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The United States Department of Agriculture Pomological Watercolor Collection encompasses 7,497 botanical watercolor paintings of evolving fruit and nut varieties; alongside specimens introduced by USDA plant explorers from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Assembled between 1886 and 1942, these remarkable, botanically accurate, watercolors were executed by some 21 professional artists (including nine women). Authored largely before the widespread application of photography, the watercolors were intended to aid accurate identification and examination of fruit varietals , for the nation's fruit growers. Documenting the transformation of American pomology, the science of fruit breeding and production, and the horticultural innovations accountable for contemporary fruit cultivation and consumption, the USDA's collection offers fascinating anthropological and horticultural insights on the fruits we ecstatically devour, and why. Encompassing fruit-suffused anecdotes and observations drawn from the fields of archaeology and anthropology, horticulture and literature, ancient representation and contemporary visual art, Atelier Éditions' kaleidoscopic examination of the USDA's pomological collection, offers readers an engaging, biophillic meditation upon the sweetest of all earth's produce.

The Fruits of Empire is a history of American expansion through the lens of art and food. In the decades after the Civil War, Americans consumed an unprecedented amount of fruit as it grew more accessible with advancements in refrigeration and transportation technologies. This excitement for fruit manifested in an explosion of fruit imagery within still life paintings, prints, trade cards, and more. Images of fruit labor and consumption by immigrants and people of color also gained visibility, merging alongside the efforts of expansionists to assimilate land and, in some cases, people into the national body. Divided into five chapters on visual images of the grape, orange, watermelon, banana, and pineapple, this book demonstrates how representations of fruit struck the nerve of the nation’s most heated debates over land, race, and citizenship in the age of high imperialism.

Heirloom Fruits of America features 100 full-color illustrations selected from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Pomological Watercolor Collection, an archive of 7,584 paintings, lithographs, and line drawings created from 1886 to 1942 by about sixty-five commissioned artists. These images served as de facto trademarks in the highly competitive and fraud-plagued American fruit industry in a time before patent protection extended to living organisms. They are also meticulously and beautifully rendered, uncovering a cache of botanical diversity in turn-of-the-century American agriculture. Yale historian Daniel J. Kevles's introduction deepens viewers' appreciation of these plates by placing these images in their historical context.

At the turn of the nineteenth century—when most food in America was bland and brown and few people appreciated the economic potential of then-exotic foods—David Fairchild convinced the U.S. Department of Agriculture to finance overseas explorations to find and bring back foreign cultivars. Fairchild traveled to remote corners of the globe, searching for fruits, vegetables, and grains that could find a new home in American fields and in the American diet. In Fruits of Eden, Amanda Harris vividly recounts the exploits of Fairchild and his small band of adventurers and botanists as they traversed distant lands—Algeria, Baghdad, Cape Town, Hong Kong, Java, and Zanzibar—to return with new and exciting flavors. Their expeditions led to a renaissance not only at the dinner table but also in horticulture, providing diversity of crops for farmers across the country. Not everyone was supportive, however. The scientific community was concerned with invasive species, and World War I fanned the flames of xenophobia in Washington. Adversaries who believed Fairchild’s discoveries would contaminate the purity of native crops eventually shut down his program, but his legacy lives on in today’s modern kitchen, where navel oranges, Meyer lemons, honeydew melons, soybeans, and durum wheat are now standard.