Apricot

For the computer company, see Apricot Computers.

The Apricot is a fruit-bearing tree of the species Prunus armeniaca, in the same subgenus Prunus subgen. Prunus as the plum, and also the name of the fruit it produces. The apricot tree is small to medium sized and produces a spreading, dense canopy 8-12 m tall; its leaves are shaped somewhat like a heart, with pointed tips, and about 8 cm long and 3-4 cm wide. Its flowers are white to pinkish in colour. The fruit appears similar to a peach or nectarine, with a colour ranging from yellow to orange and sometimes a red cast; its surface is smooth and nearly hairless. Apricots are stone fruits (drupes), and have only one seed each, often called a "stone".

Cultivation

The apricot originated in northeastern China near the Russian border, not in Armenia as the scientific name suggests. It did arrive in Armenia after moving through central Asia, which took about 3,000 years. The Romans brought it into Europe through Anatolia about 70 BC, with the name "a praecox", significant of its earliness [1]. While English settlers brought the apricot to the English colonies in the New World, most of modern American production of apricots comes from the seedlings carried to the west coast by Spanish missionaries. Turkey provides 85 percent of the world's dried apricot and apricot kernels today (concentrated around the city of Malatya).

Apricot cultivars are most often grafted on rootstock. A cutting of an existing apricot plant provides the fruit characteristics such as flavour, size, etc., but the rootstock provides the growth characteristics of the plant.

Medicinal and non-food uses

Cyanogenic glycosides (found in most stone fruit seeds, bark, and leaves) are found in high concentration in apricot seeds. The drug laetrile, a purported treatment for cancer, is extracted from apricot seeds. As early as AD 502 apricot seeds were used to treat tumors and in the 17th century apricot oil was used in England against tumors and ulcers. Seeds of the apricot grown in central Asia and around the Mediterranean are so sweet that they may be substituted for almonds. Oil pressed from these cultivars has been used as cooking oil.

In Europe, apricots were long considered an aphrodisiac, and is used in this context in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi. Dreaming of apricots, in English folklore, is said to be good luck, though the Chinese believe the fruit is a symbol of cowardice.

External links

• Complete nutritional info.
• Bitter Apricot Seed - Information on medicinal uses of apricot seeds.
• Scintro fruit book - All about fruits.
• Nutrition Information for Apricots

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  An Apricot Tree
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  Two apricots, with a branch of apricots in the background
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  Apricots after being picked
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  Apricot flowers
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  Apricot seeds