HORTICULTURAL CLASSIFICATIONS OF THE PEACH
The opening years of the Nineteenth Century mark the first attempts at classifying peaches. By 1818 as many as three classificatory schemes had been proposed, all being modifications of the same general arrangement. July 7, 1818, John Robertson read a paper on classifying peaches and nectarines before the Horticultural Society of London. Later, this was printed in the Transactions of the Society[183] together with a classification by M. Poiteau from the Bon Jardinier and another by Count Lelieur from his Pomone Francaise. In January, 1824, George Lindley read before the same society a classification which was but an extension of the older arrangements.[184]
Robertson separated peaches into true peaches and nectarines and these in turn into Classes, Divisions and Sub-divisions. He founded the two classes on the presence or absence of glands; for each of his classes he made two divisions distinguished by the size and color of the flowers; each of the four divisions is once redivided into a sub-division in which the flesh parts from the stone and another in which the flesh adheres to the stone. The two French writers use the same characters but found their second division on the adherence or non-adherence of the flesh to the stone; their third on the size of the flower but making three partitions as to size; and their fourth on the presence or absence of glands which they divide into globose and reniform. Lindley created three classes dependent on the presence or absence and the character of the glands and the character of the serrations; three divisions of each class in accordance as to whether the flowers are large, medium-sized or small; two sub-divisions of each division to agree with the presence or absence of down; and for each sub-division two sections, one for clingstones and one for melters.
This was the age of the classifier and other classifications, all similar in plan, rapidly followed in England, France, Belgium and Germany. No one at this time seems to have attempted a natural classification of peaches.
Of the nine leading American pomological writers of the Nineteenth Century, Coxe, Prince, Cole, Hooper, Elliott and Barry either do not attempt to classify or make but one or two simple divisions. Kenrick, 1832, follows Lindley in part but makes use of season in his classification. Downing in his first edition, 1845, divides peaches into freestones with pale flesh, freestones with deep yellow flesh and clingstones. This simple arrangement by Downing is notable only because it is the first time color of flesh is made use of as a distinguishing mark, the Europeans probably not having done so because yellow-fleshed varieties are rare in Europe whereas in America they are as common or more so than white-fleshed sorts. Thomas, in 1846, did not classify but in later editions divided peaches into two divisions, founded on adherence of flesh to the stone; two classes for each division in accordance with color of flesh; and three sections founded on leaf-serrations and glands.
These Nineteenth Century classifications are artificial. That is, they single out a few points of resemblance and difference and arrange varieties in accordance with them, convenience and facility of use being the controlling principles. They are natural to a degree, however, because varieties agreeing in one point of structure commonly agree in other characters. With the peach, more than in the artificial classification of most other fruits, the characters are readily distinguished and are stable. Yet most English pomologies now arrange varieties of peaches alphabetically, while the American texts do the same or use the pseudo-natural system of Onderdonk. His classification we are about to discuss. The early artificial arrangements failed to stand the test of time because classifiers could not agree upon any one arrangement and added confusion by the multiplicity of them; and, because the new varieties of the last half-century, coming in great numbers, are so poorly described that the great majority of them could not be classified from the data at hand.
In 1887 Gilbert Onderdonk,[185] a special agent of the United States Department of Agriculture, published a natural classification of peaches.[186] He put varieties of peaches into five groups which he called races and to which he gave the names: Persian, Northern Chinese, Spanish, Southern Chinese and Peento. He bounded peach-culture in America on the north by the Great Lakes and on the south by the Gulf and divided this great region into five zones to each of which he assigned one of his races. Onderdonk studied peaches in Texas and found there remarkable distinguishing characters; as, in adaptations to southern climates, in length of the rest-period, in differences in leafing, blooming and fruiting-time, and in the organs of the plants. Professor R. H. Price, working with a large number of varieties at the Texas Agricultural College, verified and greatly extended Onderdonk's observations.[187] Eventually, Price became the pontifical authority in this country on the classification of peaches and in numerous articles and addresses set forth the Onderdonk grouping of varieties so convincingly that it was adopted by practically all American pomologists and at present is in use, to some degree at least, in nearly all of our horticultural literature. It becomes necessary, therefore, to scrutinize closely this natural classification of Onderdonk and Price.
