Plant · P-744

Peach

Prunus persica

Peach bears a fuzzy-skinned stone fruit, eaten fresh, dried, or cooked, on a small, fast-growing tree that often produces its first real crop within two or three years of planting. Most varieties are self-fertile, so one tree alone sets a full crop, and its pale pink spring blossoms open before almost anything else in the orchard leafs out. Left ungrafted it reaches fifteen to twenty-five feet tall and wide, though nursery stock is usually grafted onto size-controlling rootstock and kept smaller. It needs real winter cold to break dormancy and set fruit well, then a long sunny summer to ripen, tolerating acid to neutral soil pH up to about 8 and any well-drained soil texture from sand to clay; the leaves, flowers and the pit all contain compounds that release cyanide, so only the ripe flesh is meant to be eaten. No Missouri Botanical Garden species profile exists for the base species - only for named cultivars.

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