was commonly cultivated from the Ninth Century on but none of the
writers whom he quotes gives a recognizable picture of the kinds of
peaches in their day until we come to the epoch-making agricultural
book of Olivier de Serres, who, in his _Théatre de Agriculture_,
published in 1604, names and describes twelve kinds of peaches. While
these descriptions are so incomplete as to be most tantalizing to one
trying to recognize varieties, yet Olivier de Serres is one of the
outstanding historians of agriculture and his few paragraphs on the
peach constitute a prominent landmark in the history of this fruit
because he names a considerable number of sorts and makes it plain
that the peach is no longer grown as a species but that varieties are
receiving recognition, though, sorry to say, we cannot be sure from the
fragmentary description whether or not any of his kinds have come down
to our time.
From the beginning of the Seventeenth Century the history of the peach
in France is common property to students of pomology. Botanists and
agriculturists by this time had begun to break away from Dioscorides,
Pliny and the other ancients of Greece and Rome; and in France, Germany
and England one herbal after another was beginning to appear in nearly
all of which the peach received attention. Perhaps, since France
plays so important a part in the development of the peach, a brief
recapitulation from French pomological authorities following Olivier de
Serres, showing the increase in varieties of this fruit and bringing
to mind the men who have written in pomology, may be of interest and
profit.
Lectier, agent of the King at Orleans, in a catalog of an orchard
in his charge, published a list of 27 varieties of peaches in 1628.
Thirty-nine years later, 1667, Merlet in his _Abrégé des bons fruits_
names 38 sorts of this fruit. For the next hundred years the increase
in number seems to have been small, for in 1768 Duhamel du Monceau in
_Traité des arbres fruitiers_, the first great pomological work to be
published, describes but 43 peaches. This century, however, was one
in which peach-culture increased enormously throughout France. At the
beginning of the period peaches began to be grown in the shelter of
walls--a method the results of which greatly increased the culture of
this fruit. Calvel, in 1805, names 60 varieties; Louis Noisette, 1839,
lists 60 sorts; André Leroy, 1852, names but 41 varieties, but in an
edition of the same work in 1865, describes 148 peaches; lastly, O.
Thomas in _Guide pratique_ (1876) publishes a list of 355 peaches.
_The peach in Belgium, Holland, Germany and Spain._--In the search
for prominent events in the development of the peach, we are absolved
from the task of tracing in detail the history of this fruit in the
countries named in the heading of this paragraph. These nations have
furnished no landmarks in the history of the peach. France has
provided all with their varieties of this fruit. Indeed, in none,
unless perhaps it be Spain, does the peach find a congenial climate
and certainly in none is the crop of any considerable commercial
value. Amateurs, too, in all but Spain at least, give their attention
to its orchard-associates rather than to the peach. It is true, as
we shall see, that the peach first came to America from Spain and a
considerable number of our varieties are now grouped in what is called
the "Spanish race." But horticulture in Spain, from the few accounts to
be had, is primitive in the extreme--there are no Spanish pomologies
and one cannot conceive that this country has aided appreciably in the
development of the peach.
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.
2. The red Peach tree is likewise a tree of no great bignesse; it also
sendeth forth divers boughes or branches which be very brittle. The
leaves be long, and nicked in the edges like to the precedent. The
floures be also like unto the former; the fruit or Peaches be round,
and of a red colour on the outside; the meate likewise about the stone
is of a gallant red colour. These kindes of Peaches are very like to
wine in taste, and therefore marvellous pleasant.
3. _Persica praecocia_, or the d'avant Peach tree is like unto the
former, but his leaves are greater and larger. The fruit or Peaches be
of a russet colour on the one side, and on the other side next unto the
Sun of a red colour, but much greater than the red Peach: the stones
whereof are like unto the former: the pulpe or meate within is of a
golden yellow colour, and of a pleasant taste.
4. _Persica lutea_, or the yellow Peach tree is like unto the former
in leaves and flours, his fruit is of a yellow color on the out side,
and likewise on the in side, harder than the rest: in the middle of the
Peach is a wooddy hard and rough stone full of crests and gutters, in
which doth ly a kernel much like to that of the almond, and with such a
like skin: the substance within is white, and of taste somewhat bitter.
The fruit hereof is of greatest pleasure, and of best taste of all the
other of his kinde; although there be found at this day divers other
sorts that are of very good taste, not remembered of the ancient, or
set down by the later Writers, whereof to speake particularly would not
bee great to our pretended purpose, considering wee hasten to an end.
5. There is also kept in some of our choice gardens a kind of Peach
which hath a very double and beautifull floure, but it is seldom
succeeded by any fruit: they call this _Persica flore pleno_, The
double blossomed Peach."
In the first edition Gerarde describes but four peaches, but Johnson,
36 years later, says "there are divers sorts besides the foure here
set forth by our Author" and then names thirteen "choice ones, such as
are to be had from my friend Miller in Old-street," who "hath also"
six varieties "of that kinde of Peach which some call _Nucipersia_
or _Nectorins_." Either Gerarde neglects the peach or varieties
increased greatly in 36 years--probably the former. We have not found
the nectarine mentioned before Johnson's revision of Gerarde in 1633
and probably this fruit was not well known in England long before,
for Parkinson, discussing them in 1629, says "they have been with us
not many years." This brings us to Parkinson's list of peaches, which
contains, as Johnson says, a "fuller discourse," than Gerarde. John
Parkinson (1567-1650), another British herbalist, who also cultivated a
famous garden in London, devotes a chapter to the peach and another to
the nectarine. These being short, and every word pertinent, we publish
them in full:[92]
"The great white Peach is white on the outside as the meate is also,
and is a good well rellished fruit.
The small white Peach is all one with the greater, but differeth in
size.
The Carnation Peach is of three sorts, two are round, and the third
long; they are all of a whitish colour, shadowed over with red, and
more red on the side is next the sunne: the lesser round is the more
common, and the later ripe.
The grand Carnation Peach is like the former round Peach, but greater,
and is as late ripe, that is, in the beginning of September.
The red Peach is an exceeding well rellished fruit.
The russet Peach is one of the most ordinary Peaches in the Kingdome,
being of a russet colour on the outside, and but of a reasonable
rellish, farre meaner then many other.
The Island Peach is a faire Peach, and of a very good rellish.
The Newington Peach is a very good Peach, and of an excellent good
rellish, being of a whitish greene colour on the outside, yet halfe
reddish, and is ripe about Bartholmew tide.
The yellow Peach is of a deepe yellow colour; there be hereof divers
sorts, some good and some bad.
The St. James Peach is the same with the Queenes Peach, here belowe set
downe, although some would make them differing.
The Melocotone Peach is a yellow faire Peach, but differing from the
former yellow both in forme and taste, in that this hath a small
crooked end or point for the most part, it is ripe before them, and
better rellished then any of them.
The Peach _du Troas_ is a long and great whitish yellow Peach, red on
the outside, early ripe, and is another kinde of Nutmeg Peach.
The Queenes Peach is a faire great yellowish browne Peach, shadowed as
it were over with deepe red, and is ripe at Bartholmew tide, of a very
pleasant good taste.
The Romane Peach is a very good Peach, and well rellished.
The Durasme or Spanish Peach is of a darke yellowish red colour on the
outside, and white within.
The blacke Peach is a great large Peach, of a very darke browne colour
on the outside, it is of a waterish taste, and late ripe.
The Alberza Peach is late ripe, and of a reasonable good taste.
The Almond Peach, so called, because the kernell of the stone is
sweete, like the Almond, and the fruit also somewhat pointed like the
Almond in the huske; it is early ripe, and like the Newington Peach,
but lesser.
The Man Peach is of two sorts, the one longer then the other, both of
them are good Peaches, but the shorter is the better rellished.
The Cherry Peach is a small Peach, but well tasted.
The Nutmeg Peach is of two sorts, one that will be hard when it is
ripe, and eateth not so pleasantly as the other, which will bee soft
and mellow; they are both small Peaches, having very little or no
resemblance at all to a Nutmeg, except in being a little longer than
round, and are early ripe."
"Many other sorts of Peaches there are, whereunto wee can give no
especial name; and therefore I passe them over in silence."
