THE PKACHES OF NEW YORK IO7 



South China peaches. — Those who have read the descriptions of 

 Chinese peaches in Chapter I (pages 14 to 21) recognize at once the beaked 

 varieties of South China, especially thbse growing about Canton. These 

 peaches, common enough in China and cultivated there for centuries, 

 reached occidental countries only in the middle of the Nineteenth Century. 

 They came to America as seeds from Dr. J. T. Devan, Canton, China, to 

 Mr. John Caldwell, Newburg, New York,' and were introduced into Europe 

 probably by M. Montigny, French Consul at Shanghai, who sent seeds 

 to the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, in 1852.- In recent years a number of 

 fresh importations of seeds and plants of these honey-flavored, beaked 

 peaches have been made by the United States Department of Agriculture. 



A composite picture of South China peaches shows the following 

 characters : 



Tree of medium size, upright-spreading; branches leaving the trunk 

 at an angle of about fifty degrees and curving upward; buds quite 

 prominent; flowers always large and very abundant, pale pink, base of petals 

 darker pink; leaves small, long, narrow, pointed, finely serrate, conduplicate, 

 distributed all along the limb, dark green, in fall slightly tinged with red. 

 Fruit small, oval, yellow or white blushed with red, slightly flattened; 

 skin adhering to the flesh; suture very deep in basin, but does not extend 

 more than one-third the way down; apex long and recurved; flesh white 

 or yellow; flavor a peculiar honey-sweet; stone free or cling, long-pointed, 

 generally curved. 



As yet these honey-fiavored peaches are grown commercially only in 

 the Gulf States, the notion prevailing that they cannot be grown in the 

 North. Quite to the contrary they do exceedingly well as far north as 

 Geneva, though undesirable because of smallness of fruit and lateness in 

 ripening. Of the score of the descendants of the original Honey, several 

 are in bearing on the Station grounds. Climax, Imperial, Pallas and Triana 

 being illustrated in The Peaches of New York. All but two or three of the 

 varieties that are put in this group originated in Florida and most of them 

 come from the grounds of G. L. Taber, Glen Saint Mary, of that 

 State. An excellent bulletin, No. 73, from the Florida Agricultural Experi- 

 ment Station, published in 1904, by F. C. Reimer, gives a full account of 

 these peaches. 



Is the beaked character permanent? That regions in time give rise 



^ Horticulturist I ■.5fi2. 1847. 

 ^ Rev. Hort. 11. 1861. 



