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The Imperiia Project: a spatial history of the Russian Empire

Abrikos Breda, Abrikos Lyuize (apricot)

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1. Sary Sinap apple Botanical lithograph of a variety that likely originated in the southern coast of the Black Sea (at Sinop) and thrived in Crimea. With the Saint Germaine pear the "alpha and omega" of Crimean orchardry. The Sary Sinop is considered a first-class market fruit, appealing for eating and cooking. Candied fruit factories use it exclusively. Yield is high, which explains why it plays a crucial role in the Crimean economy despite fetching 1 ruble 50 kopeks per pood (half the price of many reinette varieties). This is the calling-card apple of Karasubazar.
2. Winter Master pear A tree identified in Belgium in the second half of the 18th century. In the right circumstances (warm and sheltered locations), this pear is delicious; but less than ideal conditions yield pears for cooking. Crimean gardeners complain that the Winter Master requires too much moisture and protection. The fruit fall easily in the wind - a problem in Crimea. The editor writes that whenever one sees gorgeous Winter Masters on the table you can be sure they are from France. Russian-grown Winter Masters are few in number. Yet a correspondent writes from St. Petersburg to point out that in general, Crimean pears increasingly compete with French pears and their progress is such that the latter "might soon be a memory."
3. Golden Drogan cherry
4. Abrikos Breda, Abrikos Lyuize (apricot)
5. Saint Germaine pear The Saint Germaine (Сен Жермен) originated near Paris and enjoys renown throughout Europe. The Sary Sinap and Saint Germaine "are the alpha and omega of Crimean orchardry" and there isn't a garden in Crimean where the Saint Germaine does not grow. It fetches anywhere from 2 rubles 50 kopeks to 4 rubles per pood. Moscow fruit sellers reported that the highest quality fruit came from Alushta and Kuru Uzen, Karasubazar and Bahcesaray.
6. Duchesse d'Angouleme pear
7. Williams pear
8. Forest Beauty pear
9. Golden Winter Pearmain apple An English pear identified in 1800. At an 1894 international exposition there were 33 Golden Winter Pearmain entries, including from the western provinces, the Baltics, Crimea, Kherson, Yekaterinoslav, Poltava, Tersk and Kuban. The fruit ripens in October. This is a case of beauty over longevity though, thus the Golden Winter is best dried or made into cider. Atlas correspondents wrote in to add that the Golden Winter Pearmain stood up well to rain but could fall victim to moths and geese.
10. Bere Dil pear
12. Renet Champagne apple
13. Bere Bosc pear
14. Ardanpon pear The Ardanpon (Hardenpott) was identified in 1750. In the late 19th century it was well-established in Crimea and the most profitable (and tasty) of all winter pears. In Crimea it was known as the Ferdinand, and was often sent to the Moscow markets from the Kacha valley and from Alushta and Kuru Uzen. (St. Petersburg markets sold French pears.) This chromolithograph is based on a pear sent for the purposes of the Atlas in 1896 from Alushta. It weighed 422 grams.
15. Louise apricot
16. Triumf Zhoduan pear
17. Krasotsvet apple
19. Canadian Renet apple
20. Orleans Renet apple The Reinette d'Orleans ripened in November (earlier in Crimea) and lasted several months after harvest. A first-class table apple - the most flavorful and aromatic of all renets - that fetched good prices. The Moscow markets relied on fruit from Bahcesaray, Karasubazar, and Simferopol, with the best fruit coming, as it so often did, from the Kacha River orchards. Kapustin describes it as "a dessert apple of highest quality that will never go out of fashion."
21. White Rosemary apple
22. Short-Stemmed Queen apple
23. Autumn Mistress pear
24. Bere Clairgeau pear
25. Gros Noir (cherry)
26. Green Reine Claude (plum)
27. Simirenko apple In Russia the apple comes from the gardens of the sugar merchant and gardener Platon Fyodorovich Simirenko, who brought it in from Belgium. It has received increased attention among cultivators since 1887 and can be found in the provinces of Kiev, Poltava, Kharkov, Kherson, Podolsk, Chernigov, and in Crimea. Despite its many charms, explain the editors, it has not taken the market by storm because it is largely unknown and because there is another, well-established, green rent in Crimea.
28. English Renet apple
29. Kantil Sinap apple
30. Curé pear
Contents of this tag:
1. Abrikos Breda, Abrikos Lyuize (apricot)

