68 THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK 



CHAPTER U 



BOTANICAL AND HORTICULTURAL CLASSIFICATIONS OF 

 THE PEACH 



PLACE OF THE PEACH IN THE GENUS PRUNUS 



The genus Prunus is without peer in the number of distinct, natural, 

 esculent products it furnishes man. Here belong the stone-fruits — peaches, 

 plums, cherries, almonds and apricots, represented by some forty edible 

 species, which, through long domestication, have been broken up into not 

 less than 5000 orchard-varieties, of which at least 3000 are now under 

 ctdtivation. Of the two-score cultivated species of this genus, Prunus 

 persica, the common peach, is easily the most remarkable when judged 

 either by the senses which make foods palatable and pleasant or by the 

 criteria that establish the commercial worth of a product. As virtues 

 which give the peach leading place among stone-fruits, we may specify: 

 Wider distribution and consequently commoner cultivation and a greater 

 number of varieties; larger size, greater beauty, pleasanter and more 

 diversified taste, and more culinary uses than other stone-fruits; and 

 greater productiveness, more rapid growth and earlier fruiting of the trees 

 than most of the species of the genus. The place of the peach in the genus 

 Prunus is thus easily established from a horticultural point of view, but it 

 is a much more difficult matter to make clear its botanical standing among 

 the species with which it is considered botanically related. 



The botanical relations of the several stone-fruits to each other have 

 been set forth in the foregoing books of this series on plums and cherries, 

 but, for the convenience of those who may not have these treatises, a 

 summary of the relationships of the species of Prunus is presented. 

 Besides, greater emphasis on several differences between the peach and its 

 congeners is needed. In particular, since some notable naturalists have 

 held that the peach is a modified almond, the differences between these 

 two fruits must be more clearly set forth. 



Nearly every botanist who has done much towards classifying plants 

 has grouped the stone-fruits according to a plan of his own and there are, 

 therefore, many classification schemes and consequently a most confused 

 nomenclature for this genus. Happily, the pitfalls in synonomy dug by 

 botanists need not worry horticulturists; for each of the stone-fruits con- 

 stitutes a distinct horticultural group. In tree or fruit of peach, plum, 