Agriculture seems to have received a great impetus in England about
the middle of the Seventeenth Century, possibly with the beginning of
Cromwell's Protectorate in 1653. Toward the end of the century the
momentum began to carry pomology with it, the most apparent results of
the movement at this distance, as it affects the peach, being a great
output of new varieties and of fruit-books in which the new offerings
were described. From this time the progress of peach-culture in England
assumed so great proportions that space does not permit following
it further in this brief account--a task unnecessary, too, for the
pomological works of Lawrence, Switzer, Langley, Brookshaw, Miller,
Rea, Hitt, Abercrombie and Forsyth, to select the most prominent names,
cover the century well and are still accessible in large libraries.
Moreover, by this time the peach was well established in America and we
must take up its history there.
THE PEACH IN AMERICA
One of the first fruits of the heroic age of Spanish discovery in
America was the naturalization in the New World of animals and plants
which the discoverers brought with them. Most notable of these are the
wild horses of the western plains and the Indian peaches of southern
forests. Long before the English, Dutch, French or Swedes planted
colonies in America, peaches, introduced by Spaniards, were common
property of the Indians in southeastern and southwestern America. The
Spaniards came to the New World to conquer and brought swords more
often than fruits, but a cheery note in the long dirge of human woes
suffered by the Aztecs is found in the rapid dissemination of the
peach, among other domesticated plants, at an early period in Mexico.
Which of the Spanish conquerors brought the peach or when it came does
not appear but we have record that less than fifty years after Cortez
conquered the country the peach was, apparently, commonly grown in
Mexico. The beginnings of peach-culture on this continent are, then, to
be sought in the region south of the Rio Grande.
_The peach in Mexico._--Authority for the statement that the peach was
cultivated in Mexico less than fifty years after the Spanish conquest
is found in a Spanish book published by Molina in 1571, in which three
peaches are described in Hispano-Aztec compound words as follows:
"_xuchipal durazno_, 'red-colored peach,' _cuztic durazno_, 'yellow
peach,' and _xocotlmelocoton_, 'peach fruit.'"[93] That the peach is
to be found everywhere in Mexico, cultivated and as an escape from
cultivation, where climate permits is common knowledge to pomologists,
explorers having from time to time brought to light sorts worthy of
introduction in our southern states, and frequent mention is made of
this fruit by visitors to that country.
These Mexican peaches become of special interest to American
fruit-growers because they constitute, with the offspring of early
introductions in Florida, what pomologists call the "Spanish Race" of
this fruit. "American Race" is a more fitting name, for these peaches
are an American product. Four centuries of reproduction from seed, in a
climate and soil different from any previously imposed upon them, and
abnormally short generations have given to this continent a group of
peaches with many characters in common.
Tracing further the history of the peaches that early came to Mexico,
we find evidence that in a comparatively short time they had been taken
northward into New Mexico, Arizona and the Californias. It is barely
possible that from the same source the peach was eventually carried as
far eastward as the Mississippi, for early explorers found naturalized
peaches in the valley of this great river. No doubt the Jesuit and
Franciscan fathers, chief representatives of the Roman Catholic
Church in the early settlement of Mexico and southwestern America,
early carried the peach from place to place, for, as advance guards
of civilization, these men usually planted fruits, grains, vegetables
and flowers at the missions they founded. Therefore, it is hardly too
much to say that the history of the peach in the southwest follows the
establishment, one after another, of the old missions, beginning in
America with the settlement of Sante Fe in 1605 and continuing until
Spanish rule passed into that of the United States.
That the padres of the early religious orders planted gardens and
orchards as they planted the cross of Christianity among the Indian
tribes in the southwest may be seen from such accounts of the mission
as the following, written by a Spanish officer traveling in what is
now New Mexico in 1799:[94] "The Moquinos are the most industrious of
the many Indian nations that inhabit and have been discovered in that
portion of America. They till the earth with great care, and apply to
all their fields the manures proper for each crop. The same cereals and
pulse are raised by them, that are everywhere produced by the civilized
population in our provinces. They are attentive to their kitchen
gardens, and have all the varieties of fruit-bearing trees it has been
in their power to procure. The peach tree yields abundantly."
The antiquity of peach-culture among southern Indians, from Mexico
to Florida, is shown by the fact that, among the prominent tribes of
this region, there is a distinct name for the peach but the names of
other introduced fruits, and of some native ones, are derived from that
of the peach. Thus, according to W. R. Gerard,[95] who gave careful
study to Indian names of plants in at least four Indian languages, the
name of the peach is the radical while that of several plums is the
equivalent of "little peach," "deer's peach" and "barren peach" while
the cultivated apples and pears were by some Indians called "big peach."
As these Indian peaches have cut a prominent figure in furnishing
stocks for American peach-orchards, are the source from which came a
number of varieties, and, more than all else, gave inspiration for
planting permanent orchards of this fruit on American soil, we may well
consider them at greater length.
_Indian peaches._--In many parts of the South, from the Ohio to
the Gulf and from the Atlantic to the Great Plains, the peach
is naturalized and has run into many varieties of a peculiar and
well-recognized type. This is the "Indian Peach" of this vast region,
the chief distinguishing characters of which are: Trees with long,
spreading limbs; young growth with purplish bark; small, flat,
comparatively persistent leaves; blossoms large; season sometimes
covering several weeks; fruit small, streaked with red beneath the
skin, giving it a striped appearance, heavily pubescent; flesh usually
yellow; ripening very late, season long, and of poor or indifferent
quality. The trees of these Indian peaches have a smack of wildness
which the best of pruning does not wholly subdue. The aborigines
undoubtedly obtained peaches from Spaniards settling in both Mexico and
Florida. The first source we have discussed. We come now to the second.
No doubt the Spaniards planted peaches in their first settlement of
Florida at Saint Augustine in 1565. We have no record of the fact but
early Indian traders found the natives of northern Florida and the
neighboring states growing peaches in and about their villages in such
quantity and with such familiarity as to suggest that the several
tribes had long known this fruit. Hilton, an Englishman, who visited
Florida a hundred years after the Spaniards established themselves at
Saint Augustine, records that: "the country abounds with grapes, large
figs and peaches."[96] The besetting sins of our early explorers were
hasty generalization and exaggeration, and since the Indian peach, in
what is now Florida at any rate, does not "abound" we must believe that
Hilton was either farther north or was dissembling. Of the abundance
of Indian peaches in the other Gulf States, there can be no doubt, for
John Bartram, America's first great botanist, a man of note among all
American naturalists, in the account of his travels through this region
in 1765-1766 frequently mentions the peach as wild or as having been
cultivated by the Indians.
Thus, Bartram says, speaking of the Cherokee town of Sticoe, on or near
the Savannah River:[97] "On these towering hills appeared the ruins
of the ancient famous town of Sticoe. Here was a vast Indian mount
or tumulus and great terrace, on which stood the council-house, with
banks encompassing their circus; here were also old Peach and Plumb
orchards; some of the trees appeared yet thriving and fruitful." And
again, discussing the ruins of a French town near Mobile, Alabama,
he says:[98] "I ascended the bank of the river, and penetrating the
groves, came presently to old fields, where I observed ruins of ancient
habitations, there being abundance of Peach and Fig trees, loaded with
fruit, which affording a very acceptable dessert after the heats and
toil of the day, and evening drawing on apace, I concluded to take up
my quarters here for the night." And still again, he found on Pearl
Island:[99] "Besides the native forest trees and shrubs already noted,
manured fruit trees arrive in this island to the utmost degree of
perfection, as Pears, Peaches, Figs, Grape Vines, Plumbs, &c."
Bartram in his travels found the peach so widely and abundantly
naturalized that he was inclined to believe America to be its habitat.
At least Kalm,[100] the Swedish naturalist, who visited Bartram in
1748-1749 reports that Bartram "looked upon peaches as an original
American fruit, and as growing wild in the greater part of America."
