PRUNUS PERSICA There are over 2,000 cultivated varieties of peach worldwide, in addition to the wild peaches of Tibet and western China, where the peach tree originated. The wild peach bears small, sour, and very fuzzy fruits, but excavations show that indigenous people of that area were selecting for size and taste 4,000 years ago. From China, the tree made its way to Persia, where Alexander the Great supposedly brought it back to Greece in the 4th century bce, whence it spread around the Mediterranean and into southern Europe. It arrived in the New World with the Spanish.
In the early 19th century, the area around Chesapeake Bay was the peach capital of the United States, and later Georgia and South Carolina.
THE ORGANIC FACTOR
Insects and diseases seem to love this fruit as much as we do. In California, where most of the $1.2 billion U.S. peach crop is grown, over four million pounds of agricultural chemicals are used on it annually. Organic growers, however, have good nontoxic remedies for the common peach problems, of which there are many.
NUTRITION
For all their lusciousness, they aren’t nutritional champs, but that shouldn’t stop us from eating them. Peaches do have good amounts of potassium, folate, and vitamin A.
TYPES
Peach types are a moving target because the trees are short-lived—10 to 20 years is typical, less if they develop a disease called PTSL (peach tree short life)—and new varieties are introduced every year, so varieties go in and out of fashion quickly.
Despite the constant introduction of new varieties, some old standbys continue to find favor. Red Haven, developed in Michigan, is one of them. Elberta, introduced in the early 1870s, is another. I asked Professor Tom Gradziel, an expert on peaches at UC Davis, about his favorite peaches. He said, “My favorite cling peaches for fresh eating are the old Dixon variety, as well as the newer Dr. Davis and Riegles. For freestones, I’m old-fashioned. I feel the old O’Henry is tops for fresh or culinary use.”
Unfortunately, most peaches are sold without variety names attached to them. The easiest way to discover the variety of peach you’re buying is to shop at farmers’ markets and farmstands. Make sure to ask if the peaches are freestone or cling. Freestone pits are easy to remove while cling peach pits are not and the flesh must be carved off the pits with a knife.
Click here to read about white peaches .
SEASONALITY
High summer is the season for peaches, and this fruit sums up the warm and buttery light in a particularly satisfying way. Peach season runs from mid-June to September in California, depending on the variety, and about the same throughout the Deep South. In the colder states where they can be grown, July is high peach season. ....read more
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