Peach blossom, the state flower of Delaware

How to recognize it

The peach blossom is the flower of the common peach tree, a fast-growing fruit tree 15 to 25 feet tall with a rounded crown. In spring, before the leaves appear, the bare branches are covered with pink, sometimes white, flowers about one to one and a half inches across. Each has five petals and grows singly or in pairs along the twigs, and the flowers are pleasantly fragrant.

After the blossoms fall, the tree grows narrow, finely toothed leaves two to six inches long, which often curl inward along the midrib. The fruit, the familiar fuzzy peach, ripens in summer.

A tree from China

The peach is not native to Delaware or North America. It comes from China, where it has been cultivated for thousands of years, and the USDA lists it as an introduced plant in the lower 48 states. In Delaware it grows in orchards, not in the wild.

A word of caution: peach pits contain cyanide compounds and are poisonous if crushed or chewed.

Delaware’s peach century

Peaches made Delaware rich in the 1800s. Railroads let growers ship fresh fruit quickly to the big cities, and orchards spread across the state. In 1875 Delaware’s peach industry shipped six million baskets. When the legislature chose the state flower on May 9, 1895, Delaware’s orchards held more than 800,000 peach trees, and towns such as Middletown and Wyoming were busy peach-shipping centers.

Then disease struck. Peach yellows, spread by aphids, killed huge numbers of trees, and Delaware’s peach industry never recovered its old size. Farmers turned to other crops.

Where to see it

Look for the spring bloom in Delaware’s remaining commercial peach orchards. The old peach towns of Wyoming and Middletown still hold peach festivals each August.

Back in the Code

The 1895 designation had a strange afterlife. When the Delaware Code was compiled, the state flower was left out. In 1955 the legislature passed an act to restore it. The law is now section 308 of Title 29 of the Delaware Code. In 2009, at the suggestion of students at St. John’s Lutheran School in Dover, Delaware added peach pie as its official state dessert.