The end to be attained in a classification of peaches, as in classifying natural objects of any kind, is to provide an epitome of the knowledge of the fruits classified. Incidentally, a classification helps in the identification of varieties of peaches. Does the Onderdonk classification serve these purposes? We have not found that it does. In most arduous attempts to arrange the sorts of peaches growing on the Station grounds according to the Onderdonk plan, we have wholly failed. Even the varieties named as types do not fit, as they grow in the north, in the places provided for them by these southern classifiers. Indeed, we have wasted so much time and patience in attempting to group varieties according to Onderdonk and Price, and with so little success, that the Onderdonk classification seems to us to be cursed with the confusion of Babel. Since pomologists so generally accept this classification, these words demand that it be shown wherein this attempt at a natural arrangement of varieties fails.
In the first place the basis of Onderdonk's classification, as the names suggest, is regional variation. Each race stands for a region, the Peento included—for the name is very obviously Chinese. Incompleteness, then, is the first fault of this system for there are other regions in which races of peaches just as distinct as those named have developed: as, for examples, the Bokhara represents a hardy "Russian race;" Yellow Transvaal belongs to the very peculiar "South African race;" in the rich alluvial lands of Egypt, the "Egyptian race" has developed; still another regional race is found in the evergreen peach of the West Indies. We have no doubt that distinct races of peaches may have originated or will arise in the Canary Islands, Hawaii, New Zealand, Argentina, Chili and Mexico, to mention only countries spoken of in the foregoing pages. The Onderdonk classification can, of course, be extended to take in these new races, most of which are now represented in America, but eventually such a classification would become too cumbersome for use. It must not be overlooked that the Onderdonk classification should be doubled to apply to the nectarine, the other division of Prunus persica, which the present classification wholly ignores.
If the variations are stable, and all regions represented, the likenesses and differences brought about by regional environment may well be used by classifiers. But in the Onderdonk classification unstable variations due to climate are too largely used; as, differences in the succession of life-events, in the rest-period, in the capacity to endure heat and drought, and in minor modifications of organs, as color of foliage and shape of fruit. All of these are variations that fluctuate with even slight changes in the climate. We have said that this classification, though constantly referred to by northern fruit-growers, is not satisfactory in New York. Professor Price, too, found as he went northward that his classificatory scheme was less dependable. He says:[188] "Some of the distinctions made in this classification cannot be noticed with decisive clearness a few hundred miles farther north." A further objection to this regional classification of Onderdonk is that, in the numerous distinct peach-regions of America, new regional variations are arising which make it impossible to classify in accordance with characters that appeared before the peach came to America.
These "races" of Onderdonk and Price, then, by leaving out the peach-floras of many regions, are too exclusive, but it is no less true that they are too inclusive. Thus, the many varieties of the historic peach of western countries are put by the Onderdonk classification in the Persian race. So considered, this Persian race contains types quite as widely separated from each other as are the five "races" of the Onderdonk classification. In one great group are collected early, late, white-fleshed, yellow-fleshed, red-fleshed, globular, oblong, beaked, hardy and tender, vigorous and dwarfish peaches. Persian peaches run the whole gamut of peach-characters, the flatness of the Peento possibly excepted, and from the several hundred sorts a score of "races" might be made. These peaches are noted by Price and Onderdonk as requiring a long period of rest and as succeeding only in northern climates. Yet to this group belong the peaches of France, Spain and Italy; those of the warm parts of Africa, South America and Oceanica; and most of the varieties that thrive at the most northern limits of peach-growing in Europe and America.
The Onderdonk classification, in assigning zones to each of its five races, misleads peach-growers as to the hardiness of varieties. It makes the Peento and honey-flavored peaches much more tender in tree than they are. Varieties of both groups grow as far north as this Station and Waugh reports that one of the Peento varieties "was discovered growing thriftily and fruiting nicely on the grounds of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, Amherst, Massachusetts."[189] Of the score of descendants of the Honey, several are fruiting well on our grounds, four being illustrated and described in The Peaches of New York. If there were a demand for honey-flavored peaches, climate would not prevent their culture in New York.
