LITMIR.BIZ

      Fruit, large, the average size smaller than represented in the accompanying figure, being generally three inches wide, and two and a half high; globular, and somewhat flattened, broader at the base than the apex, regularly and handsomely shaped. Skin, yellow, with a tinge of dull red next the sun, and streaked with deeper red. Eye, large and open, with short stunted segments, placed in a round and rather deep basin. Stalk, short and stout, rather deeply inserted, and scarcely extending beyond the base. Flesh, yellow, crisp, juicy, sweet, and pleasantly acid.

      A very valuable and highly esteemed apple, either for the dessert or culinary purposes, but, strictly speaking, more suitable for the latter. It is in use from November to February.

      The common complaint against the Blenheim Pippin is, that the tree is a bad bearer. This is undoubtedly the case when it is young, being of a strong and vigorous habit of growth, and forming a large and very beautiful standard; but when it becomes a little aged, it bears regular and abundant crops. It may be made to produce much earlier, if grafted on the paradise stock, and grown either as an open dwarf, or an espalier.

      This valuable apple was first discovered at Woodstock, in Oxfordshire, and received its name from Blenheim, the seat of the Duke of Marlborough, which is in the immediate neighbourhood. It is not noticed in any of the nursery catalogues of the last century, nor was it cultivated in the London nurseries till about the year 1818.

      The following interesting account of this favorite variety was recently communicated to the Gardener’s Chronicle. “In a somewhat delapidated corner of the decaying borough of ancient Woodstock, within ten yards of the wall of Blenheim Park, stands all that remains of the original stump of that beautiful and justly celebrated apple, the Blenheim Orange. It is now entirely dead, and rapidly falling to decay, being a mere shell about ten feet high, loose in the ground, and having a large hole in the centre; till within the last three years, it occasionally sent up long, thin, wiry twigs, but this last sign of vitality has ceased, and what remains will soon be the portion of the woodlouse and the worm. Old Grimmett, the basket-maker, against the corner of whose garden-wall the venerable relict is supported, has sat looking on it from his workshop window, and while he wove the pliant osier, has meditated, for more than fifty successive summers, on the mutability of all sublunary substances, on juice, and core, and vegetable, as well as animal, and flesh, and blood. He can remember the time when, fifty years ago, he was a boy, and the tree a fine, full-bearing stem, full of bud, and blossom, and fruit, and thousands thronged from all parts to gaze on its ruddy, ripening, orange burden; then gardeners came in the spring-tide to select the much coveted scions, and to hear the tale of his horticultural child and sapling, from the lips of the son of the white-haired Kempster. But nearly a century has elapsed since Kempster fell, like a ripened fruit, and was gathered to his fathers. He lived in a narrow cottage garden in Old Woodstock, a plain, practical, laboring man; and in the midst of his bees and flowers around him, and in his “glorious pride,” in the midst of his little garden, he realized Virgil’s dream of the old Corycian:—“Et regum equabat opes animis.”

      The provincial name for this apple is still “Kempster’s Pippin,” a lasting monumental tribute, and inscription, to him who first planted the kernel from whence it sprang.”

      36. BOROVITSKY.—Hort.

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      Fruit, medium sized, two inches high, and about the same in width; roundish and slightly angular. Skin, pale green strewed with silvery russet scales on the shaded side; and colored with bright red, which is striped with deeper red on the side next the sun. Eye, set in a wide and plaited basin. Stalk, an inch long, deeply inserted in a rather wide cavity. Flesh, white, firm, brisk, juicy, and sugary.

      An excellent early dessert apple, ripe in the middle of August.

      This was sent from the Taurida Gardens, near St. Petersburg, to the London Horticultural Society in 1824.

      37. BORSDORFFER.—Knoop.

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