British Pomology: Or, the History, Description, Classification, and Synonymes, of the Fruits and Fruit Trees of Great Britain — John Shaqi
British Pomology: Or, the History, Description, Classification, and Synonymes, of the Fruits and Fruit Trees of Great BritainHogg, Robert
History
British Pomology: Or, the History, Description, Classification, and Synonymes, of the Fruits and Fruit Trees of Great Britain
Hogg, Robert
Apples
A very valuable and highly esteemed apple, either for the dessert
or culinary purposes, but, strictly speaking, more suitable for the
latter. It is in use from November to February.
The common complaint against the Blenheim Pippin is, that the tree is
a bad bearer. This is undoubtedly the case when it is young, being
of a strong and vigorous habit of growth, and forming a large and
very beautiful standard; but when it becomes a little aged, it bears
regular and abundant crops. It may be made to produce much earlier, if
grafted on the paradise stock, and grown either as an open dwarf, or an
espalier.
This valuable apple was first discovered at Woodstock, in Oxfordshire,
and received its name from Blenheim, the seat of the Duke of
Marlborough, which is in the immediate neighbourhood. It is not noticed
in any of the nursery catalogues of the last century, nor was it
cultivated in the London nurseries till about the year 1818.
The following interesting account of this favorite variety was recently
communicated to the Gardener’s Chronicle. “In a somewhat delapidated
corner of the decaying borough of ancient Woodstock, within ten yards
of the wall of Blenheim Park, stands all that remains of the original
stump of that beautiful and justly celebrated apple, the Blenheim
Orange. It is now entirely dead, and rapidly falling to decay, being a
mere shell about ten feet high, loose in the ground, and having a large
hole in the centre; till within the last three years, it occasionally
sent up long, thin, wiry twigs, but this last sign of vitality has
ceased, and what remains will soon be the portion of the woodlouse and
the worm. Old Grimmett, the basket-maker, against the corner of whose
garden-wall the venerable relict is supported, has sat looking on it
from his workshop window, and while he wove the pliant osier, has
meditated, for more than fifty successive summers, on the mutability of
all sublunary substances, on juice, and core, and vegetable, as well
as animal, and flesh, and blood. He can remember the time when, fifty
years ago, he was a boy, and the tree a fine, full-bearing stem, full
of bud, and blossom, and fruit, and thousands thronged from all parts
to gaze on its ruddy, ripening, orange burden; then gardeners came in
the spring-tide to select the much coveted scions, and to hear the tale
of his horticultural child and sapling, from the lips of the son of the
white-haired Kempster. But nearly a century has elapsed since Kempster
fell, like a ripened fruit, and was gathered to his fathers. He lived
in a narrow cottage garden in Old Woodstock, a plain, practical,
laboring man; and in the midst of his bees and flowers around him, and
in his “glorious pride,” in the midst of his little garden, he realized
Virgil’s dream of the old Corycian:--“Et regum equabat opes animis.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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