Stone (fruit)

“ The stone-cells are widely distributed through the vegetable kingdom, and form an essential part of the framework of many plants. In these cases they perform mechanical functions, as they do also in grapes or stone fruits, where they form strong walls protecting the seed. The mechanical office does not, however, appear in the pear, for the stone-grains are scattered irregularly in the pulp of the fruit. M. Polonié suggests that they may be the rudimentary remains of a stone casing to the seeds of some ancestor of our present cultivated and wild pears. ”

“ Earliness and high quality of fruit keep Rivers alive in private places in America. No one would think of planting it in a commercial orchard because of its small fruit, tender skin and flesh which show every bruise, and its susceptibility to brown-rot. It is a white-fleshed freestone, tender, juicy and with an exceedingly rich, sugary flavor with a savoring smack of the nectarine. This variety stands almost alone in beauty of flesh which is white to the stone, translucent and more or less mottled and interspersed with white veins. ”

“ The fruit of the Hawthorn is a drupaceous pome, something between pome and drupe.
355. Of fruits which are externally fleshy and internally hard the leading kind is
356. The Drupe, or Stone-fruit; of which the cherry, plum, and peach (Fig. 375) are familiar examples. In this the outer part of the thickness of the pericarp becomes fleshy, or softens like a berry, while the inner hardens, like a nut. From the way in which the pistil is constructed, it is evident that the fleshy part here answers to the lower, and the stone to the upper face of the component leaf. ”

“ Such may be found occasionally in the native persimmon, in certain grapes, and in many apples; but in the strawberry, blackberry, and raspberry, the berry which constitutes our desirable fruit, never swells unless the germs have been impregnated and the seeds perfect. In the stone-fruits the stone or pit is always developed, but the enclosed seed is often imperfect from want of impregnation or other cause—and yet the fleshy covering will sometimes swell and ripen. ”

“ This stone has not only the power of transmuting any imperfect earthy matter into its utmost degree of perfection, and can convert the basest metals into gold, flints into stone, &c.; but it has still more occult virtues, when the arcana have been entered into by the choice fathers of hermetic mysteries. The vegetable stone has power over the natures of man, beast, fowls, fishes, and all kinds of trees and plants, to make them flourish and bear fruit at any time. ”

“ Fruit and stone are more elongated than in other varieties of its supposed species and the stone is larger, flatter, more pitted and more pointed at the base and apex. The stem, too, is longer than in the average Domestica. These differences in leaf, fruit and pit may be well seen if the color-plate of this variety be compared with those of well-recognized Domesticas. ”

“ The only wild fruit that I ever heard of was the native cherry; a fruit almost entirely composed of a hard kernel the size of a marble, with a thin outside rind that has an acid taste, and of which the colonists make a sweetmeat in default of anything better. The stone is buff-coloured, and much corrugated, and when a good many of them are strung together, and alternated with the nuts of the sandalwood tree, they make a pretty row of beads, a purpose for which nature seems to have intended them. ”

“ In many cases Nature economically develops as little sweet pulp as will serve her purpose. In the wild red cherry, for instance, the stone occupies almost the entire fruit, there being only a thin layer of food substance. Often there is none whatever, and instead the fruit attains its ends by simulated attractiveness. The rosary bean temptingly displays its brilliant red seeds, which are in reality of stony hardness. Yet it does not wholly rely upon this artifice, for it is very probable that part of the seeds are scattered by the twisting dehiscence of the tough pod. ”

“ I gather the apricots when they are ripe, but somewhat firm; when, on being squeezed gently between the fingers, the stone is perceived to detach itself from the fruit. As soon as gathered, I cut them in halves, take out [85] the stone, and peel off the skin with a knife as delicately as possible. I put them into bottles, either in halves or quarters, according to the size of the mouth, and shake them on the stool to fill up the vacancies. I add to each bottle from twelve to fifteen almonds; I cork them and put them into the water-bath to receive one boiling only ”

