Late Chevreuse Peach

Persica cunctabunda - Late Chevreuse Peach

This peach tree does not go unnoticed: remarkably vigorous and so fertile that its fruits must be thinned every year to allow them to reach their full beauty.

The Late Chevreuse peach is distinguished by a spectacular transformation: its elongated, hairy, and bumpy fruits until the end of August suddenly round out in September to reveal a magnificent peach, washed with bright red to purple on the sun-exposed side. This late, almost sudden, metamorphosis defines the character of this singular variety.

The peach tree bears large, dark green leaves, some flat, others pleated against the central vein, bordered with fine serrations.

Its kidney-shaped petiole glands are particularly numerous and voluminous. The flowers, on the other hand, remain very small and lightly colored.

The ripe fruit measures about 6 centimeters in diameter, slightly taller than it is wide, often with a nipple at the top. Its thick skin, very downy at first, sheds as it ripens and turns a finely dotted bright red, transitioning to purple in the sun, while shaded areas retain a soft yellow-green.

The white, melting flesh, streaked with red near the elongated pit, offers a sweet, rich, and vinous juice reminiscent of the noble Madeleine de Courson. This late peach reaches full maturity in the last fortnight of September.

This plate is extracted from the Traité des Arbres Fruitiers by Pierre-Antoine Poiteau and Pierre Jean François Turpin, 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 sensibility, characteristic of the great plates from the golden age of botanical illustration.