Burpee’s 1899 farm annual. The plain truth about seeds. . . .

[Philadelphia, PA & Rochester, NY]: W. Atlee Burpee & Co., Seed Growers, 475 & 477 North Fifth St., 476 & 478 York Ave., [Stecher Litho. Co.], Jan. 10, 1899. 8vo. 6 x 9.25 in. 176 pp., textblock printed on pink- & blue-tinted paper. With 3 colour chromolith plates by Stecher, from illustrations by local Philadelphia artists, 100’s of woodcut engraved text illustrations. Colour chromolithograph illustrated softcovers, cover art of Burpee’s new Fifth Street Warehouse, and splendid birds-eye view of the Fordhook Farms nursery w/ inset on back cover, w/ train in fore-ground (minor chipping, edgewear, couple w/ expert repairs at fore-edges, minor spotting, discrete duplicate stamp at upper fore-edge), still VG copy, w/ mimeographed TLS & printed envelope laid-in. First edition of this well-illustrated and expansive seed catalogue issued by the storied company at the end of the 19th-Century. Only 10 years earlier Burpee (1858-1915) had established the Fordhook Farm near Doylestown, PA in order to expand his pioneering efforts to hybridize and adapt European vegetable stocks for American consumers. This was an effort to adapt and accommodate plant varieties to differences in humidity, seasonal temperatures, light intensity, and plant diseases as fungi, bacteria & viruses which often afflicted the 1000’s of seeds he had procured from the best European growers. Burpee traveled more than 30,000 miles each year across both continents, and occasionally found the best varieties close to home, such as when he discovered the Bush Lima Bean developed by Asa Palmer in Chester, PA in 1890. The chromolithograph plates used in his catalogues were often executed by German-American watercolourists in Germantown, PA, and contributed to the success of the company. Worldcat locates 3 copies (Winterthur, National Agricultural Lib., Rochester Museum).