Hooorayyyy!!! I can start new threads again!!! Thanks, arnie and all who helped!

This morning Garrison Keillor, on his NPR program, "Writer's Almanac," read a poem by Andrew Marvell in which "nectarines" were mentioned. Could this be a fruit of a different flavour than that which we now know? I think Marvell died about 1700, and the hybrid fruit that we now call "nectarine" came along about 200 years later. Can someone get to the root of this fruity anachronism?

Peaches are from Chinese origin. They go back to the 10th century B.C. and are often found on illustrations from that time. The Chinese have developed an incredible amount of peach of races.
The peach got its name around 300 B.C. The greek philosopher Theophrastus thought it came from Persia and named this lovely fruit to that country. In the first century the fruit is mentioned by Romans who wrote that they imported the fruit from Persia. It is supposed that the peach reached Europe around the year 0. In England they don't show up before 1650 A.D.
Strange enough, the nectarine is never mentioned in descriptions from the time Before Christ. Nectarines are first mentioned in America in 1720 when they grew between the peach trees in Virginia. A.J. Downing registred 19 nectarine races in America in 1857.
Today many types of nectarines are cultivated.

Asa, somehow I missed this interesting question of yours.

So, if nectarines were first mentioned in America in 1720, and if Andrew Marvell died in 1678, I wonder what fruit he was referring to. Asa, do you remember the poem? Here is a list of his poems.

I don't remember the poem, but you can look up "The Writer's Almanac" on Google and find it. I'm far too lazy to do it!

Andrew Marvell
What wond'rous life in this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach,
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Insnar'd with flow'rs, I fall on grass.

Curiously enough, immediately above the text that JT quoted above on July 27th, was this paragraph:

Darwin (1731-1802) noticed that peach trees spontaneously produced nectarines and that this also happens the other way around. He even describes a tree that produced a fruit that was half peach half nectarine and later fell back producing peaches.

The scientific name of peaches and nectarines is Prunus persica lit. 'Persian plum(-tree)'. I always thought that peaches and nectarines were different species, but they're just varieties of peach.

Andrew Marvell was an English poet, not an American, wasn't he?

quote:

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Originally posted by jerry thomas:
What wond'rous life in this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;

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Now, don't get me started...


(Of course "vine/wine," "peach/reach," and "pass/grass" are all fine. I swear that they only do this to vex me!)

quote:

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Originally posted by jheem:
Curiously enough, immediately above the text that JT quoted above on July 27th, was this paragraph:

Darwin (1731-1802) noticed that peach trees spontaneously produced nectarines and that this also happens the other way around. He even describes a tree that produced a fruit that was half peach half nectarine and later fell back producing peaches.

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Erasmus Darwin lived from 1731-1802, but it was his grandson, Charles Darwin (1809-1882) who made the observations about peaches in his book, The variation of animals and plants under domestication 1868. Here are some quotes from that book:

The variation of animals and plants under domestication.
[page] 352
CHAPTER X.
PLANTS continued—FRUITS—ORNAMENTAL TREES—FLOWERS.

[page] 361

Peter Collinson in 1741 recorded the first case of a peach-tree producing a nectarine,42 and in 1766 he added two other instances. In the same work, the editor, Sir J. E. Smith, describes the more remarkable case of a tree in Norfolk which usually bore both perfect nectarines and perfect peaches; but during two seasons some of the fruit were half and half in nature.

[page] 362

The previous cases all refer to peaches suddenly producing nectarines, but at Carclew52 the unique case occurred, of a nectarine-tree, raised twenty years before from seed and never grafted, producing a fruit half peach and half nectarine; subsequently bore a perfect peach.
To sum up the foregoing facts; we have excellent evidence of peach-stones producing nectarine-trees, and of nectarine-stones producing peach-Trees,—of the same tree bearing peaches and nectarines,—of peach-trees suddenly producing by bud-variation nectarines (such nectarines reproducing nectarines by seed), as well as fruit in part nectarine and in part peach,—and, lastly, of one nectarine-tree first bearing half-and-half fruit, and subsequently true peaches. As the peach came into existence before the nectarine, it might have been expected from the law of reversion that nectarines would have given birth by bud-variation or by seed to peaches, oftener than peaches to nectarines; but this is by no means the case.

Charles Darwin first mentioned nectarines in his journal, The Voyage of the Beagle, Chapter 15, 1835:

March 18th. -- We set out for the Portillo pass. Leaving Santiago we crossed the wide burnt-up plain on which that city stands, and in the afternoon arrived at the Maypu, one of the principal rivers in Chile. The valley, at the point where it enters the first Cordillera, is bounded on each side by lofty barren mountains; and although not broad, it is very fertile. Numerous cottages were surrounded by vines, and by orchards of apple, nectarine, and peach-trees -- their boughs breaking with the weight of the beautiful ripe fruit.

Darwin's bio, above, notes this from The Desent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex:

"The female is less eager than the male," he wrote, "She is coy," and when she takes part in choosing a mate, she chooses "not the male which is most attractive to her, but the one which is least distasteful."

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Andrew Marvell was an English poet, not an American, wasn't he?

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Yes, he was better known as a politician during his life (1621-1678). Appreciation of his poetry came after his death.

Tinman