Apricot Albergier Franc

Armeniaca vera - Free Albergier Apricot Tree

The Free Albergier holds a unique place in French fruit history: Poiteau and Turpin considered it to be the original type of all apricot trees, the only variety capable of reproducing faithfully from seed, where other cultivars lose their qualities.

Cultivated for centuries around Tours, this remarkable tree retained all its virtues in this privileged region, producing a fruit with a well-established reputation among 19th-century connoisseurs.

The Free Albergier is distinguished by its uniquely recognizable habit: slender buds, small leaves that are neither flat nor grooved, often with auricles at the base and carried by a petiole adorned with purplish glands.

Its flowers, more modest than those of the common apricot tree, give rise to medium-sized fruits reaching 50 millimeters in diameter. Ripening in mid-August, they take on a beautiful golden yellow, their skin reddens in the sun and cracks slightly. But it is inside that their true distinction lies: a red, firm flesh, enhanced by a pleasantly vinous water which, according to Poiteau himself, made these fruits far superior to the common apricot.

This exceptional taste quality explains why nurserymen of the time particularly sought out the most flavorful specimens produced from seeds.

This plate is taken from Pierre-Antoine Poiteau and Pierre Jean François Turpin's Traité des Arbres Fruitiers (Treatise on Fruit Trees), a botanical encyclopedia published between 1807 and 1835, a major reference in 19th-century naturalist illustration.
It combines the rigor of scientific drawing with a rare artistic sensibility, characteristic of the great plates from the golden age of illustrated botany.