NAT. ORDER. 
Amydalacece. 
AM YD ALUS PERSICA. THE PEACH. 
Class XII. ICOSANDRIA. Ofder I. MONOGYNIA. 
Gen. Char. Calyx, quinquefid, inferior. Petals, five. Drupe, hav- 
ing a shell perforated with pores. Skin, pubescent. 
Spe. Char. All the serratures of the leaves, acute. Flowers, 
sessile and solitary. 
The common Peach-tree grows to a considerable height, and 
sends off numerous spreading branches : the leaves are long, narrow, 
pointed, elliptical, acutely serrated, on footstalks, and alternate ; the 
flowers are sessile, purplish, solitary and large ; calyx tubular, divided 
at the margin into five ovate segments, and at the base beset with 
numerous scales ; petals five, inversely ovate, spreading, attached by 
short claws ; filaments numerous, tapering, inserted into the calyx, 
furnished with purplish anthers ; germen, roundish, downy ; style 
short, simple, terminated by a round stigma ; the fruit is too well 
known to require any description. The tree is of quick growth, 
and not of long duration. It blossoms in April, and ripens its fruit 
in August and September. 
Dr. Sickler considers that Persia is the original country of the 
Peach, which in Media is deemed unwholesome, but when planted 
in Egypt becomes pulpy, delicious and salubrious. The Peach, also, 
according to Columella, when first brought from Persia into the 
Roman empire, possessed deleterious properties, which T. A. Knight 
concludes to have arisen from those Peaches to be only swollen 
almonds (the tuberes of Pliny), or imperfect Peaches, and which are 
Vol. iii.— 109. 
