The Fort Worth gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-189?, 1891-04-23
THE OLD SPANISH PEACHES.

Some months ago we had this same sub
iect before the readers of this department
of The GAZETTE, but il strikes US that the
subject is one not easily worn threadbare,
especially so far as it relates to Texas. We
have the old Spanish peaches here, or
"old seedlings as we call them, but they
are rapidly on the decline in point of repre-
sentation. In old times they bore an album
dance OF fruit, such as il was, and they are
still doing the same thing where found in
their original purity The present season
will be good one in which to study them,
and that study ought to be carefully made
in all older settled sections of the state.
Where we find them bearing well and Civ
ing q fruit of reasonably fair quality we
ought to select the best trees to be propa-
gated from both, by budding and by plant
ing seeds. It is not the fact of its being a
seeding that makes the tree hardy. A
budded tree from a hardy strain will prob
ably be just as hardy as the parent Seeding.
The object of planting the seeds at all would
lie in the hope of obtaining u better variety
than the original.
The old Spanish peaches also have 4 foot
ing in Florida as well as Texas, but as
with US, they are rapidly disappearing. a
Mariana Fla, correspondent of the Florida
Farmer and Fruit Grower says of them
that before the war they We're found in
that state by hundreds and thousands.
They We're both healthy and fruitful
Springing from whatever unknown origin
Spanish, English or Persian-they had
grown to be part of the real estate of
Florida, just as the old mission grape and
the club-wheat are of California. They
served valuable purpose, for they bore
fruit. True, that fruit was not of as high
a quality as some that is raised nowadays,
or not raised, it would be equally as truth
full to say, for some OF the peaches now on
the list for Florida have been so sublimated
by refinement that they are no longer able
TO produce fruit of any kind
During the war the old seeding strains
were turned over to neglect, and for some
time after the war was ended little effort
was made to replace them, for people We're
put to their wits ends to procure the COM
mon necessaries of life. But in the course
of time Northern settlers or Georgians and
Carolinians began to come in, and they
brought with them their improved" bud
ded peaches: the old natives were put
aside. And from that day, says the writer,
dates the period of uncertainty and unfruit-
fitness of the Florida peach.
The old seeding cIingstone Cor ''press"
as the FlOridians called it,, and the free
stone Tor "clear-seed"), continues the cor
respondent, may not have been so juicy and
certainly not SO large as some Of the mon
strous Chinese clings now in vogue; but
they had a rich and meaty quality which
gave them substantial value An indif-
ferently good peach every year is better
than the most exquisite budded peach once
in three or four years; and they were not
indifferently good; they We're often of
very fair quality.
The crying need of Florida, and especially
Northern Florida where frost is so preva-
lent, IS not so much an early peach to ship
{once in six years., but 4 hardy, seeding,
mid-season peach to can and to evaporate
bait which the former does-often only to
prove snare and delusion-but it has
solid qualities which will one day rank it
with the great horticultural staples of
Florida.
All of which applies to Texas equally as
well as to Florida.
THEW WANT IpUvC .rInN