Fruit

INDIAN BLOOD CLING is a peach introduced by the Spaniards into Mexico in the sixteenth century. European explorers in southeastern North America were astonished to find this Old World fruit being grown by native tribes. Unlike most fruit varieties that are maintained solely by complex methods of budding or grafting, peaches come fairly true from seed and the 'Indian Blood'  certainly can. Nomadic tribes and traders must have carried it north from Mexico. Thomas Jefferson ordered this variety in 1807 from Thomas Main, a Washington nurseryman, who described it as "very large and excellent." The fruit is  splashed and mottled with scarlet, tigerlike stripes,and the flesh is white streaked with red and quite red about the seed.  It is a clingstone and has a sprightly acidity that makes it superb for jams. The flesh is firm, meaty,  pleasantly flavored and brisk.