WHEATLAND
1. Thomas Am. Fruit Cult. 550. 1875-85. 2. W. N. Y. Hort. Soc. Rpt. 113. 1880. 3. Downing Fr. Trees Am. 3rd App. 173. 1881. 4. Am. Pom. Soc. Cat. 34. 1883. 5. Tex. Sta. Bul. 39:815. 1896. 6. Budd-Hansen Am. Hort. Man. 2:359. 1903. 7. Waugh Am. Peach Orch. 209. 1913.
Wheatland is a large, yellow-fleshed, freestone peach of excellent quality which ripens just before Late Crawford. Although the variety originated in this State it is little grown here now, being somewhat more popular westward in Michigan and very much grown in Colorado and Utah. The fruit is about all that could be desired in New York but the trees are so unproductive that the variety is nowhere grown in this region with profit. The beauty and high quality of the fruit might make it desirable for home orchards.
Wheatland is a chance seedling found about 1870 on the grounds of Daniel E. Rogers, Scottsville, New York. The variety was placed on the fruit-list of the American Pomological Society in 1883.
WHEATLAND
Tree medium to large, vigorous, upright-spreading, with the lower branches drooping, hardy, rather unproductive; trunk thick and smooth; branches stocky, smooth, reddish-brown tinged with light ash-gray; branchlets long, with long internodes, inclined to rebranch, dark pinkish-red with but little green, smooth, glabrous, with conspicuous, large and small, raised lenticels intermediate in number.
Leaves six and one-half inches long, one and three-fourths inches wide, folded upward and recurved downward, oval to obovate-lanceolate, leathery; upper surface dark green, rugose; lower surface grayish-green; margin finely serrate, tipped with reddish-brown glands; petiole five-sixteenths inch long, with one to five small, globose and reniform, reddish-brown glands variable in position.
Flower-buds tender, medium to small, pubescent, conical or pointed, plump, usually free; blossoms open late; flowers seven-eighths inch across, light pink becoming darker along the edges; pedicels very short, glabrous, green; calyx-tube reddish-green, orange-colored within, campanulate; calyx-lobes narrow, acuminate, glabrous within, pubescent without; petals ovate; filaments five-sixteenths inch long, equal to the petals in length; pistil as long as the stamens, sometimes defective.
Fruit matures in mid-season; large, round; suture shallow; apex a small, acute point; color yellow, blushed and mottled with red; skin separates from the pulp; flesh yellow, stained red around the pit, juicy, firm but tender, sweet, pleasantly flavored; good in quality; stone free, one and seven-sixteenths inches long, more than an inch wide, ovate, broad at the base, with pitted surfaces; ventral suture very deeply grooved at the edges; dorsal suture deeply grooved.