Define Indian Peach

This may be a stupid question, but what, exactly, is an Indian Peach, in common use. I thought it was basically any ungrafted, or seedling Prunus persica, but the dictionary says a clingstone peach. Does that mean any clingstone? Also, to add to the confusion, there are varieties such as 'Indian Red', Indian Blood, 'Indian Free', etc. Is there a definitive answer? What do people mean when they say "Indian Peach".

Depend somewhat on your locality. Most times they are talking about an old red cling called most of the time Indian Blood. It is pretty widely available as a novelty peach tree.
http://www.willisorchards.com/product/Indian+Blood+Peach+Tree There is a more rare white freestone, usually called the Iowa White, but also called the Indian. http://www.localharvest.org/indian-white-freestone-native-peach-tree-seed-C242

Indian Free is a dark red fleshed, relatively new introduction with resistance to Peach Leaf Curl. http://tallcloverfarm.com/?p=114 It is not yet widely available but I am sure will be referred to as Indian where it is grown.

Farmer Dill, Indian Free is also a very old peach. I don't know how old but it is referenced in Peaches of NY which is from 1917.

I think today "Indian Peach" refers to the Indian Cling peach (the same as the Indian Blood that Farmer Dill mentions). Originally the term loosely meant one of the peaches grown by Indians. Here is what Peaches of NY states:

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Indian peaches. In many parts of the South, from the Ohio to the Gulf and from the Atlantic to the Great Plains, the peach is naturalized and has run into many varieties of a peculiar and well-recognized type. This is the " Indian Peach " of this vast region, the chief distinguishing characters of which are: Trees with long, spreading limbs; young growth with purplish bark; small, flat, comparatively persistent leaves; blossoms large; season sometimes covering several weeks; fruit small, streaked with red beneath the skin, giving it a striped appearance, heavily pubescent; flesh usually yellow; ripening very late, season long, and of poor or indifferent quality. The trees of these Indian peaches have a smack of wildness which the best of pruning does not wholly subdue. The aborigines undoubtedly obtained peaches from Spaniards settling in both Mexico and Florida. The first source we have discussed. We come now to the second.

No doubt the Spaniards planted peaches in their first settlement of Florida at Saint Augustine in 1565. We have no record of the fact but early Indian traders found the natives of northern Florida and the neighboring states growing peaches in and about their villages in such quantity and with such familiarity as to suggest that the several tribes had long known this fruit. Hilton, an Englishman, who visited Florida a hundred years after the Spaniards established themselves at Saint Augustine, records that " the country abounds with grapes, large figs and peaches." The besetting sins of our early explorers were hasty generalization and exaggeration, and since the Indian peach, in what is now Florida at any rate, does not " abound " we must believe that Hilton was either farther north or was dissembling. Of the abundance of Indian peaches in the other Gulf States, there can be no doubt, for John Bartram, America's first great botanist, a man of note among all American naturalists, in the account of his travels through this region in 1765-1766 frequently mentions the peach as wild or as having been cultivated by the Indians.
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Scott



This message was edited Jan 9, 2009 4:23 PM

I live in Napa Valley California. We have a peach tree that I was always told was called an Indian Red Peach. The flesh is a deep magenta mottled with white near the pit. The riper it is, the more magenta becomes. It is a late season freestone peach, usually around August/September. The skin is fuzzy and will pucker your mouth when eaten. It is best eaten raw, but if used in cooking it will require a bit more sugar because it has a tendency to become bitter. It does not at all resemble from what I have read a Indian blood cling peach.

I would appreciate any information that you might have. We have had this tree in my family for at least 40 years.