Plant · P-405

Apricot

Prunus armeniaca

Apricot flowers among the earliest of any stone fruit, which is exactly why it rarely makes a commercial orchard - an unpredictable late frost against that early bloom keeps it to scattered backyard trees with intermittent, rather than annual, crops. The fruit is eaten raw, cooked or dried, and the seed kernel yields up to half its weight in an edible oil, sweet-kernelled forms eaten freely and bitter ones taken sparingly. It needs cold-air drainage away from an early-warming pocket more than it needs good soil, though it does still want fertile, well-drained ground and dislikes clay and saline conditions.