In 1758 Le Page Du Pratz, who lived on a plantation in Louisiana for
several years and wrote a history of the French colony, says that the
natives had peaches and figs when the French settled in Louisiana in
1698. He probably errs, however, in stating that the natives got their
trees from the English colony of Carolina since the English did not
settle in Carolina until 1670. No doubt the Indians had long before had
peaches and figs from the Spaniards of Florida or Mexico. The account
which this historian gives of early peach-culture in Louisiana is worth
printing in full:[101] "The natives had doubtless got the peach trees
and fig trees from the English colony of Carolina, before the French
established themselves in Louisiana. The peaches are of the kind which
we call alberges; are of the size of the fist, adhere to the stone, and
contain so much water that they make a kind of wine of it. The figs are
either blue or white; are large and well enough tasted. Our colonists
plant the peach stones about the end of February, and suffer the trees
to grow exposed to all weathers. In the third year they will gather
from one tree at least two hundred peaches, and double that number for
six or seven years more, when the tree dies irrecoverably. As new trees
are so easily produced, the loss of the old ones is not in the least
regretted."
There are many indirect references to peaches in the Mississippi Valley
most of which can be traced to Father Hennepin's account of peaches
in Louisiana. He says:[102] "The peaches there are like those of
Europe and bear very good fruit in such abundance that the savages are
often obliged to prop up the trees with forked sticks." It turns out,
however, that Father Hennepin was the Baron Munchausen of the early
French explorers, it being doubtful whether he was ever farther down
the Mississippi than the mouth of the Illinois. Probably, therefore,
we must put much of what early writers say of the great abundance
of peaches in this region to the soaring imagination of this early
religious explorer. Yet these reports are credited by so careful a man
as Kalm, who writes:[103] "I have been told by all those who have made
journies to the southern parts of Canada, and to the river Mississippi,
that the woods there abound with peach-trees, which bear excellent
fruit, and that the Indians of those parts say that those trees have
been there since times immemorial."
A little later we have reliable information that the peach was
naturalized in parts of the Mississippi Valley at least, for Thomas
Nuttall, leading botanist of his time and a thoroughly reliable
reporter, traveling in Arkansas in 1819, writes:[104] "The thermometer
towards noon rises to seventy degrees and the peach and plum trees,
almost equally naturalized, have nearly finished blooming." And,
again,[105] "The peach of Persia is already naturalized throughout the
forests of Arkansa." From this we may picture wild peaches as having
grown for generations in parts of Arkansas and, no doubt, of the now
famous Ozark region, where, we are told, peach-trees in abundance now
decorate, with flower and fruit, primeval forests.
Reserving the best description of Indian peaches to the last we now
turn from Arkansas to the Carolinas. Here, in 1700, John Lawson, a
surveyor, who in his work had ample opportunity to know the country,
wrote about the wild and cultivated plants of the region. Lawson,
although not a trained naturalist, was a keen observer, a lover of
nature and much interested in the agricultural development of the
Carolinas. Moreover, he writes so simply, directly, and in a tone so
temperate, in contrast to the declamatory style of the times, that one
accepts without question what he says. We feel we are justified in
quoting at some length Lawson's description of Indian peaches:[106]
"All peaches with us are standing; neither have we any wall fruit in
Carolina, for we have heat enough, and therefore do not require it. We
have a great many sorts of this fruit, which all thrive to admiration,
peach trees coming to perfection, with us, as easily as the weeds. A
peach falling to the ground brings a peach tree that shall bear in
three years, or sometimes sooner. Eating peaches in our orchards makes
them come up so thick from the kernel, that we are forced to take a
great deal of care to weed them out, otherwise they make our land a
wilderness of peach trees. They generally bear so full that they break
great part of their limbs down. We have likewise very fair nectarines,
especially the red, that clings to the stone; the other yellow fruit,
that leaves the stone. Of the last I have a tree that most years brings
me fifteen or twenty bushels. I see no foreign fruit like this, for
thriving in all sorts of land, and bearing its fruit to admiration. I
want to be satisfied about one sort of this fruit, which the Indians
claim as their own, and affirm they had it growing amongst them before
any Europeans came to America.
The fruit I will describe as exactly as I can. The tree grows very
large, most commonly as big as a handsome apple tree; the flowers are
of a reddish, murrey color, the fruit is rather more downy than the
yellow peach, and commonly very large and soft, being very full of
juice. They part freely from the stone, and the stone is much thicker
than all the other peach stones we have, which seems to me that it is
a spontaneous fruit of America; yet in those parts of America that
we inhabit, I never could hear that any peach trees were ever found
growing in the woods; neither have the foreign Indians, that live
remote from the English, any other sort. And those living amongst us
have a hundred of this sort for one other. They are a hardy fruit,
and are seldom damaged by the north-east blast, as others are. Of
this sort we make vinegar; wherefore we call them vinegar peaches, and
sometimes Indian peaches.
This tree grows to a vast bigness, exceeding most apple trees. They
bear well, though sometimes an early spring comes on in February, and
perhaps when the tree is fully blown, the cloudy, north-east winds,
which attend the end of that month, or the beginning of March, destroy
most of the fruit. The biggest apricot tree I ever saw, as they told
me, was grafted on a peach stock in the ground. I know of no other sort
with us, than the common. We generally raise this fruit from the stone,
which never fails to bring the same fruit. Likewise our peach stones
effect the same, without so much as once missing to produce the same
sort that the stone came from."
_Peaches in the colonies._--The first peaches in the American colonies
must have been planted at Jamestown for, in 1629, Captain John Smith
writes of "peaches in abundance."[107] The trees, however, seem to have
been neglected for, continuing, Smith says: "Apples, Peares, Apricocks,
Vines, figges, and other fruits some have planted, that prospered
exceedingly; but their diligence about Tobacco left them to be spoiled
by the cattell; yet now they beginne to revive." The settlement in
Virginia at that time, so soon after the Indian massacres, was small
and there could have been but few trees so that Smith's "abundance"
was but as a grain of sand on the seashore with the many thousands of
bushels required to make an abundance at the present time.
Despite the neglect of fruit to attend to tobacco which Smith laments,
the planting of orchards must have gone on apace, for in 1633 a Dutch
sea-captain named De Vries visiting Virginia describes the Menife
plantation, famous in the colony at that time, as having a garden
containing rosemary, sage, marjoram and thyme, the apple, pear and
cherry while the house itself was surrounded by peach-trees.[108] Three
years later, 1642, Berkeley became governor of the colony and we are
told that about his house at Green Spring there were fifteen hundred
apple, peach, apricot, quince and other fruit-trees.[109] Robert
Evelyn, writing forty years after the settlement of Jamestown says:
"Peaches better than Apricocks by some doe feed hogs, one man hath ten
thousand trees."[110]
Fruit-growing in colonial Virginia was not without promoters and
one, a Colonel Norwood, had the persuasive eloquence of the barkers
for get-rich-quick orchard-planting concerns of our own times.
Colonel Norwood, an Englishman, visited Virginia in 1649 and on his
return wrote:[111] "Oranges, Lemons, Pine-aples, Plantanes, Peaches,
Apricocks, Peares, Apels, in a word all sort of excellent Fruits
will grow there in full perfection: you may sleepe whilst they are
growing, after their setting or engrafting, there needes no more labour
but your prayers, that they may prosper, and now and then an eye to
prevent their casualties, wounds or diseases." No doubt Norwood is over
enthusiastic in his praises and yet it is true that there were few
pests of the peach at this time, most of these coming, one by one, with
the development of the fruit-industry. About all that any fruit needed
at this time was, to use a modern political phase, "watchful waiting."
Considering the agricultural efforts that must have been required
to produce tobacco, then the medium of exchange at home and abroad,
and of corn, which in Virginia was the staff of life, one wonders
that fruit received the attention indicated by the following account
written in 1656 of a still earlier period:[112] "The Country is full of
gallant Orchards, and the fruit generally more luscious and delightful
than here, witnesse the Peach and Quince, the latter may be eaten
raw savourily, the former differs as much exceeds ours as the best
relished apple we have doth the crabb, and of both most excellent and
comfortable drinks are made." Perhaps the explanation of the popularity
of fruits in Virginia is to be found in the statement that from fruits
are made "most excellent and comfortable drinks." On the word of
Captain John Smith we have it that "few of the upper-class planters
drink any water."[113] Wine was not made in quantity in the colonies
and liquors distilled from grains were not known so that thirst, in
this case the mother of invention, caused the colonists to turn to
peaches and apples for strong drink.
