Adams
Wild selection
The record
- Parentage
- Wild selection
- Origin
- New York research work of the 1920s · New York · 1920s
- Rights
- freely propagated — Released in the 1920s, predating the US Plant Patent Act of 1930. No IP claim found in the sources consulted.
- Also known as
- Adams No. 1, Adams No. 2
- Species
- Sambucus canadensis
Description
The oldest named American elderberries, and the ancestors of most of what followed. The original work in New York in the 1920s released two selections, ‘Adams No. 1’ and ‘Adams No. 2’.
In the trade the two have largely merged into a single plant sold as ‘Adams’. That is worth stating plainly, because it means a grower buying ‘Adams’ today cannot be confident which of the two originals they are getting, or whether the distinction survived at all.
The Nova Scotia releases of the 1950s and 1960s are almost all Adams seedlings, and ‘York’ is a deliberate cross with ‘Adams No. 2’ as one parent. As with ‘Early Golden’ in the persimmon file, a long cultivar list turns out to rest on a very short list of founders.
Where to find it
No source recorded. That does not mean the cultivar is unavailable, only that this record does not yet name a nursery carrying it. Point us at one and it goes in.