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THE PURPLE GAGE PLUM.
Reine Claude Violette. Duham. ed. nov. Bon Jard. Noisette,
Manuel Complet, p. 496. Hort. Soc. Fruit Cat.
no. 234.
Die Violette Königin Claudie. SicMer Teutsch Obst. Gart,
vol. xxi. p. 64. t. 6.
A blue Gage Plum has been long known and
little esteemed in our Gardens : it is the Azure
LIâtive of the French. As the Reine Claude is the
Green Gage of the English, it might have been supposed
that a Reine Claude Violette would have
been the same as this Blue Gage. Such, however,
is not the fact; the fruit now figured under the
name of the Purple Gage being a variety of very
high quality, fully equal to the Green Gage in all
respects, and having this superiority, that while the
latter is apt to crack in wet summers, and will never
keep at all after having been gathered, this, on the
contrary, will endure, if the climate be dry, through
August and September, even till October, and is
scarcely at all disposed to crack.
The origin of the variety is unknown ; it must,
however, be recent, as it is not mentioned by
Duhamel, or any of the older French writers, and
is even omitted by Noisette in his Jardin Fruitier.
A good bearer as a standard, ripening in August
VOL. III. ic
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