178 THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK 



CHAPTER V 



LEADING VARIETIES OF PEACHES 



ADMIRAL DEWEY 



I. Ca. Sta. Bui. 42:232. i8g8. 2. Mirli. Sla. Sp. But. 30:14. 1905. 3. Albertson-Hobbs Cat. 

 29. 1906. 



.Admiral. 4. Budd-Hansen .Iw. //or/, .l/a/;. 2:335. '903. 



Dewey. 5. Am. Pom. Soc. Cat. 36. 1909. 6. Waugh .Am. Peach Onh. 201. 1913. 



Perhaps the peach most of all desired nowadays by peach-growers 

 is a very early, yellow-fleshed freestone. For years Admiral Dewey and 

 Triumph, both seedlings of Alexander, have been grown to fill this place 

 and both, in the main, fail. Admiral Dewey, while early, yellow in flesh 

 and good in quality, is not always a freestone and has several other defects 

 which make it nearly worthless as a commercial fruit. Thus, though the 

 trees arc very productive, the peaches run small, are so heavily pubescent 

 as to be unattractive, are very susceptible to brown-rot and are often dis- 

 figured with the peach-scab. The trees, too, sufifer much from leaf-curl. 

 With Alexander as the parent, the trees should be hardy, and from 

 behavior elsewhere, must be so rated; but they have not proved excep- 

 tionally so on our grounds. While nowhere largely planted, Admiral 

 Dewey is often set, as no doubt it should be, for an early peach in the 

 home orchard. Of the two early sorts, this variety stands shipment 

 rather better than Triumph. The varieties are of about the same season, 

 both coming a week or thereabouts later than the well-known Alexander. 



Admiral Dewey was grown from a seed of Alexander by J. D. Husted, 

 Vineyard, Georgia, in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century. It was 

 introduced in 1899 by Mr. Husted and has since been grown commercially 

 east and west, north and south. The American Pomological Society 

 placed the variety on its fruit-list in 1909 as Dewey but the full name 

 bestowed to commemorate the great Admiral should, we think, be retained. 



Tree large, vigorous, upright-spreading, hardy, very productive; trunk thick, smooth; 

 branches stocky, reddish-brown mingled with light ash-gray; branchlets slender, long, 

 olive-green overspread with dark red, glossy, smooth, glabrous, with numerous lenticels, 

 raised near the base. 



Leaves six inches long, one and one-half inches wide, folded upward, oval to obo\-ate- 

 lanceolate, thin; upper surface olive-green, smooth except near the midrib; lower surface 

 Hght grayish-green; margin finely serrate, tipfjed with reddish-brown glands; petiole one- 

 fourth inch long, with one to seven large, reniform, greenish-yellow glands variable in 

 position. 



