In the Guide to the Orchard, it is said, “When baked in an oven which is not too hot, these apples are most excellent; they become sugary, and will keep a week or ten days, furnishing for the dessert a highly flavored sweetmeat.”
This is one of the oldest English apples. It is first mentioned by Parkinson as “a faire, greate, goodly apple; and very well rellished.” Ralph Austen calls it “a very choice fruit, and the trees beare well.” Indeed it is noticed by almost all the early authors. According to Ray it is named in honor of Dr. Gabriel Harvey, of Cambridge, “Pomum Harveianum ab inventore Gabriele Harveio Doctore nomen sortitum Cantabrigiæ suæ deliciæ.”
168. HARVEY’S PIPPIN.—Hort.
- Identification.—[Hort. Soc. Cat.] ed. 3, p. 19.
- Synonyme.—Dredge’s Beauty of Wilts, acc. [Hort. Soc. Cat.] [Rog. Fr. Cult.] 53.
Fruit, medium sized; roundish. Skin, yellow on the shaded side, but washed with fine red on the side next the sun, and marked with crimson dots. Flesh, firm, crisp, juicy, and richly flavored.
An excellent and useful apple either for culinary purposes or dessert use; it is in season from December to February.
The tree is a free grower and an excellent bearer; it attains above the middle size, and may be grown either as an open dwarf, or an espalier, when grafted on the paradise stock.
169. HARVEY’S WILTSHIRE DEFIANCE.—H.
Fruit, of the largest size; conical, and very handsomely shaped, distinctly five-sided, having five prominent and acute angles descending from the apex, till they are lost in the base. Skin, fine deep sulphur yellow; of a deeper shade on the side which is exposed to the sun, and covered all over with minute russety dots, with here and there ramifying patches of russet. Eye, pretty large and open, with short ragged segments, and set in a rather shallow and angular basin. Stalk, very short, about half-an-inch long, and not extending beyond the base, inserted in a round and deep cavity, lined with rough scaly russet, which branches out over a portion of the base. Flesh, yellowish, firm, crisp, and juicy, sugary, vinous, and richly flavored. Core, very small for the size of the apple.