Plant: Big Red - Peach Tree

Plant description

Peach is a small rounded, open and spreading deciduous tree grown for its fruit. Fragrant pink flowers about 1 to 1.5 inches across open singly in spring before the leaves emerge, followed in summer by juicy fuzzy drupes that are yellow to orange tinged with red around a large rough stone. The alternate lanceolate leaves are toothed and turn gold in fall, and the gray bark carries horizontal lenticels and becomes rough and scaly with age. It needs full sun and good drainage in clay, loam or sandy soil, is a high maintenance tree with frequent insect problems, and suits an edible garden where it also draws butterflies and other pollinators. The seeds contain cyanogenic glycoside and are poisonous, and the plant is listed as toxic to cats, dogs and horses.

Flowers

Pink flowers in spring occur solitary or occasionally paired with 5 petals and appear before leaf out. They are 1 to 1.5 inches across and pleasantly fragrant.

Foliage

Leaves are 2 to 6 inches by 0.5 to 1.5 inches, alternate and simple with a long pointed tip, a toothed margin and two small glands at the base of the blade.

Fruit

Juicy fleshy fruit in summer is yellow to orange, tinged with red, with a large rough pit, and is fuzzy with hairs.

Bark & stems

The bark is gray with horizontal lenticels and becomes rough and scaly with age. Young stems are reddish, older stems gray, and new growth at the tips is green and smooth.

Native range

China

Plant details