As a rule, peaches originating in California find small favor in New
York. California peaches are selected for canning, evaporating and
shipping, whereas New York varieties are dessert fruits. Muir is a
California sort suitable only for culinary purposes--attractive enough
inside but so unattractive externally that it could tempt no one who
did not know the fruit to be sweet and delicious in flavor. It is a
late mid-season, yellow-fleshed, freestone peach much used by canners
on the Pacific slope. It ought to be more generally grown for the same
purpose in the East; for, as a canned product, it is hardly surpassed
in appearance or quality. The trees are vigorous, productive and little
subject to leaf-curl but the fruits in New York are often marred by
peach-scab. The variety seems perfectly at home in this State as,
seemingly, it is in most peach-regions. In fruit-characters, Muir is
very similar to Wager.
The variety was found more than twenty-five years ago on the farm
of John Muir, near Silveyville, California. G. W. Thissell, Winters,
California, named and introduced Muir. The American Pomological Society
added this peach to its fruit-list in 1899.
[Illustration: MUIR]
Tree vigorous, upright or somewhat spreading, hardy,
productive; trunk rough; branches smooth, ash-gray over
reddish-brown; branchlets slender, long, with short internodes,
dark pinkish-red with but a trace of green, smooth, glabrous,
with inconspicuous, small, raised lenticels.
Leaves fall early in the season, six and three-fourths inches
long, one and three-eighths inches wide, flat or somewhat
curled downward, oval-lanceolate, leathery; upper surface dull,
dark green, nearly smooth; lower surface olive-green; apex
acuminate; margin bluntly serrate, tipped with reddish-brown
glands; petiole seven-sixteenths inch long, with one to five
large, reniform glands variable in position.
Flower-buds small, short, obtuse, very plump, heavily
pubescent, appressed; blossoms open late; flowers seven-eighths
inch across; pale pink, darker about the edges, usually
singly; pedicels short, green; calyx-tube reddish-green,
orange-red within, campanulate, glabrous; calyx-lobes short,
obtuse, glabrous within, pubescent without; petals narrow-oval
or ovate, tapering to claws of medium width; filaments
three-eighths inch long, equal to the petals in length; pistil
as long as the stamens.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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