The name used for the Peento group, if it be worth while keeping these peaches in a group, is inapt. It gives the impression that all, like Peento, are flat peaches—in fact Price several times so publishes them—whereas of the twenty-three sorts described by Hume,[190] though nearly all are seedlings of Peento, only Peento is flat. We must look upon the Peento as a peach-monster similar to the cleft peach, Emperor of Russia, the nippled peach, Teton de Venus, the Perseque with its teat-like protuberances, or the more familiar snow-white and blood-red varieties.
We are not able to see where the Peento group leaves off and the Honey group begins in the Onderdonk classification, though, since varieties of the Peentos have not fruited at Geneva and the several Honey-flavored peaches, though both thrifty in tree and fruitful, are possibly not typical, we ought not to be too critical. As we read the descriptions made by others, however, we are struck by the fact that there are more similarities than differences in the two groups and that the differences are rapidly disappearing through hybridization.
But the obstacle which most effectually blocks the use of Onderdonk's classification in the systematic arrangement of peaches is the brood of hybrid seedling peaches annually brought forth by fruit-growers. No doubt the classification is workable, to a degree, with the type-varieties and a few carefully selected progeny but after the practical peach-grower, with a devil-may-care attitude toward classification, crosses and recrosses the types, the several races become hopelessly interlocked. The characters chiefly used by Onderdonk, as has been said, are fluctuating variations and these do not descend according to Mendelian laws. And so the great out-pouring of varieties during the past quarter-century has literally swamped a classification which served only fairly well when it included but the pioneer varieties. In the trituration of the thousand and more varieties of peaches now going on, the Onderdonk classification will be less and less useful.
In dismissing the Onderdonk scheme as having but limited application for classificatory purposes, acknowledgment is made that it serves other purposes very well. It calls attention to the history of the peach; it shows that racial strains of the peach are arising; it brings out valuable information in regard to hardiness and the rest-period of peaches; it offers instances of modification of the peach by climate; and it shows the capacity of the peach to vary. For thus illuminating the natural history of the peach, more especially the climatology of the peach, pomology is much indebted to Onderdonk and Price.
A key to varieties of peaches.—A natural classification of peaches to show the relationships of varieties is seemingly impossible. The deluge of new varieties, which growers continue with cheerful optimism to pour out, overwhelms the classifier with difficulties. About the best that can be done is to arrange varieties, for convenience in identifying, according to some of the artificial systems of a century ago when the cult of the classifier was at its height. These were really synoptical keys rather than biological classifications. If such a key is to be used very generally by fruit-growers, only characters of the fruit are admissible, thereby attaining necessary simplicity and providing that all data can be had at one examination.
The first division of a synoptical key would of course be founded on the absence or presence of pubescence on the skin; these two great divisions would then be separated into freestones and clingstones; these, in turn, divided in accordance to color of flesh—white, yellow, red; the Peento and honey-flavored peaches make necessary a division in regard to shape—globular, flat, beaked; a further separation into early, medium and late sorts could then be made. A great merit in this extremely simple classification is that the language of the layman fits it. As examples: Greensboro would follow the key from bottom to top—an early, round, white-fleshed, freestone peach; or Salwey, a late, round, yellow-fleshed, freestone peach. This key provides for seventy-two groups, fifty-four for the peach and eighteen for the nectarine, the latter having but the globular form. Other characters, of less general application in the key than those so far used, as size, flavor, adherence or non-adherence of the skin, suture, apex, and stone, could be used to carry this classification still further.
