Apricot Peach

Armeniaca Macrocarpa - Apricot-Peach

"Of all known apricots, this is certainly the largest and the best": this is how Pierre-Antoine Poiteau introduces the Apricot-Peach in his Pomologie Française.

Long confused with the Nancy Apricot, this exceptional fruit is distinguished by a unique characteristic in the plant kingdom: its pit has a longitudinal tube that can be passed through by a pin. This anatomical singularity, combined with its remarkable size and incomparable fragrance, makes it the aristocrat of the orchard.

The Apricot-Peach tree is easily recognized by its characteristic habit and foliage. Grown as an espalier in the south, it produces large, beautiful yellow fruits, smooth and regular, but sometimes pasty and flavorless. In open air, provided the spring is mild, it reveals its true character: firm, browned, dark red on the sun side, rough on the surface. Its flesh then takes on a saffron yellow hue and is filled with a fragrant, pleasantly tangy juice of incomparable flavor. Fragile in the face of climatic excesses, both drought and prolonged rains, this rare fruit requires patience and expertise.

Its early flowering, with large white blossoms, contrasts with its late maturity, around August 15th, when other varieties have already passed.

This plate is taken from the Traité des Arbres Fruitiers by Pierre-Antoine Poiteau and Pierre Jean François Turpin, a botanical encyclopedia published between 1807 and 1835, a major reference in 19th-century naturalistic 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.