Fruit prints from Smithsonian Magazine July/August 2011

A recent article in the July-August Smithsonian magazine, “Cultivating Art” talks about early American fruit growers enlisting artists to make hand colored lithographs of their fruit. This was done to protect their new varieties of fruit. In 1848, several Eastern seed and nursery leaders initiated what became the first national organization of fruit growers, the American Pomological Society. In 1852, Charles Harvey gathered a series of prints to publish The Fruits of America, Vol. 1, because patent protection did not extend to living organisms. It wasn’t until 1930, that Congress passed the Plant patent Act. This act authorizes a patent to anyone who invented, discovered, or asexually reproduced a distinct and new variety of plant.