Nectarine

“ I gather the nectarine (brugnon) more ripe than the peach, because it supports the heat better: and on the other hand, I leave the skin on it in order to preserve it. Moreover, the same process is observed as in preserving the nectarine, the peach, and the apricot; in every instance watching the water-bath closely, as I do in preserving the bunches of currants. ”

“ Thomas Rivers, Sawbridgeworth, England, grew this peach from a pit of the Grand Noir nectarine. Leaves with reniform glands, small; flowers large; fruit very large, ovate, terminating in a pointed nipple; skin nearly smooth like a nectarine, yellow, with a mottled, red cheek; flesh semi-transparent, red at the stone, melting, brisk, rich; freestone ”

“ Talking of Pleasure, this moment I was writing with one hand, and with the other holding to my Mouth a Nectarine—good God how fine. It went down soft, pulpy, slushy, oozy—all its delicious embonpoint melted down my throat like a large beatified Strawberry. ”

“ To sum up the foregoing facts: we have excellent evidence of peach-stones producing nectarine-trees, and of nectarine-stones producing peach-trees,—of the same tree bearing peaches and nectarines,—of peach-trees suddenly producing by bud-variation nectarines (such nectarines reproducing nectarines by seed) , as well as fruit in part nectarine and in part peach,—and lastly of one nectarine-tree first bearing half-and-half fruit, and subsequently true peaches. ”

“ The nectarine is considered a variety and closely related to the peach and the plum, the apricot, and the cherry.
The tree itself, when bearing its beautiful rose-colored, five-petaled flowers, is highly ornamental. It seldom grows higher than twenty feet and its branches form a symmetrical top. One very ornamental variety produces double flowers and bright, shining leaves, but no fruit.
This valuable plant is generally placed in the family Rosaceæ, which includes many species of economic and ornamental importance. ”

“ Varieties descended from three distinct species of Brassica have their stems, or so-called roots, enlarged into globular masses. The nectarine is the offspring of the peach; and the varieties of both these trees offer a remarkable parallelism in the fruit being white, red, or yellow fleshed—in being clingstones or freestones—in the flowers being large or small—in the leaves being serrated or crenated, furnished with globose or reniform glands, or quite destitute of glands. ”

“ At the present time, besides many varieties said to exist in China, Downing describes in the United States seventy-nine {343}native and imported varieties of the peach; and a few years ago Lindley [671] enumerated one hundred and sixty-four varieties of the peach and nectarine grown in England. I have already indicated the chief points of difference between the several varieties. Nectarines, even when produced from distinct kinds of peaches, always possess their own peculiar flavour, and are smooth and small. ”

“ Nectarines.—To dream of nectarines is ominous of strife between friends, of riches to the farmer and tradesman, of infidelity to lovers, of children to the married, of bad weather to the sailor, and to the poor they announce plenty and increase of wages. Nuts.—To dream you see clusters of them denotes riches and happiness. To the lover, success and a good-tempered sweetheart. If you are gathering them, it is not a good omen, for you will pursue some matter that will not turn out to your advantage. ”

“ Downy skin.—A downy skin is the normal condition of the peach. This character is found in all of the peaches to be mentioned in this discussion except those under the next heading.
Smooth skin.—"28963—From Samarkand, Turkestan."16
"A small nectarine of very firm flesh and of subacid flavor; red throughout; from a distance resembles a crab apple more than anything else. Said to come from Chartchui."
"2922717—From Samarkand, Russian Turkestan. A yellow clingstone nectarine of medium size; meat very firm and of medium sweet taste, not melting." ”

“ They generally bear so full, that they break great part of their Limbs down. We have likewise very fair Nectarines, especially the red, that clings to the Stone, the other yellow Fruit, that leaves the Stone; of the last, I have a Tree, that, most Years, brings me fifteen or twenty Bushels. I see no Foreign Fruit like this, for thriving in all sorts of Land, and bearing its Fruit to Admiration. I want to be satisfy'd about one sort of this Fruit, which the Indians claim as their own, and affirm, they had it growing amongst them, before any Europeans came to America. ”

