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, the 'Indian Blood' can be grown easily from seed. 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, entirely splashed and mottled with scarlet, tigerlike stripes, is sometimes twelve inches round. The flesh resembles a beet: scarlet, tough, stringy, meaty, although pleasantly flavored and brisk.

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