POMACES. X. PVKUS. 



623 



Austria. Jacq. austr. 2. t. 107. Flowers white. Fruit very 

 acid, but when ripe and becoming putrid, very sweet. 

 Snow Pear. Fl. April, May. Tree 6 to 10 feet. 



17 P. MICHAU'XII (Bosc, in Poir. suppl. 4. p. 432.) leaves 

 oval, quite entire, acutish, glabrous on both surfaces, and shining 

 above ; peduncles usually twin, when bearing the fruit thick and 

 woody; fruit globose. Tj . H. Native of North America. 



Michaux's Pear. Fl. April. Tree 20 feet. 



18 P. PARVIFLORA (Desf. cor. 78. t. 58.) leaves ovate, quite 

 entire, hoary beneath ; corymbs terminal ; fruit globose. Jj . H. 

 Native of Candia. P. sylvestrus Cretica, C. Bauh. pin. p. 439. 

 Tourn. cor. 43. Flowers red. 



Small-jlonered Pear. Tree 20 to 30 feet. 



SECT. II. MA'LUS (mel or mal, Celtic, for the apple, which 

 the Greeks have rendered jufjXoj', and the Latins malus}. 

 Tourn. inst. t. 406. Petals flat, spreading. Styles 5, some- 

 what connected at the base. Pome usually globose and depres- 

 sed, always umbilicate at the base. Pedicels simple, umbellate. 

 Leaves simple, glandless. 



19 P. ACE'RBA (D. C. prod. 2. p. 635.) leaves ovate, acute, 

 crenated, quite glabrous when young, as well as the calycine 

 tube ; flowers corymbose, fj . H. Native of Europe, in woods 

 and hedges. P. Mains austera, Wallr. sched. 215. Malus 

 acerba, Merat, fl. par. 187. D. C. suppl. 530. P. malus syl- 

 vestris, Fl. dan. 1101. P. Malus, Smith, engl. bot. 179. Flowers 

 white tinged with red. There are numerous varieties with acerb 

 fruit ; they are commonly called cider apples, and in French 

 pommicr a cidre. The fruit of the mild apple is globose, 

 yellowish, with a tinge of red, very acid, and astringent, yet 

 there are several varieties among the mild crabs, some of them 

 of excellent flavour when baked with plenty of sugar, even 

 surpassing many cultivated apples. The expressed juice of 

 any of them, called verjuice, is used to cure sprains and scalds, 

 being often kept by good housewives in the country for that 

 purpose. 



Sour or Wild Apple or Crab. Fl. March, April. Britain. 

 Tree 15 to 20 feet. 



20 P. MA'LUS (Lin. spec. 686.) leaves ovate or elliptic, acute, 

 serrated, clothed with white down beneath, as well as on the 

 calyxes, petioles, &c. ; flowers corymbose ; styles glabrous. 



Fj . H. Native of Europe, in woods, hedges, and parks ; plentiful 

 in Britain. Malus mitis, Wallr. sched. 215. Flowers umbellate, 

 beautifully variegated with white and rose-colour, and slightly 

 fragrant. 



The apple tree is called pomme and pommier doux or pommier 

 a couteau in France, apfel in German, and porno or melo in Ita- 

 lian. It has the branches more horizontal than the pear tree ; 

 the flowers terminate in umbels, produced from the wood of the 

 preceding year, but more generally from very short shoots or 

 spurs from wood of two years' growth. The fruit in its wild 

 state is termed a crab. It is a native of most countries of Eu- 

 rope in its wild state, and the improved varieties form an im- 

 portant branch of culture in Britain, France, and Germany, for 

 the kitchen, the table, and for the manufacture of cider. From 

 whence we received the cultivated apple is unknown, but in all 

 probability it was introduced by the Romans, to whom 22 

 varieties were known in Pliny's time, and afterwards the stock 

 of varieties greatly increased at the Norman conquest. Accord- 

 ing to Stow, carps and pepins were brought into England by 

 Mascal, who wrote on fruit trees in 1572. 



The apple tree is supposed by some to attain to a great age. 