“ In North America the smoothness, or absence of down on the fruit, makes a great difference in the attacks of the weevil, "which is the uncompromising foe of all smooth stone-fruits;" and the cultivator "has the frequent mortification of seeing nearly all, or indeed often the whole crop, fall from the trees when half or two-thirds grown." Hence the nectarine suffers more than the peach. A particular variety of the Morello cherry, raised in North America, is without any assignable cause more liable to be injured by this same insect than other cherry-trees. ”

“ Nectar is secreted in tubes so deep and slender that none but the moths' long tongues can drain the last drop. An exquisite, little, rose-pink twilight flyer, his wings bordered with yellow, flutters in ecstasy above the evening primrose's freshly opened flowers, transferring in his rapid flight some of their abundant, sticky pollen that hangs like a necklace from the outstretched filaments. By day one may occasionally find a little fellow asleep in a wilted blossom, which serves him as a tent, under whose flaps the brightest bird eye rarely detects a dinner. ”

“ Nectar, secreted in a disk on each minute ovary, is eagerly sought by little Andrena and other bees, besides flies and butterflies. Insects crawling about these clusters, whose florets are all of one kind, get their heads and undersides dusted with pollen, which they transfer as they suck. Hungry winter birds, which bolt the red fruit only when they can get no choicer fare, distribute the smooth, indigestible stones far and wide. ”

“ Five males, one female. Nature has in many flowers used a wonderful apparatus to guard the nectary, or honey-gland, from insects. In the honey-suckle the petal terminates in a long tube like a cornucopiae, or horn of plenty; and the honey is produced at the bottom of it. In Aconitum, monkshood, the nectaries stand upright like two horns covered with a hood, which abounds with such acrid matter that no insects penetrate it. In Helleborus, hellebore, the many nectaries are placed in a circle, like little pitchers, and add much to the beauty of the flower. ”

“ At nectar-getting he is as clumsy as at stinging. He sprawls over a flower, pushes here and there among the delicate organs, and gets himself thoroughly bedaubed with pollen. This clumsiness makes him a good marriage-priest for the flowers. The color of the laurel attracts him, and the nectary promises honey. He lights, gets his legs entangled among the stamens, and as he jostles them they spring from their little pits with a sharp snap and scatter their pollen over his back. In visiting another flower some of the pollen will find its way to the stigma and thus secure cross-fertilization. ”

“ We know that this orchid is but the half of itself, as it were; that its color, its form, however eccentric and incomprehensible, its twisted inverted position on its individual stalk-like ovary, its slender nectary, its carefully concealed pollen—all are anticipations of an insect complement, a long-tongued night-moth perhaps, with whose life its own is mysteriously linked through the sweet bond of perfume and nectar, and in the sole hope of posterity. ”

“ When, attracted by either of these significant characteristics,—color or fragrance,—the bee alights upon the blossom, it is sometimes guided to the very spot where the nectar lies hidden by markings of some vivid color. Thrusting its head into the heart of the flower for the purpose of extracting the secreted treasure, it unconsciously strikes the stamens with sufficient force to cause them to powder its body with pollen. ”

“ But Sprengel, a most careful observer, thoroughly searched many flowers of O. latifolia and morio, and could never find a drop of nectar; nor could Krünitz [17] find nectar either in the nectary or on the labellum of O. morio, fusca, militaris, maculata or latifolia. I have looked to all our common British species and could find no trace of nectar; I examined, for instance, eleven flowers of O. maculata, taken from different plants growing in different districts, and taken from the most favourable position on each spike, and could not find under the microscope the smallest bead of nectar. ”

“ I have told you about the nectar, that sweet liquor that oozes out at the bottom of the corolla to entice the little winged people and make them shake the anthers on the stigma. This nectar is what the bee wants. It is its great feast, the great feast also of the little ones and the queen-mother; it is the prime ingredient of honey. How carry home a liquid so that others may enjoy it? The bee possesses neither pitcher, jar, pot, nor anything of the sort. I am wrong: like the ant that carries the plant-lice’s milk to the workers, it is provided with a natural can, stomach, paunch, or crop. ”

