Almonds, peaches, plums, apricots, and cherries all belong to the Rosaceae family. Cherries, whose beautiful pink blossoms are the first glorious heralds of true spring, originate from Europe and western Asia, although the tree has spread in many parts of the temperate world and the growing season is quite long. Apples, also originally from Asia (in some places there they still grow wild), blossom a pinkish-white that fades to white awhile later.

Like plums and cherries, apricots belong to the subgenus Prunus, and it’s hard to know where they first came from because even in prehistory they spread across a fairly wide range. As with the aforementioned fruits, apricot flowers come out before the leaves, or just as these are budding. Apricot trees are slightly better at tolerating cold than peaches, but they suffer in frosts, which often kill the flowers. Some modicum of cold and dormancy, however, is necessary for proper maturation, which is why apricots do so well in the dry climate and cool, mellowish winters around the Mediterranean.

Peaches grow in a far more limited range than the other fruits mentioned. If temperatures over the winter drop below −25 °C, the trees suffer: the following season’s flower buds die and no fruit grows that summer. If the buds are already out and temperatures drop around −20 °C, the same occurs. Nectarines are genetically similar to peaches, except that peaches have a dominant, hair-producing gene whereas nectarines inheret the recessive, or hairless, version of the gene. 

Plums are finicky, too: if too little rain falls, the plums will fall from the tree immaturely, while they’re still little green buds, but too much rain rots them on the branch. It takes about 80 days at an adequate temperature (known in the industry as “growing degree days”) for the flowers to bloom, and in a good year, about half of the flowers will subsequently turn into fruit.

The flowers are lovely, of course…but what I’m really looking forward to is the fruit.