Apricot

Prunus armeniaca, the apricot most widely grown, is a small tree of eight to twelve metres with oval, finely toothed leaves and white to pinkish five-petalled flowers that open one or two together in early spring, ahead of the leaves. Its fruit, like a small peach, ripens from yellow to orange, often flushed red on the side facing the sun, and holds a single seed inside a hard stone. Genetic studies place its origin in Central Asia; the species name records an older belief that it came from Armenia, which Grieve set aside in favour of northern China and the Himalaya. She dates its arrival in England, from Italy, to the reign of Henry VIII. Apricots have long been dried for keeping and for trade. In China the tree is tied to learning and to medicine: Confucius was said to teach among apricot trees, and the physician Dong Feng took as his only fee that cured patients set apricot trees in his orchard. Kynes records that in north-eastern China the fruit was thought to confer prophecy, and that it is one candidate for the golden apples of Hera’s garden. In magic it is a plant of love: the fruit is eaten to sweeten the temper, its juice goes into love potions, and its flowers suit a handfasting or an anniversary.