CHAPTER XXI 

 THE NECTARINE 



The nectarine reaches perfection under California conditions, as 

 does its close relative, the peach. The fruit is, in fact, as Downing 

 says, only a variety of the peach with a smooth skin; only a distinct, 

 accidental variety of the peach ; and this is rendered quite certain, since 

 there are several well-known examples on record of both peaches and 

 nectarines having been produced on the same branch. Nectarine pits 

 usually produce nectarines again, but they occasionally produce peaches. 

 Peach seeds occasionally produce nectarines; the Boston variety orig- 

 inated from a peach stone.* All these facts which are recorded of rela- 

 tion between the peach and nectarine have been verified by California 

 observation. 



The practice of growing nectarines is also exactly like that employed 

 with the peach. It is propagated and pruned in the same ways, except 

 that, as pointed out by Mr. Culbertson, the nectarine has more of a 

 tendency to form short interior growths, and fruit buds are formed on 

 the larger new growths, thus enabling the pruner to cut them back 

 more closely, and yet have an abundance of fruit buds remain. The 

 peach and nectarines are the same in natural adaptations and require- 

 ments, and in diseases, so that what has been given concerning the 

 growth of the peach in this State has an apt application in the case of 

 the nectarine. 



The success of the nectarine worked on almond stock, as has been 

 demonstrated by the experience of many, has led to the grafting over a 

 good many unprofitable almond trees to nectarine, though this has not 

 been done to the extent to which the French prune and some other 

 plums have been worked on old almond stocks. 



Comparative Production of Nectarine and Peach. It may be 

 wondered, considering the similarity of the peach and the nectarine, 

 why the former comes so near being our leading deciduous fruit and 

 the latter is the least grown, but one, of all temperate zone fruits, only 

 the lowly quince being less in importance. The explanation is that 

 the fruit buyer, both in California and at the East, prefers the peach, 

 whether it be fresh, or canned, or dried, and some of those who have 

 tried even a few acres of nectarines have found many occasions to wish 

 the ground had been given to peaches. How much of this preference 

 is due to lack of knowledge of the nectarine, and how much to its 

 somewhat different flavor, it would be difficult to actually determine. 



That the nectarine would advance in popular favor has been prophe- 

 sied for some years, because of the wonderful excellence of the nectar- 

 ine as grown in our interior valleys, and the passing beauty of the 

 amber translucency of the dried nectarine, both when sun-dried and 

 when produced by machine evaporators. The excellence of the canned 



*"Downing's Fruit and Fruit Trees," p. 565. 



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