Note 162 — Chapter V · THE LEADING VARIETIES OF AMERICAN GRAPES

Dr. A. P. Wylie was a southern hybridizer. His life was one of exceptionally varied usefulness. Besides being a physician he worked with many different plants, producing new varieties of cotton, peach, nectarine, magnolia and other species. His hybrids were produced chiefly during the sixties and early seventies. His method of testing hybrid grapes was unique; as soon as the fruit from the cross-fertilized blossoms ripened, the seeds were planted and the seedlings forced the first winter in a hothouse. In the spring it was planted by the side of a mature vine outside and the seedling grafted by inarching on the established vine. In this manner, his son writes us, he frequently secured fruit the second summer. In 1873 he suffered the irreparable misfortune of losing his residence by fire. This destroyed all of his seeds and also his seedlings, which were in an adjacent hothouse. The number of Dr. Wylie’s grape seedlings cannot be accurately told as many of them were never disseminated. Of his better known sorts there are Berckmans, Dr. Wylie, Mrs. McClure, and Peter Wylie, the best known of which is the first. Dr. Wylie was the first man to hybridize the Vitis rotundifolia with other species of grapes. Unfortunately these hybrids appear to have been lost to cultivation. He died at his home in Chester, South Carolina, in 1877.