The botanist Ulysses Prentiss Hedrick argued persuasively in 1917 that these differences are merely simple mutations and not species or even varieties beginning consensus towards the modern classification.

[27] Rehder based his system largely on that of Bernhard Adalbert Emil Koehne with the peach placed with the almond in subgenus Amygdalus because similarities in the rough and pitted stone.

[34] Particular emphasis in this study is reserved for the analysis of the genetic diversity in peach germplasm and how it was shaped by human activities such as domestication and breeding.

[36] Fossil endocarps with characteristics indistinguishable from those of modern peaches have been recovered from late Pliocene deposits in Kunming, dating to 2.6 million years ago.

The specific name persica was given by Linnaeus because European botanists of the 1700s and 1800s continued to believe the Roman accounts of peaches originating in Persia to be correct.

In central Europe they are reported as escaped from cultivation in Germany, Hungary, and Switzerland and in Corsica, Sardinia, Italy, Cyprus, and Greece in the south.

[2] They also have escaped from cultivation in the African nations of Libya, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, and the Cape Verde Islands off the northeast coast.

[15] The authors of the Flora of China wrote in 2003 that completely wild peach trees no longer exist and this view is widely accepted.

[52][53] In 2014 new research was published showing that domestication occurred as early as 6000 BCE in Zhejiang Province on the central east coast of China.

Although Thomas Jefferson had peach trees at Monticello, American farmers did not begin commercial production until the 19th century in Maryland, Delaware, Georgia, South Carolina, and finally Virginia.

[68] In fact, peaches may have already spread to the American Southeast by the early to mid 1600s, actively cultivated by indigenous communities such as the Muscogee before permanent Spanish settlement of the region.

[72] Peaches are easiest to grow dry, continental or temperate climates, with conditions of high humidity greatly increasing diseases and pests in subtropics and tropics.

[89][90] The European earwig (Forficula auricularia) can be a minor to significant pest of the peach fruit, particularly when they are tightly clustered or have splits in the skin.

[119] The tree is also a host plant for such species as the Japanese beetle (Popillia japonica), the shothole borer (Scolytus rugulosus), and plum curculio (Conotrachelus nenuphar).

[121] Though not native to North America, peach trees have become a host for caterpillars of the Eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly (Papilio glacucus).

Several fungicides can be used to combat the disease, including Bordeaux mixture and other copper-based products (the University of California considers these organic treatments), ziram, chlorothalonil, and dodine.

The fruit flesh may be creamy white to deep yellow, to dark red; the hue and shade of the color depend on the cultivar.

Peaches have a short shelf life, so commercial growers typically plant a mix of different cultivars to have fruit to ship all season long.

Several genetic studies have concluded nectarines are produced due to a recessive allele, whereas a fuzzy peach skin is dominant.

The history of the nectarine is unclear; the first recorded mention in English is from 1611,[45] but they had probably been grown much earlier within the native range of the peach in central and eastern Asia.

A number of colonial-era newspaper articles make reference to nectarines being grown in the United States prior to the Revolutionary War.

A medium-sized raw peach, weighing 100 g (3.5 oz), supplies 46 calories, and contains no micronutrients having a significant percentage of the Daily Value (DV, table).

[147] While peach seeds are not the most toxic within the rose family (see bitter almond), large consumption of these chemicals from any source is potentially hazardous to animal and human health.

[151] The attractive smell of a ripe peach has 110 different volatile molecules combined, including alcohols, ketones, aldehydes, esters, polyphenols and terpenoids.

When early rulers of China visited their territories, they were preceded by sorcerers armed with peach rods to protect them from spectral evils.

[155]Peachwood seals or figurines guarded gates and doors, and, as one Han account recites, "the buildings in the capital are made tranquil and pure; everywhere a good state of affairs prevails".

The Li-chi (Han period) reported that the emperor went to the funeral of a minister escorted by a sorcerer carrying a peachwood wand to keep bad influences away.

[156] In an orchard of flowering peach trees, Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei took an oath of brotherhood in the opening chapter of the classic Chinese novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

[161][162] The book records the incident when courtier Mizi Xia bit into an especially delicious peach and gave the remainder to his lover, Duke Ling of Wei, as a gift so that he could taste it, as well.

The branch of peach flowers that was sent from the north to the centre of Vietnam was not only a message of victory from the Emperor to his consort, but also the start of a new spring of peace and happiness for all the Vietnamese people.