A more detailed discussion of the horticultural and botanical characters of the peach logically follows here.

PRUNUS PERSICA Stokes.

1.P. Persica Stokes Bot. Mat. Med. 3:100. 1812.
2.P. Persica var. vulgaris Maximowicz Mel. Biol. 11:668. 1883.
3.P. Persica var. necturina Maximowicz l. c. 669. (nectarine)
4.P. Persica var. laevis Gray
5.P. Persica var. nucipersica Dippel Handb. Laub. 3:606. 1893. (nectarine)
6.P. Persica var. platycarpa Bailey Cyc. Am. Hort. 1456. 1901. (Flat Peach, Peento)
7.Amygdalus Persica Linnaeus Sp. Pl. Ed. 1:472. 1753.
8.A. Persica var. nucipersica Linnaeus l. c. 676. (nectarine)
9.A. nectarina Aiton Hort. Kew Ed. 2, 3:194. 1811. (nectarine)
10.A. Nuci-persica Reichenbach Fl. Germ. Exc. 647. 1832. (nectarine)
11.A. laevis Dietrich Syn. Pl. 3:42. 1852. (nectarine)
12.Persica vulgaris Miller Gard. Dict. Ed. 8: No. 1. 1768.
13.P. nucipersica Borkhausen Forstb. Beschrb. 205. 1790. (nectarine)
14.P. laevis De Candolle Fl. Fran. 4:487. 1805. (nectarine)
15.P. platycarpa Decaisne Jard. Fr. Mus. (Pechers) 42. 1872-75. (Flat Peach, Peento)

Tree low, attaining a height of thirty feet, diffuse, open-headed, broad-topped, often without a central leader; trunk at maturity sometimes a foot in diameter; bark dark reddish-brown, in old trees rough and scaly; branches spreading, slender and sometimes drooping; twigs round, rather slender, glabrous, glossy green changing to shades of red, with numerous, large or small, conspicuous, usually raised lenticels.

The leaves are alternate, simple, four to seven inches long, one to two inches wide, broad-lanceolate or more often oblong-lanceolate; upper surface dark green, smooth, dull or shining, some rugose along the midrib; lower surface paler, with little or no pubescence; apex long-tapering, base abrupt or acute; margins coarsely or finely serrate, or crenate, sometimes doubly toothed, teeth tipped with glands or sometimes glandless; petioles stout, from a quarter-inch to an inch long, grooved, glandless or more often with from one to eight globose or reniform glands, sometimes mixed, a part of which may be on the base of the leaf.

The flowers develop from scaly buds on the wood of the previous season; flower-buds plump, conical or obtuse, free or appressed and usually appearing before the leaves; flowers of two distinct sizes, with some intermediates, the smaller size ranging under an inch in diameter, the larger, an inch and a half or more; the floral color ranges from an occasional pure white through shades of pink to deep red; fragrant and always pleasantly so; pedicels very short, sometimes seemingly wanting, glabrous, green; calyx-tube urn-shaped, usually smooth but sometimes pubescent without, green overlaid with red outside, greenish-yellow or dark orange within; calyx-lobes five in number, short, broad, glabrous within, pubescent without; petals ovate, five in number, rounded at the apex which is sometimes notched, tapering to a claw, sometimes notched at the base; stamens twenty to thirty, about one-half inch long, slender, distinct, usually colored; anthers yellow; ovary sessile, pubescent, one-celled, surmounted by a simple style which is terminated with a small stigma, the whole pistil equaling the stamens in length or longer.

Fruit a fleshy drupe, sub-globular but much modified in shape and size under cultivation; suture usually distinct; cavity well marked, abrupt; apex with a mamelon or mucronate tip; color varying from greenish-white to orange-yellow, usually with a red cheek on the side exposed to the sun, sometimes covered with red; very pubescent except in the nectarine; skin adherent or free from the pulp; flesh greenish-white or yellowish, often stained with red at the pit, occasionally red, sweetish, acidulous, aromatic; stone free or clinging, elliptic or ovoid, sometimes flat, compressed, pointed; outer surfaces wrinkled and pitted, inner surfaces polished; ventral and dorsal sutures grooved or furrowed, sometimes winged; the seed almond-like, aromatic, bitter.

The characters given in the foregoing description are those of the cultivated peach—the consummate fruit of Prunus persica. The generic name, Prunus, is the ancient Latin name of the plum, Prunus domestica, the type species. The specific name, persica, commemorates the old belief that the peach came from Persia. The common name, peach, in English, as in most European languages, is a derivative from persica. Amygdalus, found several times in the synonomy, is the Syrian name of the almond. The drupe-fruits are put in two, three and sometimes four genera by various botanists but in the fruit-books issued by this Station, following most botanists and pomologists, all are put in a single genus, Prunus. Such lumping of several distinct fruits into one genus has its disadvantages but the several fruits cannot be reasonably separated because outliers closely connect all. Hybridization between the cultivated stone-fruits adds to the perplexities of classification.

Prunus persica is variously divided by botanists and pomologists. Quite commonly two botanical varieties of edible peaches are split off, as shown in the synonomy, to separate the nectarine and the flat peaches from the pubescent and globular peaches. But these sub-species, originating over and over in the case of the nectarine as a bud or seed-mutation and the flat peaches probably having originated as a mutation, are not more distinct from the parent species than the red-fleshed sorts, the snowball peaches, the Yellow Transvaals from South Africa, the nippled peach, the cleft peach, the beaked peach, the winter peaches of China, or the pot-grown dwarfs from China; in fact, are not more different from other peaches than a clingstone is from a freestone, a yellow flesh from a white flesh or a large-flowered from a small-flowered sort. All constitute merely pomological groups, which, more and more, are becoming interminably confused by hybridization.

ALTON (Large Flowered)