Prohibition was not preached in the colonies nor in the states until
long after the Revolution and King Alcohol dominated every part of the
New World. Distilling spirituous liquors from rye and corn seems not
to have been practiced, if the art were known, until the beginning
of the Nineteenth Century. The upper classes drank wine, but cider,
perry, peach-vinegar and similar fermented fruit-juices were in common
use by the middle and lower classes while the carousing population
of the whole country, and there seems to have been many liberal
tipplers, slaked their thirst with rum, apple-jack and peach-brandy.
So much on drinking, not to point a moral or adorn a tale, but to
bring out the fact that fruit-growing in America had its beginning
and for two hundred years had almost its whole sustenance in the
demand for strong drink. This is shown in almost every page of the
horticultural literature of the times and in the laws of the colonies
restricting prices and levying taxes on liquors made from fruits.
Peaches were grown in quantities wherever they could be made to succeed
in the colonies, not for the fruit itself, but for the making of
peach-vinegar, a sort of cider, and peach-brandy, a distilled liquor.
By the end of the first hundred years in America the English seem to
have brought orcharding to a fine state of perfection in Virginia,
the peach succeeding then, by all accounts, rather better than now.
Bruce[114] gives an admirable summing-up of orchard-conditions at the
end of the period named: "In the closing years of the seventeenth
century, there were few plantations in Virginia which did not possess
orchards of apple and peach trees, pear, plum, apricot, and quince.
The number of trees was often very large. The orchard of Robert Hide
of York contained three hundred peach and three hundred apple trees.
There were twenty-five hundred apple trees in the orchard of Colonel
Fitzhugh. Each species of fruit was represented by many varieties;
thus, of the apple, there were mains, pippins, russentens, costards,
marigolds, kings, magitens and batchelors; of the pear, bergamy and
warden. The quince was greater in size, but less aciduated than the
English quince; on the other hand, the apricot and plum were inferior
in quality to the English, not ripening in the same perfection.
Cherries grew in notable abundance. So great was the productive
capacity of the peach that some of the landowners planted orchards of
the tree for the mere purpose of using the fruit to fatten their hogs;
on some plantations, as many as forty bushels are said to have been
knocked down to the swine in the course of a single season."
Treasure after treasure of experience and narrative may be found in
tracing the history of the peach in Virginia but space permits only
the references that best illuminate the development and culture of
this fruit in America. Two accounts must serve to give an idea of the
peach in Virginia in the Eighteenth Century. Robert Beverly, in his
_History of Virginia_ gives a good idea of the culture, kinds and uses
of peaches in the early part of the Eighteenth Century:[115] "Peaches,
nectarines and apricots, as well as plumbs and cherries, grow there
upon standard trees. They commonly bear in three years from the stone,
and thrive so exceedingly, that they seem to have no need of grafting
or inoculating, if any body would be so good a husband; and truly I
never heard of any that did graft either plum, nectarine, peach or
apricot in that country, before the first edition of this book."
"Peaches and nectarines I believe to be spontaneous, somewhere or
other on that continent, for the Indians have, and ever had greater
variety, and finer sorts of them than the English. The best sort of
these cling to the stone, and will not come off clear, which they call
plum nectarines, and plum peaches or clint stones. Some of these are
twelve or thirteen inches in the girt. These sorts of fruits are raised
so easily there, that some good husbands plant great orchards of them,
purposely for their hogs; and others make a drink of them, which they
call mobby, and either drink it as cider, or distill it off for brandy.
This makes the best spirit next to grapes."
The text for the only other account we have space to publish for the
period under consideration is found in Washington's diary for February
22, 1760. "Laid in part, the Worm of a fence around the Peach orchard."
The information in Washington's short statement is inconsequential but
from it we form a pleasant picture of peach-growing at Mount Vernon.
Washington owned a distillery and in another place we learn that "the
distiller made every fall a good deal of apple, peach and persimmon
brandy." To supply the needs of the plantation in fruit and brandy,
there must have been a considerable number of trees, all seedlings, but
set in straight rows, for Washington, the surveyor, would have no botch
work in aligning and spacing. The fence, the worm of which Washington
was laying on his twenty-eighth birthday, if typical of the times, was
of split walnut-rails, laid zigzag. Eventually it became trellised
with wild grapes, Virginia creepers, honeysuckles and morning-glories.
The corners grew up to sassafras, brambles and other plants of the
region. In spring, we picture then, the pink-petalled trees, in the
peach-orchard at Mount Vernon, making obeisance to the Father of his
Country as he rode the rounds of the plantation; in summer the shady
shrub-grown corners of the worm-fence, sweet-scented with honeysuckle
or aromatic with sassafras, furnished refreshing resting places as
Washington watched his harvest; later, the orchard, voluptuous with
fruit, gave gustatory promises of products to eat and drink and
dazzled the eye with autumn colors of Virginia creeper, wild grape and
sassafras. The peach-orchard not only served the appetite at Mount
Vernon but was one of the most picturesque spots on the plantation.
Let the foregoing accounts of Smith, Bruce and Beverly suffice to give
status to early peach-growing in Virginia. They apply equally well to
Maryland, these neighboring colonies, it will be remembered, being
called by one of our authors, "Leah and Rachel or the Two Fruitful
Sisters." Of the peach in the states to the south at least a few words
ought to be said.
In the discussion of Indian peaches we have had a good account of the
early history of the peach in the Carolinas by Lawson. We now show the
status of peach-growing in this region at a later period. In an account
of South Carolina and Georgia, said to have been written by General
Oglethorpe, printed in London in 1733, we find the following:[116]
"Mulberries, both black and white, are natives of this soil, and are
found in the woods, as are many other sorts of fruit trees of excellent
kinds, and the growth of them is surprisingly swift; for a peach,
apricot, or nectarine tree will, from the stone, grow to be a bearing
tree in four or five years' time."
"They have oranges, lemons, apples and pears, besides the peach and
apricot mentioned before. Some of these are so delicious that whoever
tastes them will despise the insipid, watery taste of those we have in
England; and yet such is the plenty of them that they are given to the
hogs in great quantities."
A little later, 1740, Mr. Thomas Jones of Savannah wrote to Mr. John
Lyde concerning the contents of his town-garden as follows:[117]
"As to our fruit, the most common are peaches and nectarines (I believe
that I had a hundred bushels of the former this year in my little
garden in town); we have also apples of divers sorts, chincopin nuts,
walnut, chestnut, hickory, and ground nuts."
The third writer is Sir John Oldmixon who quotes a Mr. Archdale in
regard to the fruits of Carolina. He writes:[118]
"Everything generally grows there that will grow in any part of Europe,
there being already many sorts of fruits, as apples, pears, apricots,
nectarines, etc. They that once taste of them will despise the watery,
washy taste of those in England. There's such plenty of them that they
are given to the hogs. In four or five years they come from a stone to
be bearing trees."
The same author is worth quoting in regard to the early culture of
the Melocoton peach in Virginia.[119] "Here is such plenty of peaches
that they give them to their hogs; some of them, called malachotoons,
are as big as a lemon and resemble it a little." The history of the
word melocoton, by the way, is interesting. It comes from the Latin
_melum cotoneum,_ literally, apple-quince. The corruption is of Spanish
origin and in Spain "melocoton" is a common name for the peach. The
word, however, is now common enough in English, no less than 29 variant
spellings being found in the dictionaries and every extensive list of
peaches having a number of varieties with melocoton as a prefix or an
affix to the name.
Passing now to the northern colonies we find that the history of the
peach in Pennsylvania begins with the history of the State. William
Penn founded Philadelphia in 1682 and a year later, in describing the
new country, names the peach as one of its assets:[120] "There are also
very good peaches, and in great quantities; not an Indian plantation
without them, but whether naturally here at first, I know not. However,
one may have them by bushels for little; they make a pleasant drink;
and I think not inferior to any peach you have in England, except the
true Newington."
