This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

The Imperiia Project: a spatial history of the Russian Empire

Prunus avium: four varieties

This page has tags:

Contents of this tag:
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. Prunus avium: four varieties
4. Breda 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:

This page is referenced by:

Gardens of Crimea
What if we could reconstruct the fabled gardens of Crimea as they were at the turn of the 19th century?
Sometimes, the historical record allows us to attempt the impossible. Ten years after the (first) annexation of Crimea by Russia, imperial officials undertook a survey of the most valuable properties in the newly-acquired territory: its gardens. To be more precise, the survey focused on the orchards and vineyards abandoned by their owners (Crimean Tatars and Greeks) and claimed as state property after 1783. The work was carried out between 1791 and 1793 and by the time it was complete, officials had compiled reports describing 809 orchards, 332 vineyards, 19,667 trees, and almost a quarter million grapevines. The registers provide glimpses of gardens that have long since ceased to exist. They allow us to imagine the cycles of sunlight and shade, the aromas, the varying levels of wildness and cultivation. At first glance we see a landscape of plum and hazelnut, walnut and pear. There are peaches and cherries, medlars and quince, and even a rogue almond. It seems beautiful. Lush. We aren't surprised that a traveler writing about Alupka in 1815 waxed poetic about the figs and cypress
and everywhere the wonderful rose bushes, lavender, jasmine and lilies, such that I thought I was in Italy.
But there are many ways to read a garden.
Piles of rotting fruit amass in autumn as surely as the sweet-blooming flowers cluster in spring. Trees fall victim to pest and drought and old age. Winds blow, axes fall. Those unwritten stories remain beyond our view.

The documents we do have - this quirky set of registers - tell stories of abundance and abandonment, persistence and transition. How do they manage this The answer is scrawled, over and over, in the manuscript tables. Each entry documents a garden whose owner fled Crimea between 1778 and 1791. Greek owners emigrated in 1778 in response to Catherine II's invitation to resettle in Russian territory near Mariupol. Tatar owners emigrated after Catherine annexed the Crimean Khanate in 1783. The men, together with their families, their knowledge of the soil, their irrigation practices, their tastes for fruit and shade, left the land. Their orchards and vineyards remained behind, and it is up to us to see them as spaces of loss and ruin as well as nodes of productivity.
Introduction to the Dashboard Elements
The Glossary: Explore the tree varieties mentioned in the registers. The Glossary includes botanical illustrations and bits of color commentary from an 18-century naturalist.

The Garden Locator: Use an early nineteenth-century topographical map to locate the villages associated with each garden.

The Vineyard mApp: This interactive map includes layers showing vineyards, rivers, and forested land. It allows you to look at varying grapevine and tree densities and compare the distribution of tree types in the orchards.
Supporting Elements
Access the related dataset via the Data Catalog.
Consult the botanical illustrations in the Atlas of Fruits.
Sweet Cherry
Черешня; prunus avium
Prevalence in tree population: 4% (623 trees)
Occurrence rate: 76%

Sweet cherry had a substantial presence in the gardens of Mishati and Kuchuk Uzen. 25% of all sweet cherries were near Kuchuk Uzen, and 29% near Sudak.

Karl Gablits identifies the tree as guignier (a French term based on the old Celtic word kign) - known throughout Europe as sweet cherry or wild cherry. It is an uncultivated tree that spreads, naturally, through forests.