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The Glorious (Fruit Tree) Glossary 113 plain 20012 2022-07-06T09:50:02-04:00
First, let's prepare the soil.
Trees are always in conversation with one another. We cannot know what the trees classified in the 1793 registers were saying (did they bicker? recite poetry?), how tall they were, or what they smelled like, but we know an astonishing amount about gardens that existed more than two hundred years ago. We know, for example, that they tended to be very small: most were less than a quarter of an acre. In fact, of the 732 plots for which we have information, the smallest was one-thousandth of an acre - a space that somehow managed to be big enough to host a fig, a walnut, two pears, and a mulberry tree.

We also know that on average the gardens contained 28 trees (with counts ranging from 1 to 673). And because three of the registers recorded both the quantity and type of trees present in each garden (well, to be more precise, they recorded the quantity and type of fruit trees) we can piece together a tree-scape of 15,742 plants.

The classification scheme at work in the registers is reproduced in this glossary. To give the entries depth, we have drawn on the work of Karl Gablits (1752-1821), a naturalist and geographer whose Physical description of Tavrida Province (1785) revealed the botanical world of Crimea to curious audiences in Russia and throughout Europe. To what extent do these sources complement one another? Consider this:
- Gablits' study came on the heels of annexation (1783); the garden registers were compiled a decade later (1793).
- Gablits' work was designed to make the Crimean tree-scape recognizable to the reading public (elites in St. Petersburg, members of the European scientific community, etc.); the registers were designed to secure property claims and profits for the imperial government.
- Gablits' work is qualitative and textual; the registers are tabular and quantitative.
To bring the colors and textures of Crimea's orchards into sharp relief, the glossary includes botanical illustrations. They are sourced, whenever possible, from the Атлас плодов (Atlas of Fruits) - a collection of chromolithograph illustrations of plant varieties published by the Imperial Russian Society of Fruit Cultivators in 1906.
Now, let's dig in.
The Glossary includes all 16 fruit-bearing trees named in the registers. Click a tree name from the list below to open a page chock-full of information. (The list follows Gablits' order of trees.)

Or, click on any red dot to see which villages contained gardens with that tree type. Click a second red dot to see which villages had both trees in common. You can compare trees or villages, as you like. Drag the dots around to reveal connections, and simply click any dot again to "close" it. You can "open" as many as you like. Curious what this looks like?
The Disappearing Fruit Trees of Crimea
Five entries in the master list of Crimean trees do not appear in the garden registers of 1793. What is this "master list" you ask?

Karl Gablits composed the list and published it as part of his Physical Description of Tavrida Province in 1785. The list of fruit-bearing trees (he composed a separate list of decorative trees) contains twenty-one entries. Sixteen appear in the garden registers of 1793 and therefore in the Glorious Glossary of (Fruit) Trees.
So which trees disappeared?
#1: The Apricot (абрикос; Prunus Armeniaca)
Gablits describes the apricot as likewise ubiquitous, especially around Staryi Krym and Sudak.
#2: The Pomegranate (гранат; Punica granatus)
Gablits admits that this one is more particular, growing only in the coastal gardens of the south, though they grow wild in the forests as well. The pomegranate is known for its medicinal properties. Any good apothecary would be pleased to get his hands on some.
#3: The Red Currant (красная смородина; Ribes rubrum)
These are found only at Bahcesaray, though they grow there in large numbers.
#4: The Cornelian Cherry (кизил; Cornus mascula)
Gablits claims it is absolutely everywhere: in every garden, in every forest, on every mountain.
#5: The Hackberry (каркас; Celtis orientalis)
Gablits tell us it thrives from Balaklava to Yalta and is happiest on stony southern ground. The berries have medicinal properties.