Shui Mi Tao

Among the very most famous of all fruits, the shuimitao (pron. shway mee dow) or "juicy honey peach" has been grown for centuries in Yangshan district, west of Shanghai, where it is reputedly grown on ten thousand fruit farms. Notorious as the peach "sucked through a wheat straw pierced through the skin" as the folklore tells it, this is indeed the juiciest peach in our acquaintance and one that may deserve to be grown for sake of its reputation alone. The most prized fruit of markets both in Beijing and Shanghai, where it is considered the definitive peach. Fruits enormous, high fuzz, skin white flushed with pink, flesh fibrous but exceedingly sweet, low in acid, a "honey" peach. According to some, this is the peach of longevity that accompanies Shou in all his representations, and the tree, or even a severed branch of it, is reputed capable of defense against any negative forces. Ripens just before midmonth in August, the gardener's reward at the period of the "Great Heat" of the Chinese summer. 600 hours. On Lovell.