Thursday, May 24, 2007

A peach is a peach?

Wikipedia is a wonderful thing. It's a brilliant demonstration that most people are good at heart. The accurate information far outweighs the BS - the trick is distinguishing the two.

Which brings me to peaches.

I noticed a tree in the backyard today, and it's growing near the spot where I remember tossing a peach pit last fall. Excited that I might have a peach tree, I checked Wikipedia to see if there were any pictures to confirm my hope.

This led me to three disappointing realizations:
1. The tree is some type of Oak, not a Peach tree.
2. Nectarines and peaches are the same thing! Really!
3. Peachtree Street in my beloved Atlanta isn't really named for anything related to the Peach. It's a bastardization of "Pitch Tree," named for a large tree from which the Creek Indians used to draw sap, or pitch.

Just when things are going well, everything you thought you knew about peaches turns out to be a bunch of lies.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So is Georgia really the PITCH state, then?!

Anonymous said...

Some information is best not shared. I could have gone my whole life believing in the tooth fairy, and I could have gone my whole life believing that Peachtree meant peach tree.

I think I need a drink.