantings were augmented until the Roedings had some sixty acres planted to Smyrna figs. The trees prospered, but they matured no fruit. The father became discouraged and retired from the enterprise, but the son persisted, in the face of many disappointments and great expense, until the problem was solved. The chief difficulty that had to be surmounted was caprification, or the fertilization of the female flowers through the agency of a small wasp. This age-old process was thought by most European botanists to be unnecessary, and the practice of hanging male capri figs containing the Blastophaga wasp in the fruit-bearing trees was considered a superstition, but when the Smyrna figs introduced into America failed to produce fruit, attention was directed to the absence of the fig insects. Roeding was captivated by the idea of the intricate cooperation of plant and insect whereby the wasp, mistaking the edible female figs for the capri figs in which she wishes to lay her eggs, is entrapped and dies without posterity, but not before she has distributed pollen to the female flowers of the fig, thus enabling them to develop for the use of man and providing for future generations of fig trees. Roeding was the first to demonstrate that when pollinated the Smyrna fig would mature. This he did by introducing pollen through the opening at the tip of the fig. He cooperated with the Department of Agriculture in introducing the Blastophaga wasp, and it was in his trees that the insects were liberated and became established. In 1901 he visited Smyrna to study the fig industry and in 1903 he published The Smyrna Fig at Home and Abroad, an account of his trip and description of Smyrna fig culture in California. He was the author also of The Fruit Growers' Guide (1919), a practical treatise on fruit growing.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Smyrna Fig: At Home and Abroad : a Treatise on Practical fig Culture

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Roeding's Fruit Growers' Guide

    (This work has been selected by scholars as being cultural...)

  • Roeding's Practical Planter's Guide; the Result of Thirty Years Experience in California Horticulture

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

Membership

president of the Pacific Coast Association of Nurserymen(In 1910);

member of the California Association of Nurserymen

Connections

He married, December 15, 1897, Elizabeth Evelyn Thorne, whose father was one of the pioneers of Fresno County. They had three daughters and one son. Roeding died by his own hand after about a year spent in a sanitarium following a nervous breakdown from overwork.

Wife:

Elizabeth

He married, December 15, 1897, Elizabeth Evelyn Thorne, whose father was one of the pioneers of Fresno County.