“ First take care, at a proper time of the year, to save the stalks of the fruit with the stones to them; then get some neat tins made in the shape of the fruit you intend to make, leaving a hole at the top to put in the stone and stalk, so contrived as to open in the middle to take out the fruit; you must also have a frame of wood to fix them in: in making the tins care must be taken to have them extremely smooth in the inside, lest by their roughness they mark the fruit ”

“ Fruit ripening during the spring and early summer, subglobose, 1⁄3′ in diameter, tipped with the conspicuous blackened remnants of the stigmas, bright red, covered with soft pubescence, solitary or in clusters of 2 or 3, deciduous at maturity from its stout stalk enlarged at apex and 1⁄4′ long; flesh thin and crustaceous, closely investing the thin-walled crustaceous stone; seed usually solitary by abortion, obovoid, gibbous, 1⁄8′ long, narrowed below, narrowed and marked at apex by the elevated pale hilum and on the inner surface of the seed-coat by the broad conspicuous raphe. ”

“ The people crowded about, sniffing the odour of dead flesh, hungry and brutal--carnivora seeking their prey.
At the grocer's the light was reflected from the gay labels on tins and packages and bottles, and the air was heavy with the confused odour of tea, coffee and spices.
Cabbages, piled in heaps against the door-posts of the greengrocer's, threw a rank smell of vegetables on the air; the fruit within, built in pyramids for display, filled the nostrils with the fragrant, wholesome scents of the orchard. ”

“ Why the Stone is said to be perfect. FOr this cause is the Stone saide to be perfect, because it hath in it the nature of Minerals, Vegetables, and Animals: for the stone is three, and one hauing foure natures, to wit, the foure elements, & three colours, black, white, and red. It is also called a graine of corne, which if it die not, remaineth without fruit: but if it doo die (as is aboue said) when it is ioyned in coniunction, it bringeth forth much fruite, the afore named operations being accomplished. ”

“ Now for the gathering of all other stone-fruite, as Nectarines, Apricockes, Peaches, Peare-plumbes, Damsons, Bullas, and such like, although in their seuerall kinds, they seeme not to be ripe at once on one tree: yet when any is ready to drop from the tree, though the other seeme hard, yet they may also be gathered, for they haue receiued the full substance the tree can giue them ”

“ Stone-fruits or drupes, such as the peach, nectarine, plum, cherry, are rather luxuries than foods, like many other fruits. Before ripening they are unfit for food; when ripening is complete, the acids and astringent matter largely disappear. The date contains chiefly sugar, and forms an important food in the East. ”

“ This exposes the internal structure and enables us to judge of the color and other characters of the fleshy pericarp, the length of the axis, the size of the core and carpels, and the number and appearance of the seeds. These characters are possessed of value, and are quite reliable; in many fruits the seeds furnish distinctive indications, and this is particularly the case with the stone fruits, many of which are readily identified by the form and markings of the stones or pits, the endocarps of botany. ”

“ All are great globes of pale gold and surprise one with their size and profusion. How does this close-fibered, tough-wooded tree find in sun and soil the material to produce such fruit? Here is one ten years old that holds by actual measurement twenty boxes, almost a ton, of fruit on a tree that is about fifteen feet high and six inches in diameter at the butt. It is as if a thumbling pear tree in a Northern garden should suddenly take to producing pumpkins and bring forth twelve hundred of them. ”

“ It is strange to think of the gradually diminished power and withdrawn freedom among the orders of leaves—from the sweep of the chestnut and gadding of the vine, down to the close shrinking trefoil, and contented daisy, pressed on earth; and, at last, to the leaves that are not merely close to earth, but themselves a part of it; fastened down to it by their sides, here and there only a wrinkled edge rising from the granite crystals. We have found beauty in the tree yielding fruit, and in the herb yielding seed. How of the herb yielding no seed,4 the fruitless, flowerless lichen of the rock? ”

