Help ID this peach

August 26, 2008 2:17 PM

Help me identify a peach! I work for an orchard. We planted what we were sold as doughnut peach trees but they're not bearing doughnut peaches; they're bearing mystery peaches.

My boss showed the peach to some local peach experts and was told they look like "Katarina" or "Catarina" peaches.

Unfortunately, I don't have a photo at the moment as I'm not at the orchard. (I can probably post a photo tomorrow). My boss describes them as freakishly yellow.

Google is turning up nothing on this. Has anyone heard anything about such a peach? Can anyone point me to something on the web? We can sell them tomorrow as "mystery peaches", no harm done. (People will probably actually enjoy the story.) But I'd like to find out something about them, if possible.

posted by veggieboy to Food & Drink (10 answers total)

So there's more variety in common fruits than most people realize. You're near Chicago? Maybe it's one of these ones?
posted by GuyZero at 2:38 PM on August 26, 2008

Response by poster: Should have said: The orchard is in Southwest Michigan.

I'm definitely up on a lot of offbeat/heirloom fruit varieties. And we grow some of the peaches on that list, but this isn't one of those.
posted by veggieboy at 2:47 PM on August 26, 2008

I just bought some "galaxy" peaches at the market the other day, they looked like the Saturn variety from GuyZero's link but YELLOW. Way yellow.
posted by Kellydamnit at 2:51 PM on August 26, 2008

Michigan Peach Guide. But you'll have to click through for the pictures. It's a slightly different list than the other one but still no Katarina-like name.
posted by GuyZero at 3:02 PM on August 26, 2008

There are a few sparse hits on Google for "Caterina" peaches.
posted by peep at 3:43 PM on August 26, 2008

Oooh. That's an obvious alternate spelling I hadn't thought of. This paper mentions "Katerina" peach trees.
posted by GuyZero at 4:10 PM on August 26, 2008

Call the nursery that supplied them. They should know what other varieties they stocked at that time. Most nurseries insure that their plants are "true to name", so not only are they going to want to know that they brokered/grafted/labeled the wrong stock, there may be some compensation. At any rate, they should be able to figure out among the peaches they offered in whatever year, what yours might be.
posted by oneirodynia at 6:38 PM on August 26, 2008

Best answer: BTW, the cultivar name is actually "Catherina". I'm not sure whether this is your peach or not, but Catherina is a yellow processing peach.
posted by oneirodynia at 6:55 PM on August 26, 2008

Response by poster: Wow, oneirodynia. Thank you. I think you nailed it with the Catherina info. Hard to know without contacting the tree broker if that's the peach (we will get in touch with him later), but at least we know what the people were talking about when they pegged these as Catherinas.

Email me if you'd like some jam.
posted by veggieboy at 7:56 PM on August 26, 2008

Sweet!
posted by oneirodynia at 9:50 PM on August 27, 2008