Its
regularity as a bearer is due to its early maturity; it can be picked
in August, which allows plenty of time, in favourable weather, for
next year's fruit buds to develop before winter; whereas with the late
sorts these buds have very little chance to mature while the current
year's fruit is ripening, with the result that a blank season nearly
always follows an abundant yield. The Worcester Pearmain is so highly
decorative, with its large pale pink and white blossoms in spring and
its glowing red fruit in autumn, that it would be worth growing for
these qualities alone in the amateur's garden, and in any case it is
an apple that nobody should be without.
An old apple, not sufficiently known, is the Rosemary Russet; it has
the distinctive russet-bronze colouring, always indicative of flavour,
with a rosy flush on the sunny side, and Dr. Hogg describes it further
as, "flesh yellow, crisp, tender, very juicy, sugary and highly
aromatic--a first-rate dessert apple, in use from December to
February." In my opinion it comes next, though _longo intervallo_, to
Cox's Orange Pippin, but it wants good land to make the best of it. It
may with confidence be produced as a rarity across the walnuts and the
wine to the connossieur in apples.
In Covent Garden Market King Pippins are known as "Kings"; Cox's
Orange Pippins as "C.
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