“ Here among the gray granite grow most of the beauties of any shore-sheltered New England pasture. Here is elder showing white, lace-like blooms, bayberry and staghorn sumac each striving to overtop the other, wild cherry and shadbush, and beneath and around these low-bush black huckleberries, raspberries [47] and blackberries, the last two blessing the tangle with fruit. Among the grasses grow yarrow, St. John’s-wort, mullein, toad-flax, cranes-bill, evening primrose and other herbs, while Virginia creeper and fragrant clematis make many a spot a bower of climbing vines. ”

“ The flesh is pure white, juicy, melting, sweet and delicious in flavor, and so aromatic that one berry will perfume a large apartment. The plant is vigorous and hardy, but a shy bearer. Hill culture and clipped runners are essential to fruit, but, for a connoisseur's table, a quart is worth a bushel of some varieties. ”

“ Thrifty orchards of healthy well-grown fruit trees, including many varieties, are fast coming to maturity. Waving fields of golden grain, ripple in the simmering heat of a noon-day sun, or rustle and billow with each passing breeze, under the pale light of a harvest moon. Beautiful fields of cotton and corn, are an inspiration to behold. ”

“ The luxuriance of the peach, the plum, the pear and the apple, is such, in this region, as to afford the most perfect possible specimens. The vigor of fruit-trees, in such a soil and under a heaven so congenial, produces fruits which are very large without being coarse-fleshed; the flavor concentrated, and the color very high. It is the constant remark of emigrants from the East, that our apples surpass those to which they have been accustomed. ”

“ The apple, [1408] the cherry, the rhamnus jujuba, the common nut, the dwarf laurel, the myrtle, and the medlar, were propagated by suckers; while the quicker and surer mode of raising trees from boughs was frequently adopted in the case of the almond, the pear, the mulberry, the citron, [1409] the apple, the olive, the quince, [1410] the black and white poplar, the ivy, the jujube-tree, the myrtle, the chestnut, the vine, the willow, the box, and the cytisus.
But the thrifty people of Hellas seldom devoted the orchard-ground entirely to fruit-trees. ”

“ But while a general magical efficacy may be supposed to reside in all stones by reason of their common properties of weight and solidity, special magical virtues are attributed to particular stones, or kinds of stone, in accordance with their individual or specific qualities of shape and colour. For example, the Indians of Peru employed certain stones for the increase of maize, others for the increase of potatoes, and others again for the increase of cattle. ”

“ Some soils, however, and this is often the case, are so rich that the grape cannot be made to thrive in them; the vines waste their substance in riotous living, producing luxuriant foliage and lusty wood but little or no fruit. ”

“ The vine, also, was grafted on a cherry and a myrtle-stock, which produced, in the first case, grapes in spring, [1382] in the second, a mixed fruit, between the myrtle-berry and the grape. [1383] When the gardener desired to obtain black citrons, he inserted a citron-graft into an apple-stock, and, if red, into a mulberry-stock.
Citrons were likewise occasionally grafted on the pomegranate-tree. In the present day, the almond, the chestnut, the fig, the orange, and the citron, with many other species of fruit-trees, are no longer thought to require grafting. ”

“ In all these differences we see the closest analogy with the varieties of the peach and nectarine. In the stone we have more important differences, and these in the case of the plum have been esteemed of specific value: in some apricots the stone is almost spherical, in others much flattened, being either sharp in front or blunt at both ends, sometimes channelled along the back, or with a sharp ridge along both margins. ”

“ The grape is propagated very extensively by cuttings; the slips are often planted in the field and in the stations where the vines are wanted for the vineyard; but some varieties are so unsatisfactory in their results, that other more elaborate and scientific means must be taken for their propagation. Among the larger fruits, those constituting our trees, we do not depend upon cuttings, except in the quince, which is not only grown for its fruit, but is also largely produced as a stock for the dwarfed pear, and is extensively propagated from cuttings. ”

“ On the other hand, the seed of fruits absolutely wild would produce fruits exactly like their original. If the seed of the wild pear be gotten from the wood and planted in a garden, every seed will yield only the wild pear again. But if a wild pear be transplanted, and put under new influences of soil, climate and cultivation, its fruit will begin to augment and improve. The change is not merely upon the size and appearance of the fruit, it affects also the qualities of the seed. ”