Early Cute Peach

Persica mammillata - Early Cute Peach

A prized variety of the famous Grosse-Mignonne, the Early Cute Peach stands out for its remarkable precocity: it ripens 10 to 15 days earlier than its illustrious parent, offering gardeners in Montreuil an exceptional fruit from early August.

First observed in 1808 at Monsieur Dubarle's, this peach is recognizable by its very elevated nipple, a singular trait that makes it immediately identifiable.

The fruit, of medium size and oval shape, boasts a finely downy skin that turns a fiery bright red in the sun.

Its very melting white flesh reveals a subtle yellowish eye and is marbled with bright red around the pit. The latter, rustic and swollen, ends in a characteristic long point. Some fruits from the same tree appear without a nipple and then resemble a miniature Grosse-Mignonne. Cultivated in Montreuil at the beginning of the 19th century, this variety combines gustatory quality and precocity, two major assets for connoisseurs of refined peaches.

This plate is taken 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 illustrated botany.