It would be hard to find a part of the earth better fitted in soil and
climate for sure and abounding harvests of peaches than the Chesapeake
peach-belt extending up through Maryland and taking in Delaware, New
Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania. We may be sure, then, that if the
Indians were growing peaches in the abundance described by Penn in
what is now Philadelphia, peach-orchards were not less common in all
of the Chesapeake belt. That the whole region was bountifully supplied
with this delicious fruit when settled by whites is further indicated,
however, in a letter written by Mahlon Stacy from the "Falls of the
Delaware," New Jersey, in 1680, to his brother Revell in England. He
says:[121]
"I have travelled through most of the places that are settled, and some
that are not; and in every place I find the country very apt to answer
the expectation of the diligent. I have seen orchards laden with fruit
to admiration; their very limbs torn to pieces by the weight, and most
delicious to the taste and lovely to behold. I have seen an apple tree
from a pippin kernel yield a barrel of curious cider, and peaches in
such plenty that some people took their carts a peach gathering; I
could not but smile at the conceit of it; they are very delicate fruit,
and hang almost like our onions that are tied on ropes."
We are told in Watson's Annals of Philadelphia[122] that one of the
remarkable characteristics of Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1700 was
that the whole of the main street, one mile in length, "was fronted
with blooming peach trees."
An account of peaches in the Delaware region as late as the middle of
the Eighteenth Century shows that even then the peach was regarded
as indigenous "like maize and tobacco." This quotation, too, is
interesting because it gives a glimpse of cultural methods, kinds, uses
and danger from frost. The author was a Swedish clergyman, a resident
of the region for some years. He writes:[123]
"Peach trees stand within an enclosure by themselves; grow even in the
stoniest places without culture. The fruit is the most delicious that
the mouth can taste, and often allowable in fevers. One kind, called
clingstones, are considered the best; in these the stones are not loose
from the fruit as in the others. Many have peach orchards chiefly for
the purpose of feeding their swine, which are not allowed to run at
large. They first bloom, in March, the flowers coming out before the
leaves, and are often injured by the frosts; they are ripe toward the
close of August. This fruit is regarded as indigenous, like maize and
tobacco; for as far as any Indians have been seen in the interior of
the country these plants are found to extend."
Pressed for space, we must conclude the discussion of early
peach-growing in this region by quoting an account of the industry
as it existed in 1750 when the Swedish naturalist, Kalm, visited the
colonies and spent some time in Pennsylvania and neighboring states.
Writing of orchards he says:[124] "Every countryman, even a common
peasant, has commonly an orchard near his house in which all sorts of
fruit, such as peaches, apples, pears, cherries, and others, are in
plenty. The peaches were now almost ripe. They are rare in Europe,
particularly in Sweden, for in that country hardly any people besides
the rich taste them. But here every countryman had an orchard full of
peach trees, which were covered with such quantities of fruit, that we
could scarcely walk in the orchard, without treading on those peaches
which were fallen off; many of which were always left on the ground,
and only part of them was sold in town, and the rest was consumed by
the family and strangers; for every one that passed by, was at liberty
to go into the orchard, and to gather as many of them as he wanted.
Nay, this fine fruit was frequently given to the swine.
This fruit is, however, sometimes kept for winter use, and for this
purpose they are prepared in the following manner. The fruit is cut
into four parts, the stone thrown away, and the fruit put upon a
thread, on which they are exposed to the sunshine in the open air, till
they are sufficiently dry. They are then put into a vessel for winter.
But this manner of drying them is not very good, because the rain of
this season very easily spoils and putrifies them, whilst they hang in
the open air. For this reason a different method is followed by others,
which is by far the most eligible. The peaches are as before cut into
four parts, are then either put upon a thread, or laid upon a board,
and so hung up in the air when the sun shines. Being dried in some
measure, or having lost their juice by this means, they are put into
an oven, out of which the bread has but just been taken, and are left
in it for a while. But they are soon taken out and brought into the
fresh air; and after that they are again put into the oven, and this is
repeated several times until they are as dry as they ought to be. For
if they were dried up at once in the oven, they would shrivel up too
much, and lose part of their flavour. They are then put up and kept for
the winter. They are either baked into tarts and pyes, or boiled and
prepared as dried apples and pears are in Sweden. Several people here
dry and preserve their apples in the same manner as their peaches.
The peach trees have, as I am told, been first planted here by the
Europeans. But at present they succeed very well, and require even less
care than our apple and pear trees."
Kalm[125] also gives an account of the colonists' method of making
peach-brandy, which, as we have seen, plays so important a part in
the peach-industry of the times. Brandy-making, according to Kalm,
was simplicity itself and it is not to be wondered that in those days
of strong drink peach-brandy was popular. The following is Kalm's
description: "They make brandy from peaches here, after the following
method. The fruit is cut asunder, and the stones are taken out. The
pieces of fruit are then put into a vessel, where they are left for
three weeks or a month, till they are quite putrid. They are then put
into the distilling vessel, and the brandy is made and afterwards
distilled over again. This brandy is not for people who have a more
refined taste, but it is only for the common kind of people, such as
workmen and the like."
Kalm, travelling from Trenton to Princeton, found the country thickly
settled and full of orchards:[126]
"During the greater part of the day we had very extensive corn fields
on both sides of the road. * * * Near almost every farm was a spacious
orchard full of peach and apple trees, and in some of them the fruit
had fallen from the trees in such quantities as to cover nearly the
whole surface. Part of it they left to rot, because they could not take
it all in and consume it. Wherever we passed by we were always welcome
to go into the fine orchards and gather our hats and pockets full of
the choicest fruit, without the possessors so much as looking after it."
The soil and climate of Long Island and the lower reaches of the
Hudson, similar to those of the Chesapeake peach-belt, are so well
adapted to peaches that we may be sure that the early settlers in New
York eked out their scanty fare with this fruit soon after settlements
were made. Trade with the colonies to the south, where peaches were
common before the Dutch were established on Manhattan Island, began
almost immediately after the arrival of the Hollanders in America, and
knowledge of the adaptability of peaches to conditions in the New World
was no doubt quickly acquired from Virginia, if, indeed, the aborigines
were not cultivating this fruit in the region as Penn found them
doing on the site of Philadelphia. Yet careful search in the colonial
records of New York shows no early accounts of peaches, there being
few such accounts, by the way, of any agricultural product, no one
having undertaken the task of describing the natural and agricultural
resources of this State as was done by several able observers for
Virginia and the New England states.
No doubt, however, orchard-planting as a general practice was long
delayed in New York because of political and economic conditions. The
Dutch came to America as traders and not as home-makers, and almost
from the day they landed were in trouble with both their savage and
their civilized neighbors so that actual or petty warfare prevented
them from planting orchards until in 1647 when the reins of government
were taken in hand by Peter Stuyvesant, a farmer as well as a soldier,
who at once set about encouraging the planting of fields, gardens
and orchards. He brought, we are told, fruits, flowers, farm and
truck-crops from the neighboring colonies and Holland and these he not
only planted on Manhattan Island but sent to the settlements up the
Hudson. The peach may readily be grown in suitable soils from Albany
down the river to New York, and, by the end of the Seventeenth Century,
we are told by travelers, naturalists and missionaries that this fruit
was in common cultivation by the whites and was even rudely tilled by
the Indians of the Hudson Valley.
But, in eastern New York, away from the coast, the peach did not find
the climate as congenial as in the colonies to the south and then, too,
from the following record, the peach-borer early became troublesome.
Kalm says:[127] "Peach-trees have often been planted here (Albany,
New York) and never would succeed well. This was attributed to a worm
which lives in the ground, and eats through the root, so that the tree
dies. Perhaps the severity of the winter contributes much to it." We
have another reference to show that winter-killing must have been a
discouraging factor in peach-culture in this part of New York in early
days as it is now. Cadwallader Colden, appointed first surveyor-general
of New York in 1719, and in 1761 lieutenant-governor of the Province,
a botanist of note, who had a patent of land in what is now Orange
County, wrote in 1737 that cold had killed the peach-trees the previous
winter.
The traveler who visits New York today finds many orchards on the
Hudson but in them he sees comparatively few peaches. The peach is
much more at home two hundred miles west about the Central Lakes and
along the shores of Lake Ontario. Here, it is interesting to learn,
peaches were grown in considerable quantities long before the region
was settled by the whites--how long we have no record nor do we know
much of the character of the fruit. John Bartram in his _Travels from
Pensilvania to Onondago, Oswego and the Lake Ontario_, an account of
a journey made in 1743, mentions apples, peaches, plums and grapes
growing about the Indian villages passed through on his route. Whether
these peaches came from the white settlements nearer the Atlantic,
or at a much earlier date from the Indians to the South, or both, we
cannot even surmise.
