Apricot

Armeniaca communis - Common Apricot

The common apricot tree is the largest of the apricot trees, but not the most fertile, contrary to what Duhamel claimed. 

Pierre-Antoine Poiteau, a keen observer, noted in 1846 that this tree bears less fruit than its cousins and remains vulnerable to late spring frosts, true arbiters of abundant or scarce harvests.

Its fruits, picked in mid-July, turn yellow when ripe without ever reddening in the Parisian sun, revealing flesh that is often bland in the open air, but more fragrant when the tree is trained against a wall.

The common apricot tree is distinguished by its large, flat, beautiful green leaves, often heart-shaped and wider than they are long. Their rounded teeth are finer than those of the peach-apricot, and the short petiole, often red, bears glands in varying numbers. 

Fruit-bearing branches can have up to five flower buds around a wood bud. The medium-sized flowers open into a well-rounded saucer shape.

The fruit, almost as large as the peach-apricot but less flattened, reaches 54 millimeters in height and 58 in diameter. Its skin yellows without reddening, sometimes slightly scabby – a paradoxical sign of quality. 

Exposure and humidity significantly influence its taste: when espaliered, it becomes larger and yellower, but loses flavor.

This plate is taken from Poiteau and Turpin's Traité des Arbres Fruitiers, a fruit 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 sensitivity, characteristic of the great plates from the golden age of illustrated botany.