CLIMAX
1. Am. Pom. Soc. Cat. 44. 1891. 2. Tex. Sta. Bul. 39:804. 1896. 3. Glen St. Mary Cat. 11. 1900. 4. Fla. Sta. Bul. 73:143. 1904. 5. Am. Pom. Soc. Cat. 36. 1909.
Climax is a honey-sweet, freestone peach supposedly adapted only to the far south. The trees on the grounds of this Station seem as hardy as the average and are as productive. Whether or not the peaches are as large and as attractive here as in Florida, where the variety is a commercial sort, we cannot say but certain it is, Climax has no commercial value in New York. The peaches are small, unattractive in color, drop badly, are disfigured by peach-scab and have only honeyed sweetness to recommend them. We figure and describe the variety in full only to show that honey-fleshed peaches can be grown this far north and to call attention to the possibility and desirability of using peaches of this stock in breeding to improve the quality or give new flavors to northern peaches. It would, too, give pleasant variety and add quality to the home orchard.
Climax is a seedling of Honey but neither the date of origin nor the name of the originator is known. The variety was introduced by G. L. Taber, Glen Saint Mary, Florida, in 1886. The American Pomological Society added Climax to its fruit-list in 1891 but dropped it in 1899. In 1909, however, the variety was replaced in the Society's catalog as a peach of merit for the South.
CLIMAX
Tree small, vigorous, upright-spreading, round-topped, dense, productive; trunk roughish; branches roughened by the lenticels, reddish-brown covered with gray; branchlets very slender, long, with short internodes, olive-green overspread with darker red, smooth, glabrous, with very few small, inconspicuous, raised lenticels.
Leaves six inches long, one and three-eighths inches wide, flattened, lanceolate, thin, leathery; upper surface dull, medium green, smooth; lower surface olive-green; margin bluntly serrate, glandular; petiole three-eighths inch long, slender, glandless or with one to four small, reniform glands usually at the base of the leaf.
Flower-buds small and short, conical, plump, pubescent, appressed; blooming season late; flowers pale pink, one inch across; pedicels slender, glabrous, green; calyx-tube dotted reddish-green, greenish-yellow within, obconic, glabrous; calyx-lobes acute or obtuse, glabrous within, pubescent without, partly erect; petals ovate or oval, tapering to narrow claws whitish at the base; filaments shorter than the petals; pistil shorter than the stamens.
Fruit matures in mid-season; two and three-eighths inches long, two and one-eighth inches thick, oval, but slightly compressed, with unequal sides; cavity usually shallow flaring, splashed with red; suture shallow, deepening toward the apex; apex conic, with a long, swollen, often recurved tip; color greenish-white or creamy-white, occasionally with a blush or faint mottlings of red toward the base; pubescence short, thick; skin thin, adherent to the pulp; flesh white, stained with red near the pit, juicy, stringy, melting, very sweet, mild; very good in quality; stone semi-free to free, one and one-fourth inches long, thirteen-sixteenths inch wide, oval, plump, bulged on one side, long-pointed at the apex, with pitted and grooved, reddish-brown surfaces; ventral suture deeply furrowed along the sides, narrow; dorsal suture grooved.