“From all these facts, I am inclined to believe that the peach is of Chinese rather than of western Asiatic origin. If it had existed in Persia or Armenia from all time, the knowledge and cultivation of so pleasant a fruit would have spread earlier into Asia Minor and Greece. The expedition of Alexander probably was the means of making it known to Theophrastus (332 B.C.), who speaks of it as a Persian fruit. Perhaps this vague idea of the Greeks dates from the retreat of the ten thousand (401 B.C.); but Xenophon does not mention the peach. Nor do the Hebrew writings speak of it. The peach has no Sanskrit name, yet the peoples who spoke this language came into India from the north-west; that is to say, from the generally received home of the species. On this hypothesis, how are we to account for the fact that neither the Greeks of the early times of Greece, nor the Hebrews, nor the Sanskrit-speaking peoples, who all radiated from the upper part of the Euphrates valley or communicated with it, did not cultivate the peach? On the other hand, it is very possible that the stones of a fruit tree cultivated in China from the remotest times, should have been carried over the mountains from the centre of Asia into Kashmir, Bokhara, and Persia. The Chinese had very early discovered this route. The importation would have taken place between the epoch of the Sanskrit emigrations and the relations of the Persians with the Greeks. The cultivation of the peach, once established in Persia, would have easily spread on the one side towards the west; on the other, through Cabul towards the north of India, where it is not so very ancient.
“In confirmation of the hypothesis of a Chinese origin, it may be added that the peach was introduced into Cochin-China from China,[1106] and that the Japanese give the Chinese name Tao[1107] to the peach. M. Stanislas Julien was kind enough to read to me in French some passages of the Japanese encyclopædia (bk. lxxxvi. p. 7), in which the peach tree tao is said to be a tree of Western countries, which should be understood to mean the interior of China as compared to the eastern coast, since the passage is taken from a Chinese author. The tao occurs in the writings of Confucius in the fifth century before the Christian era, and even in the Ritual in the tenth century before Christ. Its wild nature is not specified in the encyclopædia of which I have just spoken; but Chinese authors pay little attention to this point.”
After a few details about the common names of the peach in different languages, I went on to say, “The absence of Sanskrit and Hebrew names remains the most important fact, whence we may infer an introduction into Western Asia from a more distant land, that is to say, from China.
“The peach has been found wild in different parts of Asia; but it is always a question whether it is indigenous there, or whether it sprang from the dispersion of stones produced by cultivated trees. The question is the more necessary since the stones germinate easily, and several of the modifications of the peach are hereditary.[1108] Apparently wild peach trees have often been found in the neighbourhood of the Caucasus. Pallas[1109] saw several on the banks of the Terek, where the inhabitants give it a name which he calls Persian, scheptata.[1110] Its fruit is velvety, sour, not very fleshy, and hardly larger than a walnut; the tree small. Pallas suspects that this tree has degenerated from cultivated peaches. He adds that it is found in the Crimea, to the south of the Caucasus, and in Persia; but Marshall, Bieberstein, Meyer, and Hohenacker do not give the wild peach in the neighbourhood of the Caucasus. Early travellers, Gmelin, Guldenstadt, and Georgi, quoted by Ledebour, mentioned it. C. Koch[1111] is the only modern botanist who said he found the peach tree in abundance in the Caucasian provinces. Ledebour, however, prudently adds, Is it wild? The stones which Brugnière and Olivier brought from Ispahan, which were sown in Paris and yielded a good velvety peach, were not, as Bosc[1112] asserted, taken from a peach tree wild in Persia, but from one growing in a garden at Ispahan.[1113] I do not know of any proof of a peach tree found wild in Persia, and if travellers mention any it is always to be feared that these are only sown trees. Dr. Royle[1114] says that the peach grows wild in several places south of the Himalayas, notably near Mussouri, but we have seen that its culture is not ancient in these regions, and neither Roxburgh nor Don’s Flora Nepalensis mention the peach. Bunge[1115] only found cultivated trees in the north of China. This country has hardly been explored, and Chinese legends seem sometimes to indicate wild peaches. Thus the Chou-y-ki, according to the author previously quoted, says, ‘Whosoever eats of the peaches of Mount Kouoliou shall obtain eternal life.’ For Japan, Thunberg[1116] says, Crescit ubique vulgaris, præcipue juxta Nagasaki. In omni horto colitur ob elegantiam florum. It seems from this passage that the species grows both in and out of gardens, but perhaps in the first case he only alludes to peaches growing in the open air and without shelter.
