Fruit mid-season; one and one-quarter inches by one and one-eighth inches in size, ovate, purplish-red, covered with thin bloom, yellowish, rather dry, firm, sweet, mild; of good quality; stone very free, three-quarters inch by one-half inch in size, irregular-oval, flattened, with faintly pitted surfaces; ventral suture distinctly winged; dorsal suture with a narrow, shallow groove.
WASHINGTON
WASHINGTON
Prunus domestica
1. Prince Treat. Hort. 24. 1828. 2. Pom. Mag. 1:16, Pl. 1828. 3. Lond. Hort. Soc. Cat. 154. 1831. 4. Prince Pom. Man. 2:53. 1832. 5. Floy-Lindley Guide Orch. Gard. 298, 383, 418. 1846. 6. Cole Am. Fr. Book 210. 1849. 7. Thomas Am. Fruit Cult. 326 fig., 327. 1849. 8. Hovey Fr. Am. 1:87, Col. Pl. 1851. 9. Am. Pom. Soc. Cat. 54. 1852. 10. Elliott Fr. Book 415. 1854. 11. Ann. Pom. Belge 4:23, Pl. 1856. 12. Thompson Gard. Ass’t 520. 1859. 13. Downing Fr. Trees Am. 951. 1869. 14. Pom. France 7: No. 24. 1871. 15. Mas Le Verger 6:59. 1866-73. 16. Hogg Fruit Man. 729. 1884. 17. Mathieu Nom. Pom. 453. 1889. 18. Mich. Sta. Bul. 103:32, 33, fig. 1894. 19. Cornell Sta. Bul. 131:193. 1897. 20. Va. Sta. Bul. 134:44. 1902. 21. Can. Exp. Farm Bul. 43:36. 1903.
Anglesio 17. Bolmar 3, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17. Bolmar’s Washington 3, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 17. Bolmar’s Washington 5. Bolmer 1, 4, 13, 17. Bolmer’s Washington 1, 4, 13. Bolmore’s Washington 4. Double Imperial Gage 1, 4. Franklin 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17. Imperial Gage (of Albany) 4. Irving’s Bolmar 10, 13, 16, 17. Irving’s Bolmer 14. Jackson 11, 13, 14, 17. Louis Philippe 14. Louis Philipp 17. New Washington 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 17. Parker’s Mammoth 10, 13, 16, 17. Philippe 1, 11, 13, 14, 17. Prune Washington Jaune 11. Superior Gage 1, 4, 8. Superior Green Gage 4, 8. The Washington Plum 2, 8. Washington 5, 8. Washington Bolmar 8. Washington Gage 4. Washington Jaune 13, 14, 17. Washington Mammot 14, 17. Washington Yellow 17.
Washington holds high rank among the Reine Claude varieties, plums unsurpassed for dessert purposes. The fruits are large in size for one of this group; handsome in form and color (in the latter respect the color-plate does not do the variety justice); abundant in juice yet firm and meaty enough in flesh to keep and ship well; fine in flavor though not quite equalling some others of its group in this character. The trees are large, hardy, vigorous and healthy, remarkable for their broad, glossy, abundant leaves, bear bountiful crops annually and at a favorable period of maturity. Washington thus has a combination of characters which few of its group, with which only it must be compared, possess. The variety, however, is not without defects; the fruits are subject to brown-rot, so much so that its value as a commercial variety is greatly lessened; the quality varies greatly in different locations and even in different years,—the latter very noticeable on the Station grounds; the trees are slow in coming in bearing and the crops are small for some years after fruiting begins. From the above considerations it may be seen that while this variety is almost always worth planting in a home collection, the location for it as a commercial fruit needs to be chosen with some care.
There are two accounts of the origin of this variety. William Prince gives its history as follows (References, 1): “It has always been the custom at the establishment of the author, at Flushing, to plant annually the seeds of the finest fruits, for the purpose of originating new varieties; and, about the year 1790, his father planted the pits of twenty-five quarts of the Green Gage plum; these produced trees yielding fruit of every colour; and the White Gage, Red Gage, and Prince’s Gage, now so well known, form part of the progeny of those plums; and there seems strong presumptive evidence to suppose that the Washington Plum was one of the same collection.” Michael Floy gives a different history of the Washington (References, 5). He states that he received the variety in 1818 from a Mr. Bolmar of New York who in turn had purchased his trees from a market woman in 1814. The purchased trees were produced as suckers from the roots of a Reine Claude tree which had been killed below the graft by lightning on the Delancey farm, now the Bowery, in New York City. In 1819, a few of the trees, budded the previous year by Floy, were sent to England. The American Pomological Society added the Washington to its fruit catalog list in 1852. Taking in consideration the evidence of other writers and further facts offered in other accounts by the Princes, father and son, it seems almost certain that the first history is correct and that Bolmar’s trees had their origin in the Prince nursery.
Tree large, vigorous, round and open-topped, hardy, very productive; branches dark ash-gray, rough becoming shaggy on the trunk, with small lenticels; branchlets below medium in thickness and length, with long internodes, green changing to brownish-red, thinly pubescent, with small lenticels of average number; leaf-buds of medium size and length, pointed, free.