 Haller mentions some trees in Herefordshire that attained 1000 

 years, and were highly prolific ; but Mr. Knight considers 200 

 years as the ordinary duration of a healthy tree grafted on a 



crab stock, and planted in a strong tenacious soil. Speedily 

 (Hints, 58.) mentions a tree in an orchard at Burton-Joyce near 

 Nottingham, of about GO years old, with branches extending from 

 7 to 9 yards round the bole, which in 1792 produced upwards 

 of 100 pecks of apples. Of all the different fruits that are pro- 

 duced in Britain, none can be brought to so high a degree of per- 

 fection, with so little trouble ; and of no other is there so many 

 excellent varieties in general cultivation, calculated for almost 

 every soil, situation, and climate, which our island affords. 

 Very good apples are grown in the Highlands and Orkneys, and 

 even in the Shetland Islands (Cal. hort. mem. vol. 2.), as well as 

 in Devonshire and Cornwall ; some sorts are ripe in the be- 

 ginning of July, and others which ripen later will keep till June. 

 Unlike other fruits, those which ripen latest are the best. 



Use. For pies, tarts, sauces, and the dessert, the use of the 

 apple is familiar to every one. The fermented juice forms cider, 

 a substitute both for grape wine and malt liquor. In confec- 

 tionary it is used for comfits, marmelades, jellies, pastes and 

 tarts, &c. In medicine, verjuice or the juice of crabs is used 

 for sprains, and as an astringent and repellent, and, with the 

 proper addition of sugar, Withering thinks a very grateful liquor 

 might be made with it, little inferior to Rhenish wine. Light- 

 foot affirms, mixed with cultivated apples, or even alone, it 

 thoroughly ripe, it will make a sound masculine wine. The apple 

 when ripe is laxative ; the juice is excellent in dysentery ; boiled 

 or roasted apples fortify a weak stomach. Scopoli recovered 

 from a weakness of the stomach and indigestion from using 

 them, and they are equally efficacious in putrid and malignant 

 fevers, with the juice of lemons or currants. In perfumery, the 

 pulp of apples, beat up with lard, forms pomatum ; and Bosc 

 observes (N. cours d'Agricultiur, &c.) that the prolonged strati- 

 fication of apples with elder-flowers, in a close vessel, gives the 

 former an odour of musk, extremely agreeable. In dyeing, the 

 bark produces a yellow colour, and in general economy the wood 

 of the tree is used for turning, and various purposes where hard- 

 ness, compactness, and variegation of colour are objects. 



Criterion of a good apple, Apples for the table are charac- 

 terized by firm juicy flesh, elevated poignant flavour, regular 

 form, and beautiful colouring ; those for kitchen use by the pro- 

 perty of falling, as it is technically termed, or forming in general 

 a pulpy mass of equal consistency, when baked or boiled. Some 

 sorts of apples have the property of falling when green, as the 

 Keswick, Carlisle, Haivthornden, and other codlins ; and some 

 only after being ripe, as the Russet tribe. Those which have 

 this property when green are particularly valuable for affording 

 sauces to geese early in the season, and for succeeding the goose- 

 berry in tarts. For cider an apple must possess a considerable 

 degree of astringency, with or without firmness of pulp or rich- 

 ness of juice. The best kinds, Knight says, are often tough, 

 dry, and fibrous ; and the Siberian Harvey, which he recom- 

 mends as one of the very best cider-apples, is unfit either for 

 culinary purposes or the table. Mr. Knight has found that the 

 specific gravity of the juice of any apple recently expressed in- 

 dicates with very considerable accuracy the strength of the 

 future cider. Considering the various uses of the apple, it may 

 be regarded as a fruit of more use and benefit to the public in 

 general than all the other fruits the produce of this island. 



Varieties. Tusser in 1573 mentions in his list of fruits 

 " apples of all sorts." Parkinson in 1629 enumerates 57 sorts. 

 Evelyn about 30 years afterwards says (Pomona pref.), " it was 

 through the plain industry of one Harris, a fruiterer to Henry 

 VIII. that the fields and environs of about 30 towns in Kent 

 only, were planted with fruit from Flanders, to the universal 

 benefit and improvement of the county." Gibson (Churches of 

 Dove and Homelacy,) mentions that Lord Scudamore, ambassa- 

 dor to the court of France in the time of Charles I., collected in 



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