The apricot is propagated by budding on the mussel or common plum stock. The tree succeeds in good well-drained loamy soil, rather light than heavy. It is usually grown as a wall tree, the east and west aspects being preferred to the south, which induces mealiness in the fruit, though in Scotland the best aspects are necessary. The most usual and best mode of training is the fan method. The fruit is produced on shoots of the preceding year, and on small close spurs formed on the two-year-old wood. The trees should be planted about 20 ft. apart. The summer pruning should begin early in June, at which period all the irregular foreright and useless shoots are pinched off; and, shortly afterwards, those which remain are fastened to the wall. At the winter pruning all branches not duly furnished with spurs and fruit buds are removed. The young bearing shoots are moderately pruned at the points, care being, however, taken to leave a terminal shoot or leader to each branch. The most common error in the pruning of apricots is laying in the bearing shoots too thickly; the branches naturally diverge in fan training, and when they extend so as to be about 15 in. apart, a fresh branch should be laid in, to be again subdivided as required. The blossoms of the apricot open early in spring, but are more hardy than those of the peach; the same means of protection when necessary may be employed for both. If the fruit sets too numerously, it is thinned out in June and in the beginning of July, the later thinnings being used for tarts. In the south of England, where the soil is suitable, the hardier sorts of apricot, as the Breda and Brussels, bear well as standard trees in favourable seasons. In such cases the trees may be planted from 20 to 25 ft. apart.
The ripening of the fruit of the apricot is accelerated by culture under glass, the trees being either planted out like peaches or grown in pots on the orchard-house system. They must be very gently excited, since they naturally bloom when the spring temperature is comparatively low. At first a maximum of 40° only must be permitted; after two or three weeks it may be raised to 45°, and later on to 50° and 55°, and thus continued till the trees are in flower, air being freely admitted, and the minimum or night temperature ranging from 40° to 45°. After the fruit is set the temperature should be gradually raised, being kept higher in clear weather than in dull. When the fruit has stoned, the temperature may be raised to 60° or 65° by day and 60° by night; and for ripening off it may be allowed to reach 70° or 80° by sun heat.
The Moorpark is one of the best and most useful sorts in cultivation, and should be planted for all general purposes; the Peach is a very similar variety, not quite identical; and the Hemskerk is also similar, but hardier. The Large Early, which ripens in the end of July and beginning of August, and the Kaisha, a sweet-kernelled variety, which ripens in the middle of August, are also to be recommended. For standard trees in favourable localities the Breda and Brussels may be added.
APRIES (Άπρίης), the name by which Herodotus (ii. 161) and Diodorus (i. 68) designate Uehabrē‛, Οὐαφρής (Pharaoh-Hophra), the fourth king (counting from Psammetichus I.) of the twenty-sixth Egyptian dynasty. He reigned from 589 to 570 B.C. See [Egypt] and [Amasis].
APRIL, the second month of the ancient Roman, and the fourth of the modern calendar, containing thirty days. The derivation of the name is uncertain. The traditional etymology from Lat. aperire, “to open,” in allusion to its being the season when trees and flowers begin to “open,” is supported by comparison with the modern Greek use of ἅνοιξις (opening) for spring. This seems very possible, though, as all the Roman months were named in honour of divinities, and as April was sacred to Venus, the Festum Veneris et Fortunae Virilis being held on the first day, it has been suggested that Aprilis was originally her month Aphrilis, from her Greek name Aphrodite. Jacob Grimm suggests the name of a hypothetical god or hero, Aper or Aprus. On the fourth and the five following days, games (Ludi Megalenses) were celebrated in honour of Cybele; on the fifth there was the Festum Fortunae Publicae; on the tenth (?) games in the circus, and on the nineteenth equestrian combats, in honour of Ceres; on the twenty-first—which was regarded as the birthday of Rome—the Vinalia urbana, when the wine of the previous autumn was first tasted; on the twenty-fifth, the Robigalia, for the averting of mildew; and on the twenty-eighth and four following days, the riotous Floralia. The Anglo-Saxons called April Oster-monath or Eostur-monath, the period sacred to Eostre or Ostara, the pagan Saxon goddess of spring, from whose name is derived the modern Easter. St George’s day is the twenty-third of the month; and St Mark’s Eve, with its superstition that the ghosts of those who are doomed to die within the year will be seen to pass into the church, falls on the twenty-fourth. In China the symbolical ploughing of the earth by the emperor and princes of the blood takes place in their third month, which frequently corresponds to our April; and in Japan the feast of Dolls is celebrated in the same month. The “days of April” (journées d’avril) is a name appropriated in French history to a series of insurrections at Lyons, Paris and elsewhere, against the government of Louis Philippe in 1834, which led to violent repressive measures, and to a famous trial known as the procès d’avril.
See Chambers’s Book of Days; Grimm’s Geschichte der deutschen Sprache. Cap. “Monate”; also [April-fools’ Day].