Sullivan's army, which came to this region in 1779 to chastise the
Indians, found and destroyed considerable numbers of fruit-trees,
among them many peaches. After Sullivan's raid the region was quickly
settled by whites who, following the examples of the Indians, planted
apples and peaches, the orchard soon becoming a prominent asset to
every farm. Collections of pioneer papers frequently mention the great
adaptability of these lake-regions to peaches. In Conover's _History
of Kanadasaga and Geneva_[128] there are sixteen references to the
peach-orchards about Seneca and Cayuga lakes in and about the year
1800. As in the South, the products seem to have been used chiefly in
making peach-brandy.
David Thomas,[129] Aurora, Cayuga County, New York, was the pioneer
horticulturist, fruit-grower and nurseryman in this part of the State
and soon after coming to New York in 1805, we learn from several
references to his orchards and nurseries in his own writings, began
planting peaches. All of the named varieties from the South and East
were tried in his orchard and if valuable were propagated and sold from
his nursery. According to his son, John Jacob Thomas, the pomological
writer, he had in 1830 "the most extensive and valuable collection of
bearing trees west of the Hudson." Through him the western counties of
the State were stocked with named peaches and other fruits.
Of peaches in the New England colonies, we need say but little. Except
in favored parts of Connecticut and Massachusetts, this fruit was
little grown in these northern colonies. It is not at all probable that
New England Indians ever planted peaches and for a generation after the
whites came the struggle for the necessities of life kept them from
indulging in so great a luxury as a peach-orchard. Strong drink was
as commonly used by the Puritans as by the Churchmen in Virginia and
peach-brandy would have been as acceptable but it was easier to produce
cider, and rum from the West Indies could be had with little trouble.
Still, peaches were sparingly grown in the New England colonies.
The Massachusetts Company in 1629 sent peach-pits, along with seeds of
other fruits, to be planted by the colonists.[130] Twelve years later
George Fenwick, Saybrook, Connecticut, writes to Governor Winthrop that
he is "prettie well storred with chirrie & peach trees."[131] Justice
Paul Dudley,[132] who seems to have been the leading horticulturist
in Massachusetts in his time, writes in 1726: "Our Peaches do rather
excel those of _England_, and then we have not the Trouble or Expence
of Walls for them; for our Peach Trees are all Standards, and I
have had in my own Garden seven or eight Hundred fine Peaches of the
Rare-ripes, growing at a Time on one Tree." From another statement made
by Justice Dudley,[133] we learn that peaches were still being grown
from the stone and may assume that budding was not known or so careful
a horticulturist as our author would have mentioned it. He says: "Our
Peach Trees are large and fruitful, and bear commonly in three Years
from the Stone. I have one in my Garden of twelve Years Growth, that
measures two Foot and an Inch in Girt a Yard from the Ground, which,
two Years ago, bore me near a Bushel of fine Peaches."
SEEDLINGS GIVE WAY TO BUDDED TREES
About the close of the Eighteenth Century the planting of pits for
permanent trees began to give way to budding. It does not appear
who began budding peaches on this side of the Atlantic but the
desirability of budded stock was discussed as early as 1736, for in
that year we find the English botanist, Peter Collinson, urging his
American colleague, John Bartram, to "graft Plums and Nectarines on
Peach stocks."[134] The matter had evidently been under consideration
before for Collinson tells Bartram "Pray try; I have great opinion of
its succeeding."[135] Bartram is hard to convince and ten years later
Collinson is still urging him to bud, for, in a letter of April 26,
1746, he writes, rather impatiently, "Though thou canst not see, yet I
have told thee what inoculating a Peach stock may do."[136]
Probably the Princes, pioneer nurserymen in America, in their nursery
at Flushing, Long Island, first began to bud the peach, for in their
catalog of 1771 they offer 29 sorts though most of these appear to be
types rather than varieties. Twenty years later they list 35 varieties
with the statement that all "are inoculated." John Kenrick,[137]
father of William Kenrick,[138] the pomological author, who for
years was Prince's chief competitor, his nurseries being located at
Newton, Massachusetts, began business in 1790 by planting a quantity
of peach-stones the trees from which he did not bud. Four years later,
we are told, he learned to bud and greatly extended his assortment of
varieties, making a specialty of budded peach-trees.[139]
Until the middle of the next century, peaches were nevertheless
commonly grown from the pits. It is probable that never before nor
since, the world over, have seedling peaches been raised on so
extended a scale as in America during the half-century following the
Revolutionary war. The country between the Atlantic seaboard and the
Mississippi was being rapidly settled and on nearly every farm from the
Great Lakes to the Gulf, barring a few in the northernmost parts of
this great area, peaches were planted. They furnished food not only for
the pioneers but were used in fattening pigs and in the earlier part of
the period, at any rate, were, with apples, the chief supply of ardent
spirits which every farmer then kept on hand for daily use. There were
millions of peach-trees in America before 1825 but until that time
there were but few named varieties. Then the art of budding began to
spread; nurseries sprang up; this vast collection of peaches was
passed through the sieve of selection; local varieties quickly acquired
fame; and, as means of communication developed, the new varieties began
to be disseminated, until, in 1850, American nurseries were selling
over 400 varieties, a number which at the close of the century had
increased to over 1000.
THE CARE OF THE PEACH IN COLONIAL TIMES
Peach-growers, in the period under consideration, gave their trees
much the same care as is given in the present time except that
they did not spray. Pests were fewer and yet some were especially
troublesome, notably the peach-borer, the remedies for which were
as numerous as today. Curculio, then as now, almost prohibited the
culture of nectarines. A rot, the brown-rot, without doubt, did much
damage. Peach-yellows, as yet, was not the scourge it now is but,
as we shall see, was well in evidence. There were faddists in those
days as in these. Thomas Coulter of Bedford County, Pennsylvania, was
one of the original "sod-mulchers"--at least year in and year out he
inveighed against cultivation. He managed to get himself in all of
the publications of the times for a period of a half-century. We find
his method discussed in Volume V of the Transactions of the American
Philosophical Society, in the _Domestic Encyclopaedia_[140] in 1803
and, as late as 1821, a full account was published in the _American
Farmer_.[141] We quote the article in full, as it came out in the three
publications named, as a record of the times and because it contains a
number of novel ideas some of which may commend themselves to modern
orchardists of the sod-mulch school who want a cheap and easy way of
growing peaches.
"Transplant your peach-trees, as young as possible, where you mean
them to stand; if, in the kernel, so much the better ... because, in
that case, there will be no check of growth, which always injures
peach-trees. Plant peach-trees 16 feet apart, both ways, except you
would wish to take your waggon through the orchard to carry the
peaches away; in that case, give 24 feet distance to every fifth row,
one way, after transplanting. You may plough and harrow amongst your
peach-trees, for two years, paying no regard to wounding or tearing
them, so that you do not take them up by the roots. In the month of
March, or April, in the third year after transplanting, _cut them all
off by the ground_; plough and harrow amongst them as before, taking
special care not to wound or tear them in the smallest degree, letting
all the sprouts or scions grow that will grow; cut none away, supposing
six or more should come from the old stump; the young scions will grow
up to bearing trees on account of the roots being strong. Let no kind
of beasts into peach-orchards, _hogs excepted_, for fear of wounding
the trees; as the least wound will greatly injure the tree, by draining
away that substance which is the life thereof; although the tree may
live many years, the produce is not so great, neither is the fruit so
good.
After the old stock is cut away, the third year after transplanting,
the sprouts or scions will grow up, all round the old stump, from four
to six in number; no more will come to maturity, than the old stump
can support and nourish; the remainder will die before ever they bear
fruit. These may be cut away, taking care not to wound any part of any
stock, or the bark. The sprouts growing all round the old stump, when
loaded with fruit will bend and rest on the ground in every direction,
without injuring any of them, for many years, all of them being rooted
in the ground, as tho' they had been planted. The stocks will remain
tough, and the bark smooth for 2 years and upwards; if any of the
sprouts or trees from the old stump should happen to split off, or die,
cut them away, they will be supplied from the ground, by young trees,
so that you will have trees from the same stump for 100 years, as I
believe. I now have trees, 36, 20, 10, 5 and down to one year old, all
from the same stump.
