The first American reference to the Shanghai is found in 1851[202] when fruits were exhibited at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society in Boston by R. Choate with the statement "peach from a tree imported from Shanghai." More definite are the facts of an importation made by Charles Downing in 1850. Early in that year Downing received potted peach-trees from the British consul at Shanghai under the names "Chinese Cling" and "Shanghai," supposed to be two sorts but proving to be identical. One of these trees was sent to Mr. Henry Lyons, Columbia, South Carolina, and this bore fruit in 1851.[203] From Downing's stock the variety was quickly and widely distributed and the horticultural magazines of the time gave the new peaches wide publicity, so that, from this and other importations which were made from time to time by various persons, these peaches from northern China were universally grown in the peach-orchards of America within a quarter of a century of their introduction. _South China peaches._--Those who have read the descriptions of Chinese peaches in Chapter 1 (pages 14 to 21) recognize at once the beaked varieties of South China, especially those growing about Canton. These peaches, common enough in China and cultivated there for centuries, reached occidental countries only in the middle of the Nineteenth Century. They came to America as seeds from Dr. J. T. Devan, Canton, China, to Mr. John Caldwell, Newburg, New York,[204] and were introduced into Europe probably by M. Montigny, French Consul at Shanghai, who sent seeds to the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, in 1852.[205] In recent years a number of fresh importations of seeds and plants of these honey-flavored, beaked peaches have been made by the United States Department of Agriculture. A composite picture of South China peaches shows the following characters: Tree of medium size, upright-spreading; branches leaving the trunk at an angle of about fifty degrees and curving upward; buds quite prominent; flowers always large and very abundant, pale pink, base of petals darker pink; leaves small, long, narrow, pointed, finely serrate, conduplicate, distributed all along the limb, dark green, in fall slightly tinged with red. Fruit small, oval, yellow or white blushed with red, slightly flattened; skin adhering to the flesh; suture very deep in basin, but does not extend more than one-third the way down; apex long and recurved; flesh white or yellow; flavor a peculiar honey-sweet; stone free or cling, long-pointed, generally curved.