A highly esteemed old English apple, suitable principally for culinary purposes, but also valuable for the dessert; it is in use from December to the end of April.
The tree attains about the middle size, is a free and healthy grower, and an excellent bearer.
This is, I believe, the oldest existing English apple on record. It is noticed as being cultivated in Norfolk, as early as the year 1200,—what evidence against Mr. Knight’s theory! In Blomefield’s History of Norfolk, there is mention of a tenure in that county by petty serjeanty, and the payment of two hundred pearmains, and four hogsheads of cider of pearmains into the Exchequer, at the feast of St. Michael, yearly. It is the original of all the Pearmains, a name now applied to a great variety of apples. Much doubt has existed as to the origin of this word, and in a communication to the Gardener’s Chronicle for 1848, I there stated what I conceived to be its meaning. The early forms in which it was written, will be seen from the synonymes above, they were Pearemaine and Peare-maine. In some early historical works of the same period, I have seen Charlemagne written Charlemaine, the last portion of the word having the same termination as Pearemaine. Now, Charlemagne being derived from Carolus magnus there is every probability that Pearemaine is derived from Pyrus magnus. The signification therefore of Pearmain is the Great Pear Apple, in allusion no doubt, to the varieties known by that name, bearing a resemblance to the form of a pear.
393. WINTER QUOINING.
- Synonymes.—Winter Queening, [Rea. Pom.] 212. [Raii. Hist.] ii. 1448. [Fors. Treat.] 100. [Hort. Soc. Cat.] ed. 3, n. 610. Winter Quinin, [Nourse Camp. Fel.] 146. Calville d’Angleterre. Langer Rother Himbeerapfel, [Diel Kernobst.] v. 15.
Fruit, medium sized, two inches and a quarter wide, and rather more than two inches and a half high; conical, distinctly five-sided, with five acute angles, extending the whole length of the fruit, and terminating at the crown in five equal, and prominent crowns. Skin, pale-green, almost entirely covered with red, which is striped and mottled with deeper red, and marked on the shaded side with a thin coat of russet. Eye, small, and closed, set in a narrow and angular cavity. Stalk, about half-an-inch long and slender, deeply inserted in a narrow and angular cavity. Flesh, greenish-yellow, tender, soft, not very juicy, sugary, rich, and perfumed.
A good old English apple, suitable either for the dessert or culinary purposes; it is in use from November to May.
The Winter Quoining, is a very old English apple. I have here adopted an orthography, different from that usually employed, because I conceive it to be the most correct. The name is derived from the word Coin or Quoin, the corner stones of a building, because of the angles or corners on the sides of the fruit. Thus Rea in his Pomona says, when speaking of this apple, “it succeeds incomparably on the paradise apple, as the Colviele, (Calville) and all other sorts of Queenings do,” regarding the Calville also as a Queening from the angularity of its shape.