CHAPTER III
COMMERCIAL PEACH-GROWING IN AMERICA
Commercial peach-growing began in America early in the Nineteenth Century. About this time, it will be remembered, budded trees began to take the place of seedlings. Named varieties appeared as a consequence of budding and, as nurseries sprang up in the settled parts of the country, varieties multiplied at a rapid rate. After the year 1800 we read less about peaches as food for hogs and less about peach-products for assuaging the thirst for strong drink. As cities and towns built up, market demands increased and money-making began to quicken the charms of peach-growing. With the coming of extensive plantings and intensive culture in commercial orchards, new and menacing pests and other problems began to appear at every turn. Before the middle of the century, commercial peach-growing was in full swing in the Chesapeake peach-belt and in its infancy in several westward regions. Stories of great success now filled the papers, "peach kings" abounded, and, with the return of good times following the Civil War, fruit-growers indulged in a saturnalia of peach-tree planting. The rouge of speculation made the industry doubly attractive. An account of the rise of commercial peach-growing in America cannot help but be of interest and, besides, it is only by the study of the past of the industry that we can draw safe conclusions for the future.
Peach-growing on a commercial scale in the United States began in what is known as the Peninsula, consisting, technically, of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Delaware and southern New Jersey but horticulturally, because of similitude of soil, climate and products, taking in a bit of Virginia, touching eastern Pennsylvania and running up to Long Island. All of this region, including the southern reaches of the Hudson, may be considered as one commercial territory. The peach began its undisputed supremacy among fruits in the orchards of the Peninsula as early as orchards were planted but, beginning with 1800, the industry pushed ahead with leaps and bounds so that the figures at times remind one of Alice in Wonderland when she drank from the magic bottle and immediately grew to gigantic proportions.
In 1800 an orchard of 20,000 trees was set in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, the product to be used in brandy-making.[191] The last peach-grower to engage in the liquor business seems to have been a certain Mr. Bayley in Accomack County, Virginia, the tip of the Peninsula, who in 1814 planted 63,000 trees which six years later yielded fifteen gallons of brandy per 100 trees, worth $2 per gallon—not profitable unless the seed were sown in rows, as was probably the case, and the seedlings permitted to crowd rather closely.[192] One of the first large orchards planted in this region to supply city peach-markets was that of a Mr. Cassidy who set an orchard of 50,000 trees in Cecil County, Maryland, about 1830.[193] The product of this orchard went to market in sailboats and large wagons. The industry was not in full swing in this region until the fifties when orchards were planted all along the water courses in Cecil, Kent and Queen Anne counties, making a continuous forest of peach-trees two miles back from the rivers.[194]
The peach-industry in Delaware seems to have begun, according to Mr. Charles Wright,[195] in 1832 at Delaware City, when a twenty-acre orchard of budded trees was set by Messrs. Reeves and Ridgeway, which by 1836 had increased to 110 acres. The receipts from this orchard in a single season were as much as $16,000, the fruit bringing in Philadelphia from $1.25 to $3 per three-peck basket. Other notable orchards of these early times mentioned by Mr. Wright are those of Major Philip Reybold and Sons who, beginning in 1835, by 1846 had 117,720 trees on 1090 acres near Delaware City from which 63,344 baskets of peaches were shipped in August, 1845; in Kent County, John Reed began planting as early as 1829 and several years later had 10,000 trees of Red Cheek Melocotons. In 1848 the peach-crop in Delaware was estimated at 5,000,000 baskets, chiefly from New Castle County. Peach-yellows, first a serious pest around Philadelphia about 1800, became epidemic in northern Delaware in 1842 and, little by little, the center of the peach-industry shifted southward from Middletown in the late sixties to Smyrna; a few years later it had reached Wyoming and in the nineties it was as far south as Bridgeville.
It is interesting to follow the ups and downs of the peach-industry in the Peninsula. Epidemics of yellows, a succession of cold winters, over-production, transportation difficulties or expense, San Jose scale, have all been factors powerful enough at various times to make or mar the fortunes of those engaged in growing peaches. Indeed, in following the history of this fruit on the Peninsula, one is forced to declare that peach-growing is gambling pure and simple. Take, for example, the building of the Delaware railroad. Peaches were scarcely planted in the interior parts of the Peninsula, away from water-ways, until the building of this road in the sixties and seventies, when the yield increased so rapidly that 4,175,500 baskets were shipped by rail in 1875, the total yield being 8,782,716 baskets[196]—fortunes followed the completion of the railroad only to be lost in subsequent over-production.
