Fruit matures very late; one and three-fourths inches long, one and seven-eighths inches thick, compressed, with unequal halves often giving a lopsided appearance; cavity narrow, abrupt, usually white; suture shallow; apex round, with a mucronate tip; color dull greenish-white, entirely overspread with dingy pink mingled with splashes and stripes of darker, clouded red, mottled; pubescence long, coarse; skin tough, adherent to the pulp; flesh red, becoming lighter colored next the stone, juicy, coarse, stringy, tough and meaty, brisk, pleasantly flavored; fair in quality; stone clinging, one and one-fourth inches long, seven-eighths inch wide, oval to slightly obovate, short-pointed, strongly bulged near the apex, with grooved and pitted surfaces; ventral suture deeply furrowed at the sides, narrow; dorsal suture deep, medium in width. BLOOD LEAF =1.= _Mich. Sta. Bul._ =118=:33. 1895. _Blood-leaved Peach._ =2.= _Gard. Mon._ =13=:206. 1871. =3.= _Ibid._ =14=:316, Pl. 1872. =4.= _Ibid._ =15=:142, 183. 1873. =5.= _Horticulturist_ =28=:155. 1873. =6.= _Gard. Mon._ =17=:58, 59. 1875. Blood Leaf is a handsome ornamental. Its beet-red leaves in early spring and its pink blossoms, borne in great profusion, entitle it to esteem for both foliage and flowers. It is worth growing as well for its fruits. The color-plate opposite page 78 shows the flowers and the accompanying illustration depicts the fruit-characters. The peaches are in no way remarkable and yet they please some as a dessert fruit. Seedlings springing up under two trees of this variety in the Station orchard in 1913, furnished interesting data on the inheritance of the blood-red color in the leaves of this peach. Out of 252 young trees, 189 were red-leaved and 63 green-leaved--an exact three-to-one ratio to show that the green color is carried as a recessive. Several stories are told of the origin of this peach. One is that on the battlefield of Fort Donelson, Kentucky, a southern general, fatally wounded, sucked the juice of a peach and threw the stone into the little pool of blood which flowed from his side. From this pit in its bloody seed-bed sprang the tree with its blood-red leaves. John L. Hebron, in a letter published in _Gardener's Monthly_, 1873, tells a different tale. According to Hebron the variety was found by P. I. Connor in 1866 at Champion Hills, Mississippi, on the battlefield where General Tilghman was killed, a tree having sprung up close to the spot where the General died. The variety is sometimes called the General Tilghman peach. Leaving fable and coming to facts, we find that the variety originated in Mississippi in the sixties and was introduced to the trade in 1871. [Illustration: BLOOD LEAF]