The peaches of New York

by U. P. Hedrick

Seven pubescent-fruited species of Prunus are found in the Southwestern States. From reading the descriptions, it is hard to tell whether these plants, unique in more than one respect, are most closely related to peaches, plums, apricots or almonds. Professor S. C. Mason of the United States Department of Agriculture, who has studied these fruits,[181] thinks that some if not all of them may have horticultural value, at least in the Southwest where fluctuations of heat and cold are great and drought and alkalinity of soil must be endured by plant-life. They deserve brief mention in The Peaches of New York because of the possibility that some of them can be used as dwarfing-stocks for the peach and possibly that some may be hybridized with cultivated peaches. The species, with brief notes taken for most part from Mason, are as follows:

Prunus texana Dietrich, the "wild peach" of Texas, is a plum-like fruit from eastern Texas of which there are already several hybrids with the wild plums of the region. Prunus andersonii Gray is the "wild almond" or "wild peach" of Nevada. The species is found in western Nevada and eastern California in a region subject to severe cold in winter and extreme drought and heat in summer. One cultivator of this species suggests it as a good stock for the peach and the almond and thinks it has possibilities for hybridization.[182] The "desert apricot," Prunus eriogyna Mason, comes from a very restricted region in southern California. The characters of this species should fit it to endure the environment on the desert slopes of mountains. The "desert almond," Prunus fasciculata Torrey, sometimes called "wild peach" and "wild almond," ranges much farther south and east than Prunus andersonii in southern Nevada and southern California, crossing into southwestern Utah and northwestern Arizona, and grows in gravels and sands where its roots penetrate to great depth. Prunus minutiflora Engelman, the "Texas almond," is found in southwestern Texas, a shrub which, like the former species and the one following, is dioecious, a marked and unique peculiarity of these three species. The "Mexican almond," Prunus microphylla Hemsley, is found in the high mountain region of Mexico. Prunus havardii Wight, is known only in a restricted region in western Texas. The last two species are so little known that one cannot even surmise whether they may have horticultural possibilities.

HORTICULTURAL CLASSIFICATIONS OF THE PEACH

The opening years of the Nineteenth Century mark the first attempts at classifying peaches. By 1818 as many as three classificatory schemes had been proposed, all being modifications of the same general arrangement. July 7, 1818, John Robertson read a paper on classifying peaches and nectarines before the Horticultural Society of London. Later, this was printed in the Transactions of the Society[183] together with a classification by M. Poiteau from the Bon Jardinier and another by Count Lelieur from his Pomone Francaise. In January, 1824, George Lindley read before the same society a classification which was but an extension of the older arrangements.[184]

Robertson separated peaches into true peaches and nectarines and these in turn into Classes, Divisions and Sub-divisions. He founded the two classes on the presence or absence of glands; for each of his classes he made two divisions distinguished by the size and color of the flowers; each of the four divisions is once redivided into a sub-division in which the flesh parts from the stone and another in which the flesh adheres to the stone. The two French writers use the same characters but found their second division on the adherence or non-adherence of the flesh to the stone; their third on the size of the flower but making three partitions as to size; and their fourth on the presence or absence of glands which they divide into globose and reniform. Lindley created three classes dependent on the presence or absence and the character of the glands and the character of the serrations; three divisions of each class in accordance as to whether the flowers are large, medium-sized or small; two sub-divisions of each division to agree with the presence or absence of down; and for each sub-division two sections, one for clingstones and one for melters.

This was the age of the classifier and other classifications, all similar in plan, rapidly followed in England, France, Belgium and Germany. No one at this time seems to have attempted a natural classification of peaches.

Of the nine leading American pomological writers of the Nineteenth Century, Coxe, Prince, Cole, Hooper, Elliott and Barry either do not attempt to classify or make but one or two simple divisions. Kenrick, 1832, follows Lindley in part but makes use of season in his classification. Downing in his first edition, 1845, divides peaches into freestones with pale flesh, freestones with deep yellow flesh and clingstones. This simple arrangement by Downing is notable only because it is the first time color of flesh is made use of as a distinguishing mark, the Europeans probably not having done so because yellow-fleshed varieties are rare in Europe whereas in America they are as common or more so than white-fleshed sorts. Thomas, in 1846, did not classify but in later editions divided peaches into two divisions, founded on adherence of flesh to the stone; two classes for each division in accordance with color of flesh; and three sections founded on leaf-serrations and glands.

These Nineteenth Century classifications are artificial. That is, they single out a few points of resemblance and difference and arrange varieties in accordance with them, convenience and facility of use being the controlling principles. They are natural to a degree, however, because varieties agreeing in one point of structure commonly agree in other characters. With the peach, more than in the artificial classification of most other fruits, the characters are readily distinguished and are stable. Yet most English pomologies now arrange varieties of peaches alphabetically, while the American texts do the same or use the pseudo-natural system of Onderdonk. His classification we are about to discuss. The early artificial arrangements failed to stand the test of time because classifiers could not agree upon any one arrangement and added confusion by the multiplicity of them; and, because the new varieties of the last half-century, coming in great numbers, are so poorly described that the great majority of them could not be classified from the data at hand.

In 1887 Gilbert Onderdonk,[185] a special agent of the United States Department of Agriculture, published a natural classification of peaches.[186] He put varieties of peaches into five groups which he called races and to which he gave the names: Persian, Northern Chinese, Spanish, Southern Chinese and Peento. He bounded peach-culture in America on the north by the Great Lakes and on the south by the Gulf and divided this great region into five zones to each of which he assigned one of his races. Onderdonk studied peaches in Texas and found there remarkable distinguishing characters; as, in adaptations to southern climates, in length of the rest-period, in differences in leafing, blooming and fruiting-time, and in the organs of the plants. Professor R. H. Price, working with a large number of varieties at the Texas Agricultural College, verified and greatly extended Onderdonk's observations.[187] Eventually, Price became the pontifical authority in this country on the classification of peaches and in numerous articles and addresses set forth the Onderdonk grouping of varieties so convincingly that it was adopted by practically all American pomologists and at present is in use, to some degree at least, in nearly all of our horticultural literature. It becomes necessary, therefore, to scrutinize closely this natural classification of Onderdonk and Price.

The end to be attained in a classification of peaches, as in classifying natural objects of any kind, is to provide an epitome of the knowledge of the fruits classified. Incidentally, a classification helps in the identification of varieties of peaches. Does the Onderdonk classification serve these purposes? We have not found that it does. In most arduous attempts to arrange the sorts of peaches growing on the Station grounds according to the Onderdonk plan, we have wholly failed. Even the varieties named as types do not fit, as they grow in the north, in the places provided for them by these southern classifiers. Indeed, we have wasted so much time and patience in attempting to group varieties according to Onderdonk and Price, and with so little success, that the Onderdonk classification seems to us to be cursed with the confusion of Babel. Since pomologists so generally accept this classification, these words demand that it be shown wherein this attempt at a natural arrangement of varieties fails.