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George M. Darrow


George McMillan Darrow (1889–1983) was the foremost American authority on strawberries. He worked for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA-ARS) for forty-six years as a pomologist and small fruits breeder, and authored numerous papers on horticulture.

Darrow was born in Springfield, Vermont on February 2, 1889. He graduated from nearby Chester High School in 1906, and in 1910 from Middlebury College with a BA. He went on to Cornell University, obtaining an MA in horticulture in 1911. During 1912-1917 Darrow partnered with future U.S. Senator George Aiken in "Darrow and Aiken," a fruit growing enterprise in Putney, Vermont. By 1917, however, he was committed to full-time work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 1927 he obtained a Ph.D in Plant Physiology from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. A prolific author, Darrow wrote over 230 research or review articles, bulletins, and book chapters; a majority were USDA publications and reports. The bulk of his career was spent in Maryland (Glenn Dale and later Beltsville). However, in the late 1920s-early 1930s he initiated small fruit breeding programs in Oregon for the USDA. Darrow was constantly looking for ways to improve strawberries, and was responsible for the development of twenty-eight cultivars of strawberries, twelve of which remain significant. Another accomplishment that made a profound impression on small fruit scientists was Darrow's establishment of a foundation of genetic material that would figure prominently in breeding new strawberry varieties. He realized that improvement in small fruits had to occur by developing new varieties. In order to do this, he thought that scientists should possess an extensive knowledge of the make-up of a strawberry plant. Darrow is predominantly known for strawberry breeding and research, but he worked with all small fruits, including blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries. His personal hobby and passion was breeding daylilies.

In the late 1920s, Darrow began tracking down reports of a large, reddish-purple berry that had been grown on the northern California farm of a man named Rudolph Boysen. He enlisted the help of Walter Knott, a Southern California farmer who was known as a berry expert. Darrow and Knott learned that Boysen had abandoned his growing experiments several years earlier and sold his farm. Undaunted, Darrow and Knott headed out to Boysen's old farm, on which they found several frail vines surviving in a field choked with weeds. They transplanted the vines to Knott's farm in Buena Park, California, where he nurtured them back to fruit-bearing health, making Knott the first to commercially cultivate "boysenberries".


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