“I have said nothing hitherto of the distinction to be established between the different varieties or species of the peach, since most of them are cultivated in all countries—at least the clearly defined kinds, which may be considered as botanical species. Thus the great distinction between the downy and smooth-skinned fruits (peaches proper and nectarines), on which it is proposed to found two species (Persica vulgaris, Mill, and P. levis, D. C.), exists in Japan[1117] and in Europe, as in most of the intermediate countries.[1118] Less importance is attached to distinctions founded on the adherence or non-adherence of the skin, on the white, yellow, or red colour of the flesh, and on the general form of the fruit. The great division into peaches and nectarines presents most of these modifications in Europe, in Western Asia, and probably in China. It is certain that in the latter country the form of the fruit varies more than elsewhere; for there are as in Europe oval peaches, and also the peaches of which I spoke just now, which are quite flattened, in which the top of the stone is not even covered with flesh.[1119] The colour also varies greatly.[1120] In Europe the most distinct varieties, nectarines and peaches, freestones and clingstones, existed three centuries ago, for J. Bauhin enumerates them very clearly;[1121] and before him Dalechamp, in 1587, also gave the principal ones.[1122] At that time nectarines were called Nucipersica, because of their resemblance in shape, size, and colour to the walnut. It is in the same sense that the Italians call them pescanoce.
“I have sought in vain for a proof that the nectarine existed in Italy in the time of ancient Rome. Pliny,[1123] who confounds in his compilation peaches, plums, the Laurus Persea,[1124] and perhaps other trees, says nothing which can apply to such a fruit. Sometimes people have thought they recognized it in the tuberes of which he speaks. It was a tree imported from Syria in the time of Augustus. There were both red and white tuberes. Others (tuberes? or mala?) of the neighbourhood of Verona were downy. Some graceful verses of Petronus, quoted by Dalechamp,[1125] clearly prove that the tuberes of the Romans in Nero’s time were a smooth-skinned fruit; but this might be the jujube (Zizyphus), Diospyros, or some Cratægus, just as well as the smooth-skinned peach. Each author in the time of the Renaissance had his opinion on this point, or criticized that of the others.[1126] Perhaps there were two or three species of tuberes, as Pliny says, and one of them which was grafted on plum trees was the nectarine (?)[1127] but I doubt whether this question can ever be cleared up.[1128]
“Even admitting that the Nucipersica was only introduced into Europe in the Middle Ages, we cannot help remarking that in European gardens for centuries, and in Japan from time unknown, there was an intermixture of all the principal kinds of peach. It seems that its different qualities were produced everywhere from a primitive species, which was probably the downy peach. If the two kinds had existed from the beginning, either they would have been in different countries, and their cultivation would have been established separately, or they would have been in the same country, and in this case it is probable that one kind would have been anciently introduced into this country and the other into that.”
I laid stress, in 1855, on other considerations in support of the theory that the nectarine is derived from the common peach; but Darwin has given such a large number of cases in which a branch of nectarine has unexpectedly appeared upon a peach tree, that it is useless to insist longer upon this point, and I will only add that the nectarine has every appearance of an artificial tree. Not only is it not found wild, but it never becomes naturalized, and each tree lives for a shorter time than the common peach. It is, in fact, a weakened form.
“The facility,” I said, “with which our peach trees are multiplied from seed in America, and have produced fleshy fruits, sometimes very fine ones, without the resource of grafting, inclines me to think that the species is in a natural state, little changed by a long cultivation or by hybrid fertilization. In Virginia and the neighbouring states there are peaches grown on trees raised from seed and not grafted, and their abundance is so great that brandy is made from them.[1129] On some trees the fruit is magnificent.[1130] At Juan Fernandez, says Bertero,[1131] the peach tree is so abundant that it is impossible to form an idea of the quantity of fruit which is gathered; it is usually very good, although the trees have reverted to a wild condition. From these instances it would not be surprising if the wild peaches with indifferent fruit found in Western Asia were simply naturalized trees in a climate not wholly favourable, and that the species was of Chinese origin, where its cultivation seems most ancient.”
Dr. Bretschneider,[1132] who at Pekin has access to all the resources of Chinese literature, merely says, after reading the above passages, “Tao is the peach tree. De Candolle thinks that China is the native country of the peach. He may be right.”