THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK 



BLOOD CLING 



1. Bridgeman Card. Ass't Pt. 3:109. 1857. 2. Am. Pom. Soc. Cat. 21. 1897. 3. Waugh Am- 

 Peach Orch. 199. 1913. 



Blood Clingstone. 4. Prince Treat. Fr. Trees 17. 1820. 5. Floy Am. Fruits 411. 1825. 6. Down- 

 ing Ft. Trees Am. 493, 494. 1845. 7. Ibid. 601. 1869. 8. Fulton Peach Cult. 201. 1908. 



Blood Peach, g. Kenrick Am. Orch. 197. 1841. 



Indian Blood Cling. 10. Am. Pom. Soc. Cat. 18. 1871. 



Indian Blood, ii. Ga. Sta. Bui. 42:237. 1898. 



Blood Cling is the favorite curiosity of the peach-orchard and as 

 such we accord it a color-plate and a full description in The Peaches of 

 New York. Unfortunately, the beet-red color of the flesh coiild not be 

 reproduced with sufficient accuracy to make the attempt satisfactory. It 

 is a pleasant peach to eat out of hand and is much used for pickling and 

 preserving, for which purposes it has real merit. The round-headed, com- 

 pact tree might make the variety a desirable parent in breeding new 

 peaches. 



This peach is an American seedling raised many years ago from the 

 Blood Clingstone of the French. The fruit is much larger than that of 

 the parent sort but otherwise is much the same. The Blood Free raised 

 by John M. Ives of Salem, Massachusetts, while somewhat of the nature 

 of Blood Cling, is, nevertheless, a different sort. The American Pomo- 

 logical Society listed Blood Cling in its catalog in 1871 under the name 

 Indian Blood Cling. In 1897 this name was changed to Blood Cling. 



Tree large, vigorous, round, compact, hardy, unproductive; trunk thick; branches 

 stocky, reddish-bronze, with a light ash-gray tinge; branchlets slender, long, with short 

 internodes, olive-green overlaid with dark red, smooth, glabrous, with nimierous usually 

 small, inconspicuous lenticels. 



Leaves five and three-fourths inches long, one and one-half inches wide, folded upward, 

 oval-lanceolate; leaves thin, somewhat leathery; upper surface dark green, varying from 

 smooth to rugose; lower surface light grayish-green ; margin finely serrate, with dark 

 brown glands; petiole three-eighths inch long, with two to five reniform, light or dark 

 green glands variable in position. 



Flower-buds large, long, plump, oblong-conic, pubescent, free; flowers open in mid- 

 season; blossoms pink, one and three-eighths inches across; pedicels short, glabrous, pale 

 green; calyx-tube dull, speckled greenish-red, light greenish-yellow within, campanulate, 

 glabrous; calyx-lobes long, narrow, >acute, glabrous within, heavily pubescent without; 

 petals oval to ovate, crenate near the base, tapering to short, narrow claws white at the 

 base; filaments three-eighths inch long, shorter than the petals; pistil pubescent, seven- 

 sixteenths inch long, equal to or shorter than the stamens. 



Fruit matures very late; one and three-fourths inches long, one and seven-eighths 

 inches thick, compressed, with unequal halves often giving a lopsided appearance; cavitv 