The young trees coming up, after any of the old trees split off or
die, and are cut away, will bear fruit the second year; but this fruit
will not ripen so easily as the fruit on the old trees from the same
stem. Three years after the trees are cut off by the ground, they will
be sufficiently large and bushy, to shade the ground so as to prevent
grass of any kind from matting or binding the surface, so as to injure
the trees; therefore; ploughing is useless, as well as injurious;
useless, because nothing can be raised in the orchard, by reason the
trees will shade all the ground, or nearly so; injurious, because
either the roots, stocks or branches will be wounded: neither is it
necessary ever to manure peach-trees, as manured trees will always
produce less and worse fruit, than trees that are not manured; although
by manuring your peach-trees, they will grow larger, and look greener
and thicker in the boughs, and cause a thicker shade, yet on them will
grow very little fruit, and that little will be of a very bad kind
generally looking as green as the leaves, even when ripe, and later
than those that never have been manured."
None of the varieties that we now grow was then cultivated. Taking the
sorts described in 1800 we find that four were red-fleshed; eight,
yellow-fleshed; thirty-four, white-fleshed; eighteen, freestones;
nineteen, clingstones, and twelve nectarines. There were no flat, or
Peento, peaches but a sort known as Venus's Nipple was seemingly a
typical beaked peach.
In 1800, Baltimore was the best market for peaches in America and
was near the Chesapeake peach-belt. We are fortunate in having a
description of peach-growing around Baltimore at about that time.
Richard Parkinson, an English farmer and agricultural writer, came to
America to rent one of George Washington's farms in 1798. The two could
not agree and Parkinson rented a farm near Baltimore on which was a
peach-orchard. He published an account of his experiences in two very
readable volumes and from this work we quote in part the story of his
peach-orchard. Perhaps allowances should be made, for Parkinson seems
to have been soured by failure and some of his expressions are such
as might be expected from an opinionated Englishman undergoing new
experiences in America just after the Revolution. Parkinson says:[142]
"It would astonish a stranger to see the quantity of fruit in these
parts, which makes the country to look beautiful twice a-year, when the
trees are in blossom, and when the fruit is on the trees ripe. But the
fruit is chiefly for the use of hogs and can be applied to no better
purpose.
On my farm at Orange-Hill, only three miles from Baltimore, the last
year I was there, I sold all my peaches to two men at four pence per
peck, and let them have a cart and a horse to take them into the city
to sell, knowing I had only made four pence per peck on the average
the year before, and gathered them myself. These men agreed to pick
them, and feed the horse in town at their expence. It was the opinion
of every one that they had got a great bargain, and many others wished
they had had it. They picked about one-half of them, and carried
them to Baltimore: but, alas! they gave up the business, saying they
could not make wages, although they at first had said that they would
certainly take every peach, intending, if the market should not suit,
to carry them to the stills, &c. I was in hopes all this exertion would
make this bargain successful, as four pence per peck would pay much
better than to give them to hogs, as I have no knowledge of what number
a hog will eat. Seeing this scheme frustrated, and thinking it a sin
and a shame to see such a number of fine peaches rot on the ground, I
mounted my horse and rode to the stills, as there were many small ones
within three or four miles of me in the country. They have been erected
for this use; but many of them are never used after the first year;
and I am of the opinion that they will not pay expences. The men at
the stills were civil enough; they offered to lend me the still, and
let me find a man to work it, &c. or they would work it for me; but,
from every information I could obtain, I found that my peaches would
not more than pay the carriage to the stills and hardly that; and after
selling them to the owners of the stills, they would not give me so
much for my fruit, as would pay me for my trouble; nor will peaches pay
the farmer, to be given to the hogs, if they be not so situated that
the hogs can run where they are; and that happened not to be my case.
As a striking instance of the little profit of stills, Mr. O'Donnel,
at Canton, had planted an orchard, of great extent, of red peaches,
for the purpose of making peach-brandy. The red peach is reckoned much
superior to any other for brandy. Although Mr. O'Donnel's orchard had
grown to bear in great perfection and he had a still and the other
necessary apparatus, the profit proved so small, that he suffered
the whole to go waste, and his pigs consumed the produce; and, in
the winter, rooted up all those fine peach trees, and planted the
ground with Indian corn, having previously manured the land with dung
from Baltimore for the purpose of an orchard. Now this gentleman had
some hundreds of acres of woodlands unimproved in this plantation;
therefore, the cause could not be for want of land.
My fine turnips, Indian corn, potatoes, &c. were in the field by the
orchard without any fence. Indeed hogs are not allowed to run at large
within five miles of Baltimore, by an act of assembly; and mine were
too valuable to risk such a misfortune; and especially as I was a great
hog-shooter myself, it would have been fine diversion for any of my
neighbours to have shot one of my fifty-dollar pigs. Seeing that these
plants would not succeed, all that remained was to fatten my own hogs
with them. I had but seven hogs; and they would have employed a man
with horse and cart half a day to feed them; for, after a short time,
they will only eat the best peaches, and refuse the others as a man
would. I found this plan would not answer; and the consequence was,
that, after every trial and exertion, they rotted on the ground. Now
my farm was so situated that the great road through the heart of the
country went through it, five or six stage-coaches, and great numbers
of other carriages of all kinds. In all probability some of my own
countrymen as merchants (for there begin to be many of these gentlemen
to settle their accounts with the American merchants, and I suppose
they will increase) seeing this waste committed, would, on returning
to England, relate their story in this way--That when at the tavern
at Baltimore on the same day, the fruit-people were asking eleven
pence apiece for peaches. An Englishman says to himself, 'What idle
fools those Americans are! and I think all the English, when they get
to America, are as bad: but, when I get there, I will set them the
example.' But when there, he finds himself much disappointed, and does
not know how it is that he does not increase in riches, while neither
himself nor his family enjoys any comfort. He at last finds out that
the Americans are not a set of fools as he once thought: and, as he
must have a name for them, perhaps he calls them rogues; which, if Lord
Chesterfield was right in his observation, pleases a man the best of
the two.
When I took this farm, I had not a doubt, that, by some extraordinary
exertion, I should be able to make something handsome from peaches,
and so near Baltimore. Before I took the farm, when I enquired how
peaches sold in the market, perhaps they would tell me eleven pence
apiece, and eleven pence a peck on the same day. That used to stagger
me very much: but it is so: and the man who offers you a fine Newington
peach for eleven pence or a five-penny bit, sells but few each day; and
lives, although very poorly, at a very great expence; consequently his
profit must be great on each article. The man who sells the peaches at
eleven pence each, will not grow rich by his business, any more than
the grower. Then we come to the calculation of my profit at four pence
per peck, which is the best and greatest price. Could the scheme be
put in execution, it will, generally speaking, require two men and one
horse and cart each day, to pick thirty pecks and carry them to market;
and thirty pecks are more than any white man can sell one day with
another. A black man is much better for this business than a white man;
although they are in general ignorant, they are impudent: thirty pecks
of peaches, at four pence per peck, is just ten shillings per day for
peaches; and the two men's wages are worth, at that season of the year,
one dollar per day each, and one pint of whiskey, which will be sixteen
shillings for the men: the cart and horse are worth one dollar and a
half per day; but you could not hire it for less than two dollars.
Now the expences on this business are one pound seven shillings and
three pence per day, and the produce is ten shillings. But as I sold
them, I made profit each day on thirty pecks of peaches two shillings
and nine pence: the reader may plainly see that there could not be
any thing done better. This shews in this part of the work where I am
on the Eastern Shore, one hundred miles and upwards from market, that
the reader will be convinced the cherries and peaches pay the best for
hogs."
