USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection, Beltsville MD-Deborah Passmore 1902
Peento Peach
When it first came to the United States it bore the name “Flat Chinese Peach.” There is controversy when it first arrived: did William Prince of NY import it in the 1820s? Or did L. M. E. Berkmans import it in the years after the Civil War? It originated in the south of China, a semi-tropical fruit that bloomed in January or early February and bore fruit through the month of May. There is no way William Prince could have cultivated the plant in New York, even in a hot house. So for our purposes Berkmans introduced the peach to America, and found its niche. It was the one peach that could grow in the hottest parts of the U.S.—in Florida, Texas, and the Gulf Coast—those places where January frosts would not destroy a year’s crop. Berkmans sold trees from his nursery at Augusta, GA, Fruitlands as the Peento, an English approximation of the Chinese name, Pantao, “coiled peach.”
The oblate shape of the peach was so pronouncedly different from the spheroidal shape of most peaches that some fruit growers thought it would never work as produce. Indeed, much of the 1880s peach experimentation in Florida, according to James Mott’s Trees and Plants Suited to South Florida (1889) consisted of nurserymen such as A I Bidwell planting seedling groves of Peentos in the hope of finding an offshoot that produced round fruit. But peaches that ripen in May have a market whatever their shape, and in the 20th century breeders realized that the distinctive flat ring configuration was marketing gold. You could name it what you will: Saturn Peach, Flying Saucer Peach, or Donut Peach and it would stand out from every other peach on a produce stand. Their distinctive almond flavor and creamy consistency has given rise to a sect of devotees who regarded it as the finest tasting of peaches.
In the Twentieth Century Rutgers Tree Fruit and Extension Center tackled the problem that deviled early peach growers in the middle South—how to develop a strain of Peento Peach that was more cold tolerant—that had a later blooming date. They also bred several kinds of disease resistance into their strains and developed a splendid yellow skinned version of the peach that they named “Sweet Bagel.” Rutgers’s strains, which they branded as ‘Saturn peaches,” have reinvigorated the market for the flat peach, and made it available as far north as Massachusetts.
While visiting Bishop’s Orchards in Guilford CT yesterday I encountered two types of peento peach being sold, the sweet bagel and the improved classic peento (being sold under the name donut peaches). I bought a carton of each.