The peaches of New York

by U. P. Hedrick

It is possible—would that we could know the facts—that Spain may have played an important part in introducing peaches into Europe. For the earliest Spanish gardens were the work of the Moors and since Moorish gardens, wonderful in beauty of design, show a strong resemblance to the gardens of Persia, what more probable than that the Moor, half-Asiatic, early brought the peach from Persia to Spain.

The peach in England.—The peach and the gooseberry do not thrive side by side. England grows the gooseberry to highest perfection, fogs, rains and cloudy weather seemingly ministering to its wants. But the peach loves sun, heat and clear skies and if these come not naturally the peach-tree must be artificially grown. The peach is not, after centuries of cultivation, acclimatized in England. But in all times, and of all people, the English have been most fond of gardens and orchards and so beautiful and delectable a fruit as the peach could not escape their attention. And so, though under the necessity of growing this fruit on walls or under glass, England, since the Middle Ages, has done much toward the development of the peach, the difficulties of culture seeming to stimulate interest. Her pomological literature is particularly rich in references to this fruit. We in America, too, are greatly indebted to England for many varieties of peaches. The history of the peach in England, then, should afford much interesting and profitable material in this discussion.

There seems to be no record of the Romans having brought the peach to England, yet there can be little doubt that they did so. The remains in England of Roman houses, baths, roads, pavements and bridges, very similar if not quite so well built as those of Italy, suggest that there were Roman gardens about these early houses and villas in England just as there were about those in the great Empire on the Mediterranean. Moreover, there was an early Saxon name for the peach. The Latin is "Persica;" the early Anglo-Saxon is "Persoc treou;" the English, "peach."[88] But gardening in England for most part went as it came, with the Romans, and, during nearly a thousand years of struggling with barbarians after the fall of the Roman Empire, the peach, in common with all other garden-plants needing culture, seems to have disappeared and was not reintroduced until in the Thirteenth Century.

That the peach came to England, as a permanent asset, from France, is so certain from the general history of English horticulture, though there be no authentic record to substantiate the statement, that we need consider no alternative. One looks in vain for a satisfactory date for the beginning of peach-culture in England. In France the monastic orders, as we have seen, were the conservators of horticulture, as they were of all arts excepting war, and we feel sure that, as the Church reached England, some good bishop, father or brother planted peaches in a monastery garden. Yet our quest of a date is rewarded with nothing earlier than 1216, in which year, according to the Chronicle of Roger of Wendover,[89] "King John, at Newark, in the midst of his despair and disappointment, hastened his end by a surfeit of peaches and ale." From this we may certainly say that peach-culture was established in England at least as early as the beginning of the Thirteenth Century.

Two hundred years elapse before we find another reference to the peach in England. Lydgate, English monk and poet (1375-1440?), as quoted by the Hon. Mrs. Evelyn Cecil,[90] mentioned peaches among "the fruits which more common be." Possibly an earlier reference is found in Chaucer's Romaunt of the Rose:

"And many hoomely trees there were That peches, coynes, and apples bere."

English fruit-books commonly accredit the introduction of the peach in England to a certain Wolf, gardener to Henry VIII, and fix the date at about 1524, but the quotations given show that this fruit was probably well established long before the Sixteenth Century. Perhaps it suffices to say that the peach began to be cultivated in England at the close of the Middle Ages—a time sufficiently vague to be convenient in the state of inexactness of our knowledge.

In the Sixteenth Century references to the peach become so numerous that one cannot reckon with all of them. Selecting only a few notable names of writers on plants, we have Turner, one of the first and perhaps the greatest of British herbalists, who mentions the peach in his Herball of 1551, though rather disparagingly, for he says: "The peche is no great tre in England that I could se—the apples are soft flesshy when they are rype, something hory without." Tusser, author of Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandrie, 1573, the best-known work on farming of the times, gives a list of fruits to be transplanted in January among which are "Peaches, white and red." Lastly, the century ends with John Gerarde's The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes, 1597, in which the peach is treated at greater length and to better advantage than by any previous English author. An improved edition of Gerarde's herbal was brought out in 1633 by Thomas Johnson who adds very materially to the discussion of the peach in the first edition and from this we quote in full all that pertains to varieties:[91]

"There are divers sorts of Peaches besides the foure here set forth by our Author, but the trees do not much differ in shape, but the difference chiefly consists in the fruit, whereof I will give you the names of the choice ones, and such as are to be had from my friend Mr. Miller in Old-street, which are these; two sorts of Nutmeg Peaches; The Queenes Peach; the Newington Peach; The grand Carnation Peach; The Carnation Peach; The blacke Peach; The Melocotone; The White; The Romane; The Alberza; The Island Peach; Peach du Troy. These are all good ones. He hath also of that kinde of Peach which some call Nucipersica or Nectorins, these following kindes; the Roman red, the best of fruits; the bastard Red; the little dainty greene; the Yellow, the White; the Russet, which is not so good as the rest. Those that would see any fuller discourse of these may have recourse to the late work of Mr. John Parkinson, where they may find more varieties, and more largely handled, and therefore not necessary for me in this place to insist upon them.

1. The Peach tree is a tree of no great bignesse: it sendeth forth divers boughes, which be so brittle, as oftentimes they are broken with the weight of the fruit or with the winde. The leaves be long, nicked in the edges, like almost to those of the Walnut tree, and in taste bitter: the floures be of a light purple colour. The fruit of Peaches be round, and have as it were a chinke or cleft on the one side; they are covered with a soft and thin downe or hairy cotton, being white without, and of a pleasant taste; in the middle whereof is a rough or rugged stone, wherein is contained a kernell like unto the Almond; the meate about the stone is of a white color. The root is tough and yellowish.