LEMON FREE
1. Wickson Cal. Fruits 313. 1889. 2. Am. Pom. Soc. Cat. 33. 1899. 3. Mich. Sta. Bul. 169:218. 1899. 4. Budd-Hansen Am. Hort. Man. 2:349. 1903. 5. Waugh Am. Peach Orch. 204. 1913.
Lemon. 6. Rural N. Y. 47:131. 1888. 7. Am. Pom. Soc. Cat. 32. 1889. 8. Ont. Fr. Exp. Sta. Rpt. 2:59. 1895.
Lemon Free is a yellow-fleshed, freestone, lemon-shaped, lemon-colored peach ripening in late mid-season. The fruit is not sufficiently attractive in appearance to sell well in the markets and, besides, is too thin-skinned to ship or keep well. The quality is very good, the flavor being sweet, rich and delicious, though possibly the flesh is a little too dry to permit the variety being ranked as "very good." It is an excellent peach for culinary purposes having the reputation of making a handsomer canned product than any other peach. Lemon Free is little grown in the eastern states but it is one of the leading sorts of its season in parts of California. The color-plate shows the shape very well but the color is not quite that of the real peach.
This variety seems to have originated in Ohio about 1885 but nothing is known of its parentage, originator or introducer. Wickson, in California Fruits, claims California as its birthplace but this, we think, is an error. In 1889 the American Pomological Society placed Lemon Free in its fruit-catalog as Lemon but in 1899 changed the name to Lemon Free.
LEMON FREE
Tree very large, vigorous, upright-spreading, dense-topped, hardy, rather unproductive; trunk thick, smooth to medium; branches stocky, smooth, reddish-brown tinged with light ash-gray; branchlets often very long, with a tendency to rebranch, with medium to long internodes, pinkish-red with but a trace of green, glossy, smooth, glabrous, with large, raised, russetty lenticels medium in number.
Leaves seven inches long, one and three-fourths inches wide, folded upward and curled downward, oval to obovate-lanceolate, thick, leathery; upper surface dark olive-green, smooth becoming rugose along the midrib; lower surface grayish-green; margin finely serrate, tipped with reddish-brown glands; petiole three-eighths inch long, with two to six rather large, reniform, reddish-brown glands variable in position; flower-buds intermediate in size and length, conical to pointed, slightly pubescent, usually free; flowers appear in mid-season.
Fruit matures in late mid-season; two and one-half inches long, two and five-sixteenths inches wide, roundish-oval; cavity medium to deep, wide, flaring, often mottled with red; suture shallow, becoming deeper at the apex and extending beyond; apex mucronate to roundish-mamelon, recurved; color green or golden-yellow, with a faint blush and mottled with red; pubescence fine, long, thick; skin thin, tender, variable in adhesion to the pulp; flesh yellow, juicy, stringy, tender and melting, sweet to sprightly, pleasantly flavored; very good in quality; stone semi-free to free, one and one-fourth inches long, nearly one inch wide, oval, plump, flattened near the base, short-pointed, the surfaces usually grooved and with few pits; ventral suture winged, deeply marked along the edges, narrow; dorsal suture winged, grooved.