New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, and southeastern New York rather slowly followed the lead of Delaware in commercial peach-growing. New Jersey, according to census reports, reached her zenith in peach-growing in 1899 when there were 4,413,568 peach-trees in the State which produced 2,746,607 bushels of fruit giving her third rank among the states of the Union in production. Ten years later the State had dropped to fourteenth. The peach seems to have been neglected in eastern Pennsylvania as a commercial crop, possibly because a good start was never made on account of the early appearance of yellows. In southeastern New York and on Long Island, peach-growers have usually followed the fortunes of their neighbors in New Jersey who have ever grown on a much larger scale.
To show how quickly the peach gives returns and how great the return from the capital invested, the following figures, savoring a good deal of American boastfulness of dollars and cents, are illustrative:[197] "The peach farms in Upper Delaware and Maryland have returned to their owners the most fabulous amounts for their investments far exceeding in profit any other staple crop that has been raised in the Middle States, and on a scale never before heard of in this or any other country. Some of the orchards containing from 1000 to 1300 acres have netted their owners from $20,000 to $30,000 annually. A peach orchard in New Castle county, Delaware, of 400 acres, netted the owner in one crop, $38,000. One in Kent county, Maryland, of some 600 acres, produced a crop paying $31,000, and the same orchard in 1879 yielded $42,000. In 1873, the Delaware Peach Growers' Association reported that there were sent from the Delaware peninsula to the northern markets of Philadelphia and New York 1,288,500 baskets of peaches, or 2577 car-loads by the railroad. Adding the quantity shipped by steamers and sailing vessels, and the amount canned, the actual quantity amounted, in the aggregate, to 2,000,000 of baskets. In 1872, the whole district, comprising the Eastern Shore of Maryland, marketed 3,500,000 baskets. The late Col. Wilkins, on Chester river, Kent county, Maryland, had 1350 acres in with peach trees, numbering 137,000, producing in bearing years from $30,000 to $40,000 annually."
Commercial peach-growing in the South is of recent development—its history is known to all pomologists of the present generation. It began in the seventies, the impetus being given by the introduction of a number of early, bright-colored, very showy peaches that could be marketed in northern cities in May and June. It took years, however, to develop means to send these peaches to market and it was not until in the nineties that the perfection of refrigerator cars and rapid transportation was such that the southern crop cut any figure in the peach-markets. The introduction of the Elberta in the seventies may be said to be another stone in the foundation of the peach-industry in the South. After Georgia became a factor in the culture of this fruit in America in the nineties, the State was followed in lesser degree, by South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas. In most of these southern states the peach-orchard is so near the cotton-plantation—often the two are interplanted—that the owners rob Peter to pay Paul in the care of the two crops. But this is not always the case, and at its best the southern peach-orchard is the consummate flower of modern commercial peach-growing.
The peach-industry in Connecticut is a recent development, as in the South. As late as 1880 the crop was negligible in the State; in 1889, 37,295 bushels were grown; 61,775 in 1899; and 417,918 bushels in 1909. This, considering the smallness of the State and the very uneven surface of much of it, is a rather remarkable development. Winter-killing, which takes place about one winter out of four, is the chief drawback but the high prices received from nearby markets make the peach, despite the occasional off-year, a profitable crop. Connecticut peaches are characterized by large size, bright color and good quality. From Connecticut the industry has spread into Massachusetts where all conditions are essentially the same.
Peach-growing in New York has never been spectacular. Along the lower Hudson before the Civil War and again a decade after it there was a thriving peach-industry such as there was in New Jersey and Delaware. A peach-industry is first of all dependent on quick transportation—the fruit must move. This meant in early days that there must be nearby markets and water transportation—western New York had the latter but not the former. Peaches, however, were early grown, in fact, as we have seen, were cultivated by the Indians, in the lake regions of western New York. In 1828 the Domestic Horticultural Society, the third such organization in America, was organized in Geneva, having for its field ten counties in western New York.[198] The Monroe County Horticultural Society was organized in 1830,[199] and in 1831 the Genesee Farmer and Gardener's Journal came into existence. These institutions bore fruit, more literally bore orchards, and a taste for horticulture, which, together with the nurseries that by this time were being established in the salubrious climate and excellent soil of western New York, gave a perfection in fruit-growing long unrivalled in America and now equalled only in California.
