A valuable dessert apple of first-rate quality, in use from October to Christmas.
The tree is a free grower and an excellent bearer.
81. CORNISH GILLIFLOWER.—Hort.
- Identification.—[Hort. Soc. Cat.] ed. 3, n. 267. [Lind. Guide], 67. [Down. Fr. Amer.] 102.
- Synonymes.—July-flower, [Hort. Trans.] vol. ii., p. 74. Cornish July-flower, Ibid. vol. iii., p. 323. Calville d’Angleterre, [Baum. Cat.] Pomme Regelans, acc. [Hort. Soc. Cat.]
- Figures.—[Pom. Mag.] t. 140. [Ron. Pyr. Mal.] pl. xix, f. 4.
Fruit, large, three inches and a quarter wide, and the same in height; ovate, angular on the sides, and ribbed round the eye, somewhat like a Quoining. Skin, dull green on the shaded side, and brownish red streaked with brighter red on the side next the sun; some parts of the surface marked with thin russet. Eye, large and closed, set in a narrow and angular basin. Stalk, three quarters of an inch long, inserted in a rather shallow cavity. Flesh, yellowish, firm, rich, and aromatic.
This is one of our best dessert apples, remarkable for its rich and aromatic flavor; it is in use from December to May.
The tree is hardy, and a free grower, attaining the middle size, but not an abundant bearer; it produces its fruit at the extremities of the last year’s wood, and great care should, therefore, be taken to preserve the bearing shoots. It succeeds well, grafted on the paradise stock, and grown as an espalier or an open dwarf.
This valuable apple was brought into notice by Sir Christopher Hawkins, who sent it to the London Horticultural Society, in 1813. It was discovered about the beginning of the present century, growing in a cottager’s garden, near Truro, in Cornwall.
The name July-flower is very often applied to this and some other varieties of apples, and also to flowers, but it is only a corruption of the more correct name Gilliflower, which is derived from the French Girofle, signifying a clove, and hence the flower which has the scent of that spice, is called Giroflier, which has been transformed to Gilliflower. In Chaucer’s “Romaunt of the Rose,” he writes it Gylofre.