[eyolf]

AS Carolyn's excerpt says that seed vendors switched them, I guess that there isn't any reason to hang onto my seeds of BB, John Baer and CEJ.

I had a bug to try to see if I could discern any difference in these 3 back in 2004, and grew out a lot of them from a several sources. In my experience, CEJ was less uniform and more supceptible to cracking and deformed fruits from 2 of the 3 sources I tried.

What does that say: I guess that BB and JB were selected out or "improved'? The best of all was a selection by a Canadian, Andy Pollock. This one beats the others by a day or two, an ounce or so per fruit, and a pound or two overall yield.

I identified a clear-sklinned mutant of John Baer in my field of about 80 plants that year, and thought I really had something...until I learned that someone named Geswein found that in Bonny Best 3/4 of a century ago...and my JB could originally have been a BB in a packet labelled JB. Since that, I have heard of that same mutation in other varieties, and seen it again in a black.