Of the history of commercial peach-growing in western New York, it can only be said that there has been such an industry since 1800. The product of the orchards of the first quarter-century went, for most part, to the brandy-still, for the second quarter it was used at home and for local markets and from then on, since 1850, or a little before, the region has been well to the front in the peach-markets of eastern United States. Changes in the commerce of the continent have made great changes in the peach-industry in New York. In 1825 the opening of the Erie Canal made western New York the granary of eastern United States—wheat was more profitable than peaches. Twenty-five years later millions of bushels of wheat from the plains, carried through the Great Lakes and the Erie Canal to the sea, began to drive wheat out of western New York and make the peach more profitable. This is a fine illustration of the fact that transportation is often as important a factor as soil or climate in the profitable production of a crop. Until figures were taken by census enumerators, the history of the peach-industry could be written only by giving innumerable items taken at random from newspapers of the times. The present status of peach-growing in this region is to be discussed in a future chapter.
Another large commercial peach-region is to be found along the shore of Lake Erie in Ohio. The peach has been cultivated very generally in Ohio since the first settlements there more than a century ago and the industry assumed commercial importance in a dozen or more centers as early, at least, as 1867, when the assessors' returns showed a total crop for the State of 1,402,849 bushels.[200] But what is now known as the peach-belt along the shores of Lake Erie is largely a growth of comparatively recent times, much of the land now covered with peach-orchards having been originally planted to vineyards. Possibly the region was at its zenith in the nineties, the plantings here contributing greatly to putting Ohio in third place at this time among the states of the Union in the production of peaches.
Michigan furnishes an interesting chapter in the history of the peach-industry. The industry was started in what is now the Michigan peach-belt by an Indian trader who planted a pit in 1775 near St. Joseph. From this tree sprang seedling orchards, one of which, near Douglas at the mouth of the Kalamazoo River, numbered 300 trees. There were no budded trees until 1834. A conjunction of several factors now gave peach-growing a tremendous impetus in the State. Chicago, growing with leaps and bounds, demanded peaches; the soil and climate of western Michigan were found to be ideal for this fruit; between the supply and demand was quick and cheap transportation by water. Shipments began in 1834 to Chicago and, as this and other western cities grew, peach-planting in Michigan progressed as probably never before in any other part of the world. In the seventies peach-yellows swept like a wave of fire over the southern portion of what is now the belt, driving the industry northward until at Traverse City the peach reached its highest northern limit in the eastern states. With better control of the yellows, peach-orchards were again planted in the southern parts of the belt and the industry continues to thrive, though with the ups and downs incident to this fruit wherever grown.
Another large peach-growing area lies in southern Illinois extending across the Mississippi into Missouri and Kansas. Westward, in Colorado, Utah, California, Oregon and Washington, are the world's newest peach-orchards, all of which have arisen to commercial importance within recent times. In southern Illinois and Missouri, however, even before the Civil War, peach-growing had assumed sufficient magnitude to be called an industry. The present standing of these later peach-areas may best be compared with that of the older regions by a tabulated report from the United States Census Reports which is herewith printed. In the fluctuating figures of this table one sees the exploitation of the peach. What other tree-crop in the whole world could show more ups and downs in the brief space of thirty years? No state holds first rank two decades in succession; in fifteen states in 1910 there were more trees not of bearing age than there were in bearing; there were more peach-trees in the United States in 1900 than in 1910; the figures most graphically attest the shifting of peach-regions; decreasing numbers represent misfortunes—most often yellows, or San Jose scale, a freeze, or overproduction; increasing numbers stand for a newly discovered advantage. By these tokens we better realize the speculative nature of peach-growing.