ADAPTABILITY AND VARIABILITY IN THE PEACH
In the preceding pages our narrative has flitted from continent to
continent and country to country in a belt encircling the earth. Few
other fruits are found under such varied conditions and over such
extended areas. We have seen that peaches are found wild and cultivated
over much of Japan; as far north as Vladivostock in Korea; once a
wild inhabitant of some part of China it is now cultivated in nearly
every section of that vast empire where agriculture is an industry;
the trees are so abundant and so much at home in the orchards and
forests of the Turkestans and Persia as to have given rise to the
belief that they have always grown there. While not so common as in
Asia, yet peaches thrive in all of southern Europe and readily submit
to artificial culture in pots and on walls in northern European
latitudes. Coming to America with the first Spaniards, the peach found
such congenial surroundings that it spread rapidly, freely and widely,
leading botanists three centuries later to call it a native. In the
fruit-areas of the United States, after two centuries of cultivation,
though sometimes a luxury and the crop often a speculation, the peach
is so perennially plentiful that it is to be found, fresh, canned or
evaporated, in every home in the land and the species is represented in
American pomologies by over 1000 sorts which have originated in this
country.
However, in tracing the history of the peach from China to America,
we have not wholly shown the range of adaptability of this fruit.
The peach has become adapted to the clear skies, strong light, long
seasons and hot climate of northern Africa, where, under modified
cultural treatment, it is a common fruit in Egypt[143] and the other
states bordering on the Mediterranean. It thrives on the islands in the
Mediterranean and on those of the North Temperate zone almost to the
tropics in the Atlantic and the Pacific, as the Azores, Canaries, West
Indies and Hawaiian group. As long ago as 1649 the Azores were famous
for peaches and Colonel Norwood, author of _A Voyage to Virginia_,[144]
in a gustatory reminiscence tells us that they were of so good quality
that he "did not fail to visit and revisit them in the dead of night to
satisfy a ravenous appetite nature has too prodigally given me for that
species." In the sub-tropic climate of Guadeloupe Islands, French West
Indies, there is a peach peculiar to the region differing in shape,
flavor and in heat-resisting qualities from the common run of this
fruit.[145]
The Aryan race has taken the peach across the equator in the pathways
of discovery, conquest and civilization, and made it a favorite fruit
in the gardens and orchards of the South Temperate as well as in
those of the North Temperate zone. In the colonies of South Africa
the peach seems to be as common as any deciduous fruit, native sorts
being planted with those from Europe and America. Of the Transvaal
Yellow Peach, R. A. Davis, horticulturist of the colony, says:[146]
"Generally speaking, it is the fruit most commonly grown in the
Transvaal, and it may safely be said that where it will not grow no
other peach stands much chance of thriving. The writer has seen them
flourishing by the side of the railroad amongst granite boulders, the
result of a chance pit thrown from the window of a railway carriage. It
is also extensively grown as a hedge around homesteads, having been
planted after the primitive method of turning a furrow where the hedge
was wanted and simply dropping the seeds in after the plough. It is
commonly recognised that the peach hedge should duly appear and bear
fruit in two years from planting the seed. The writer has also seen
them growing by the side of water-furrows and dams, with the whole of
the roots on one side of the tree at least immersed in water."
The Spaniards, no doubt, planted the peach in parts of South America
soon after the discovery of the continent and it now runs wild on
both coasts. Thus, Darwin in his famous voyage found the islands at
the mouth of the Parana River, Argentina, "thickly clothed with peach
and orange trees carried there by the waters of the river."[147] Many
references to wild peaches on the Pacific Coast may be found, as
interesting as any being one from Bertero who says that on Robinson
Crusoe's island, Juan Fernandez,[148] "The peach is so abundant
that one can scarcely form an idea of the quantity of fruit that
it bears. They are in general of good quality despite the state of
wildness." According to Oakenfull,[149] in Brazil, "Of all the fruits
introduced from abroad, the peach has made itself more at home than
any." Wight[150] reports the peach and nectarine in Argentina, Chile,
Peru and Bolivia under cultivation and as escapes from cultivation
in seemingly all degrees of evolution. The peach-drying industry is
important in the province of Coquimbo, Chile. According to Lounsbury
the peach is the most common fruit-tree in Argentina. He says:[151]
"It grows almost everywhere most luxuriantly, bears heavily and as yet
no very serious insect or fungus pest for it has become widespread.
Solid blocks of thousands of trees are not uncommon about Buenos
Ayres. Most of the choice varieties of Europe and America have been
introduced." The culture of this fruit in South America falls short
of that in North America only because of the lack of advancement in
horticulture--the one continent is a century behind the other in this
field of agriculture.
In temperate Oceanica the peach plays as important a part in
horticulture as any other of the deciduous tree-fruits. In early days
in New Zealand, "vast groves of peaches existed, sometimes, as in the
Waikato, extending for miles, where magnificently grown trees cropped
without limit."[152] Both the peach and nectarine are grown in the
horticultural regions of the island. Wherever the fruits of temperate
climates are cultivated in Australia, there may the peach be found. If
one may judge from the attention given this fruit in the agricultural
literature of New Zealand and Australia, it holds the same high place
in the horticulture of these islands in the Pacific that it has in
Europe and America.
The types of peaches are almost as diverse as the regions in which the
fruit is an inhabitant. The 2181 varieties described in _The Peaches of
New York_ attest the variability of the species in America and Europe,
many of our sorts having come from the Old World. This great number of
kinds can be distinguished by reason of differences in skin, flesh,
flavor, aroma, stone and season, the attributes of which have been
mentioned several times in foregoing paragraphs. The structure of leaf
and tree offers as many more taxonomic characters. It is interesting to
note the extreme forms in fruit and tree the peach has taken on in its
centuries of world-wide wanderings.
Round, flat, beaked, free or clingstone peaches with smooth or downy
skins and red, yellow or white flesh, sweet, sour or bitter, in all
combinations, and each often modified by soil and climate, are known
to American growers of this fruit. But there are many peaches with
less well-known characters. Thus, a peach in China bears fruits as
heavy as one pound apiece with extraordinary keeping and shipping
qualities;[153] another Chinese peach of the Honey type has a tree
with a maximum height of only seven or eight feet;[154] growing in
the same locality, Poliping, China, is a variety with extraordinarily
long leaves;[155] the _Paak wat to_ peach from China is a white-stoned
sort;[156] a variety in the French West Indies has fruits that peel
easily and withstand a continuous temperature in ripening season of
76 to 90 degrees;[157] from Kashgar comes a peach that will keep for
several months;[158] in Chinese Turkestan there is a nectarine "said
to keep for several weeks after fully ripe;"[159] even more remarkable
is the Feitcheng peach which ripens in late September and can be kept,
if wrapped in paper, until February;[160] as remarkable as any is the
Transvaal Yellow of South Africa which we have seen in a foregoing
paragraph grows "amongst granite boulders," "as a hedge around
homesteads" and "beside water furrows and dams, the roots of one side
of the tree immersed in water;" the Fragrant Peach and the Firm Peach
from China are not yet known in America;[161] another Chinese peach is
a dwarf, "grown in pots indoors, which fruits at a height of fifteen
inches and bears peaches on the main trunk though the stem be scarcely
larger than a lead pencil."[162] Most of the examples named are from
China but others can be found in every distinct region in which peaches
have long been grown.
Every well-marked geographical region in which the peach is grown
comes, sooner or later, to have a type of varieties of its own; yet
the universal stamp of the peach--of cultivated _Prunus persica_--is
on them all. These facts imply two important things. First, the peach
is an exceedingly flexible fruit, capable of being moulded to fit many
conditions of environment; and, under cultivation, training, feeding
and culture in unlike regions, soils and climates, may still be greatly
improved and the improvements all intensified and augmented by crossing
and selecting. Second, the peach, a gift to the world from China, has
seemingly, in its centuries of cultivation by the Orientals, taken on
sufficient immutability to make it one of the most stable of species,
especially in its fruits. The many races and thousands of varieties
are all best put in one species; many varieties come true to seed;
and peaches from seed seldom "revert" to worthless forms as so many
seedling fruits habitually do. Cultivated plants, as all who work with
them know, differ widely in variability. Some, as corn, the cucurbits,
and grapes and plums with their many species, are so variable as to
be almost unmanageable in attempts to improve them; others, as the
cereals, are quite too immutable for the best work of the breeder.
The peach is neither a stone wall nor shifting sand in the matter of
variability.