Excerpt from The Peach and Nectarine
Such early flowering and beautiful trees were not likely to escape the notice of ancient writers. Hence we find the almond-tree named by Moses, and its precocity in flowering seemed to be accepted as a sign of the future devotion of the tribe of Levi for the priesthood. Virgil also accepts the free flowering of the almond as at once proof and omen of a fruitful season. The merry month of May must have been more genial in his day than in these degenerate times, when May makes a ravenous cold snap or collation of myriads of peach and almond blossoms. All before the merry month is cheerful, fair, and beautiful - all behind a blighted, blackened wilderness of barrenness and sterility. Still, it must be said for Virgil that he wrote of standard almond trees, which did not rush so early as our peaches and nectarines forced back against hot roasted with the fiery heats of spring sunshine, and frozen through immediately afterwards with the cold darts of May night frosts, without a veil of cloud to tone down the energy of intense radiation.
However, it is hardly fair to merry May to credit her with all our fruit failures, and with blighting the beauty of our standard or dwarf almond and peach trees, for these flower through February and March in warm localities, and also in April. It is this earliness and profusion of blooming that have endeared these plants to man in all ages, and some types and forms of peaches and almonds have probably been cultivated by him for his pleasure and use since the dawn of civilisation. It is, however.
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