“ That long, tubular, fork-shaped tongue may be sucking up the nectar from those rather small cylindrical blossoms, or it may be capturing tiny insects housed away there. Much more like a large sphynx moth hovering and humming over the flowers in the dusky twilight, than like a bird, appears this delicate, fairy-like beauty. How the bright green of the body gleams and glistens in the sunlight. ”

“ The nectar gathered by bees passes directly into a receptacle, the honey-sack or honey-stomach, which is used for that purpose only. It does not go the same road as the bee's food. The notion that bees swallow the nectar and then unswallow it is as erroneous as it is unappetizing. The flavour, body, and colour of honey depend on the source of the nectar, the age, the amount of chemical change wrought by the bees, and the completeness of the ripening process which goes on in the hive before the cells are capped. Honey is a very wholesome sweet, far more easily digested than cane or grape sugar. ”

“ The rich sky-blue of the male, in some lights, becomes greenish, and in others dark blue. The bill, like that of all the genuine Nectariniæ, is slightly notched a little way from the tip, and the base is much broader than high. ”

“ Along this surface stretches a groove which is surrounded by thickened cuticle and practically formed into a tube by numerous fine hairs. Along this channel the nectar is drawn into the pharynx and passes, mixed with saliva, into the crop or “honey-bag”; the action of the saliva changes the saccharose into dextrose and levulose, and the nectar becomes honey, which the bee regurgitates for storage in the cells or for the feeding of the grubs. The sting (fig. 6, pg, st.) of female bees is usually highly specialized, but in a few genera it is reduced and useless. ”

“ The formation of the mouth is beautiful and complicated, adapted to the rapid sucking up of nectar even if deeply placed in the flower. The nectar is stored in the body of the bee, and subsequently transferred to the waxen honey-cells in the hive. In the Butterflies and Moths the mouth parts are also modified for sucking, and as these insects do not build nests or take care of their offspring as Bees do the mouth is formed solely for the purpose of securing the nectar which is their only food. ”

“ As the flies and small pollen-collecting bees move rapidly over a corymb to feast on the layer of nectar freely exposed for their benefit, they usually cross-fertilize the flowers; for, as Muller pointed out, the anthers and stigmas of each come in contact with different parts of the insect's feet or tongue. Beetles, which visit the clusters in great numbers, often prove destructive visitors. Kerner claims that nectar is secreted in the leaves of this species, whether in the two glands that appear at the top of the petioles or not, he does not say. ”

“ Unlike its far more showy, decorative cousin the arrow-head, this wee-blossomed plant, whose misty white panicles rise with compensating generosity the world around, bears only perfect, regular flowers. Twelve infinitesimal drops of nectar, secreted in a fleshy ring around the center, are eagerly sought by flies. As the anthers point obliquely outward and away from the stigmas, an incoming fly, bearing pollen on his under side, usually alights in the center, and leaves some of the vitalizing dust just where it is most needed. ”

“ Those which literally set their caps for color-loving bees and butterflies whose long tongues could easily drain nectar deeply hidden from the mob for their special benefit, assumed gay hues, speckling the inner side of their spreading divisions, even providing lines as pathfinders to their nectaries in some cases, lest a visitor try to thrust in his tongue between the petal-like parts while standing on the outside, and so defeat their well-laid plan. ”

“ Most of the members of each community are active and roving in their dispositions, and show no tendency to undue distension of the nether extremities. They go out at night and collect nectar or honey-dew from the gall-insects on oak-trees; for the gall-insect, like love in the old Latin saw, is fruitful both in sweets and bitters, melle et felle. This nectar they then carry home, and give it to the rotunds or honey-bearers, who swallow it and store it in their round abdomen until they can hold no more, having stretched their skins literally to the very point of bursting. ”