THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK 95 



fleshed, red-fleshed, globxilar, oblong, beaked, hardy and tender, vigorous 

 and dwarfish peaches. Persian peaches run the whole gamut of peach- 

 characters, the flatness of the Peento possibly excepted, and from the 

 several hundred sorts a score of " races " might be made. These peaches 

 are noted by Price and Onderdonk as requiring a long period of rest and as 

 succeeding only in northern climates. Yet to this group belong the peaches 

 of France, Spain and Italy; those of the warm parts of Africa, South America 

 and Oceanica; and most of the varieties that thrive at the most northern 

 limits of peach-growing in Europe and America. 



The Onderdonk classification, in assigning zoiles to each of its .five 

 races,' misleads peach-growers as to the hardiness of varieties. It makes 

 the Peento and honey -flavored peaches much more tender in tree than they 

 are. Varieties of both groups grow as far north as this Station and Waugh 

 reports that one of the Peento varieties " was discovered growing thriftily 

 and fruiting nicely on the grounds of the Massachusetts Agricultural 

 College, Amherst, Massachusetts." ^ Of the score of descendants of the 

 Honey, several are fruiting well on our grounds, four being illustrated and 

 described in The Peaches of New York. If there were a demand for honey- 

 flavored peaches, climate would not prevent their culture in New York. 



The name used for the Peento group, if it be worth while keeping 

 these peaches in a group, is inapt. It gives the impression that all, like 

 Peento, are flat peaches — in fact Price several times so publishes them — 

 whereas of the twenty-three sorts described by Hume,^ though nearly aU 

 are seedlings of Peento, only Peento is flat. We must look upon the 

 Peento as a peach-monster similar to the cleft peach. Emperor of Russia, 

 the nippled peach, Teton de Venus, the Perseque with its teat-like pro- 

 tuberances, or the more familiar snow-white and blood-red varieties. 



We are not able to see where the Peento group leaves off and the Honey 

 group begins in the Onderdonk classification, though, since varieties of the 

 Peentos have not fruited at Geneva and the several Honey-flavored 

 peaches, though both thrifty in tree and fruitful, are possibly not typical- 

 we ought not to be too critical. As we read the descriptions made by 

 others, however, we are struck by the fact that there are more similari- 

 ties than differences in the two groups and that the differences are rapidly 

 disappearing through hybridization. 



' Waugh, F. A. Systematic Pomology, 178. 1903. 

 2 Hume H. Harold Fla. Sta. Bid. 62: 1902. 



