WAGER
1. Cult. & Count. Gent. 43:584. 1878. 2. W. N. Y. Hort. Soc. Rpt. 113, 114. 1880. 3. Cult. & Count. Gent. 48:823. 1883. 4. Black Cult. Peach & Pear 111. 1886. 5. Am. Pom. Soc. Cat. 22. 1897. 6. Kan. Hort. Soc. Peach, The 148. 1899. 7. Budd-Hansen Am. Hort. Man. 2:358, 359. 1903.
Hardiness, productiveness and early bearing are the outstanding characters of Wager that give it a high place in the peach-list for New York. It is a yellow-fleshed, freestone peach none too attractive in coloring, always rather small and of only fair quality as a dessert fruit but excellent for canning, drying and all culinary purposes. The variety comes true to seed, or nearly so. The fruits of Wager are not attractive enough and the trees are too small to make the variety of much value in commercial plantations but it is a very good peach for home orchards and one of the best of all where hardiness is a prime requisite. Several quite distinct peaches are sold by nurserymen as Wager.
Wager originated some time previous to 1870 with Benjamin Wager, West Bloomfield, Ontario County, New York. The variety was added to the fruit-list of the American Pomological Society in 1897.
WAGER
Tree medium in size or small, upright-spreading, hardy, productive; trunk intermediate in thickness and smoothness; branches stocky, smooth, reddish-brown overlaid with light ash-gray; branchlets rebranching near the tips, dark red with some green, roughened by the lenticels, which are medium in size and number.
Leaves five and one-half inches long, one and one-fourth inches wide, flattened or curled downward, oval to obovate-lanceolate, thin, leathery; upper surface dull, dark green, rugose along the midrib; lower surface grayish-green; apex acuminate; margin finely serrate, tipped with reddish-brown glands; petiole five-sixteenths inch long, with two to four small, globose or reniform glands variable in color and position.
Flower-buds medium in size and length, heavily pubescent, conical, plump, usually free; blossoms appear in mid-season; flowers one and one-eighth inches across; pedicels very short, thick, glabrous, green; calyx-tube reddish-green, orange-colored within, campanulate, glabrous; calyx-lobes narrow, acute, glabrous within, pubescent without; petals oval, broadly notched, tapering to claws red at the base; filaments three-eighths inch long, shorter than the petals; pistil pubescent at the ovary, longer than the stamens.
Fruit matures in mid-season; two and one-half inches long, two and one-fourth inches wide, oval, bulged near the apex, sometimes conical, compressed, with unequal halves; cavity flaring or abrupt, often mottled with red and with tender skin; suture a line, becoming deeper toward the tip; apex roundish or pointed, usually with a mamelon, recurved tip; color orange-yellow, blushed and mottled with dark red; pubescence thick, long and fine; skin thin, tough, separates from the pulp; flesh yellow, faintly stained with red near the pit, meaty but tender, sweet, mild; good in quality; stone free, one and three-eighths inches long, one inch wide, ovate, flattened near the base, with pitted surfaces, marked with few short grooves; ventral suture deeply grooved along the sides, wide, furrowed; dorsal suture a wide, deep groove.