50 Fun Facts About Peach

Which actor sang the piano ballad 'Peaches' as Bowser in the 2023 animated Mario movie?

Jack Black co-wrote and sang Bowser's lovesick ballad to the princess; the directors had first pictured a heavier metal number in the style of his band Tenacious D.

A peach with a fuzz-free glossy skin is sold under what name?

Nectarine is the name for a fuzzless peach: it is the same species, not a hybrid, and a single recessive gene switches off the fuzz.

Peaches, cherries, plums and apricots all belong to which genus?

Prunus is the stone-fruit genus, whose members wrap a single hard pit in fleshy fruit; they are close enough kin for breeders to cross them, producing hybrids such as the aprium and the pluot.

In which animated film is Peach a starfish living in a dentist's office aquarium?

Finding Nemo's Peach, voiced by Allison Janney, belongs to the Tank Gang, the aquarium fish who hatch a plan to clog the filter and escape from a dentist's office in Sydney.

The fuzz on a peach's skin is made of tiny hairs called what?

Trichomes are hairlike outgrowths of a plant's surface cells, and a peach's fuzz is a dense coat of them; such hairs help plants fend off insects and cut water loss.

In China the peach is a traditional symbol of what?

Longevity is what the peach stands for: Shouxing, the god of long life, is usually shown holding one, and peach-wood charms were hung over doors to keep out evil.

Peaches whose flesh pulls cleanly away from the pit are called what?

Freestone peaches release the pit cleanly and are the ones sold for eating fresh; clingstones, which hold the pit tightly, usually end up in cans.

Because of its hard seed casing, the peach is botanically classified as what kind of fruit?

A drupe is a fruit with a fleshy layer around a hard, woody shell that holds the seed; 'stone fruit' is the everyday name, and the coconut is a drupe too, not a true nut.

Roughly how long does a peach tree keep bearing fruit before growers replace it?

About 15 years is a common figure: peach trees are short-lived, bearing for 10 to 20 years, so orchards are replanted far sooner than most people expect of a fruit tree.

The word 'peach' comes from a Latin name meaning the apple of which land?

Persia: the Romans called the fruit malum Persicum, 'Persian apple', because it reached Europe by way of Persia, and the name wore down through Old French pesche into 'peach'.

Yellow peach flesh gets its colour from which group of pigments?

Carotenoids, the pigments that colour carrots, tint yellow peach flesh; white peaches make them too, but an enzyme breaks them down, and yellow varieties carry only broken copies of its gene.

The smooth-skinned peach is often wrongly believed to be a peach crossed with which other fruit?

Plum is the usual guess, but the fuzzless fruit is simply a peach carrying a recessive allele that switches off the fuzz; no plum is involved.

In Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach, the peach ends its flight impaled on which landmark?

The Empire State Building's spire skewers the peach after a passing plane cuts the seagulls' strings; New Yorkers first take it for a bomb, and in the end the city's children eat it.

In Journey to the West, who is put in charge of heaven's peach orchard and eats the fruit himself?

The Monkey King, Sun Wukong, was made guardian of the orchard, ate nearly all the ripe peaches, then stole the wine from a heavenly banquet he had not been invited to.

Roman wall paintings of peaches survive from Herculaneum thanks to which volcano's eruption in 79 CE?

Vesuvius buried Herculaneum deep in volcanic ash, which preserved the peach paintings; the fragments are now kept in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples.

Who first brought the peach to the Americas?

Spanish explorers carried the peach to the Americas in the 16th century; in the 1600s Indigenous communities, among them ancestors of the Muscogee, passed it along their own networks across the Southeast.

In 1864 Kit Carson's expedition destroyed thousands of peach trees in Canyon de Chelly to break which people?

The Navajo were starved into surrender and marched to Bosque Redondo on the Long Walk; a treaty in 1868 finally let the survivors return home to the canyon.

From 2006 to 2013 the Peach Bowl dropped the fruit from its title and took only which sponsor's name?

Chick-fil-A, already the game's title sponsor, had it renamed the Chick-fil-A Bowl in 2006; 'Peach' returned in 2014, when the game joined the College Football Playoff rotation.

Peach kernels contain amygdalin, which the body breaks down into which poison?

Cyanide is released when amygdalin, concentrated in the kernel inside the pit, is broken down by enzymes in the gut, which is why peach kernels should not be eaten in quantity.

Peach leaf curl, a fungal disease that puckers and reddens new leaves, thrives in which weather?

Cool winter rain washes the fungus's spores onto swelling buds, so the infection takes hold in wet late winters and early springs; growers in such climates rely on dormant-season fungicide sprays.

Peaches are 'climacteric' fruits, meaning they do what?

Keep ripening after picking is what climacteric means: the fruit produces a burst of ethylene that goes on softening it and developing its aroma off the tree, which is why peaches are shipped firm.

Which singer's 2021 single 'Peaches', featuring Daniel Caesar and Giveon, debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100?

Justin Bieber first teased the song in a piano clip on Instagram in 2020; a producer screen-recorded that video and built the beat of the finished track over it.

Which Georgia-based rock band named its 1972 double album Eat a Peach?

The Allman Brothers Band took the title from a remark by guitarist Duane Allman about eating a peach for peace whenever he was in Georgia; he died in a motorcycle crash before the album was finished.

The flat, doughnut-shaped peach is often sold under the name of which planet?

Saturn peach is one trade name for the flat peach; another, paraguayo, is misleading, since the variety most likely arose in China, not Paraguay.

In the Ice Age films, Peaches is the daughter of Manny and Ellie, who are what kind of animal?

Woolly mammoths Manny and Ellie become parents in Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs; 'Peaches' was their code word for Ellie going into labour, and it stuck as the baby's name.

Escoffier created Peach Melba in the 1890s to honour an opera singer from which country?

Australia was Nellie Melba's homeland; Escoffier's first version at the Savoy came perched on an ice swan, a nod to her role in Lohengrin.

Along with peaches and vanilla ice cream, what is the third essential ingredient of a Peach Melba?

Raspberry sauce, a sweetened raspberry purée, completes the dish: Escoffier added it a few years after the Savoy original, when he reworked the recipe at the Carlton in London.

The Bellini cocktail of peach purée and Prosecco was invented at Harry's Bar in which city?

Venice's Harry's Bar is where its founder Giuseppe Cipriani created the drink, naming it after the painter Giovanni Bellini because its pink colour reminded him of one of his canvases.

A fuzzy navel is a mix of peach schnapps and what?

Orange juice is the mixer, the 'navel' in the name coming from navel oranges and the 'fuzzy' from the peach; add a shot of vodka and it becomes a 'hairy navel'.

The Peachoid, a giant peach-shaped water tower in South Carolina, features in which political drama?

House of Cards sends Frank Underwood home to Gaffney in its third episode to calm a scandal over the Peachoid, the real water tower that stands beside the interstate there.

The Peach Bowl began in 1968 as a fundraiser for which service club's work with the blind?

The Lions clubs of Georgia created the game to fund their Lighthouse for the Blind; after years of thin crowds and poor takings, they gave up control of it in 1986.

Which baseball great was nicknamed 'the Georgia Peach'?

Ty Cobb, born in Narrows, Georgia, used his fortune to give Royston, the town where he grew up, a hospital and to fund college scholarships for needy Georgia students.

Roald Dahl first planned for James and the Giant Peach to feature a giant version of which smaller fruit?

Cherry was Dahl's first idea; he changed his mind because he thought a peach prettier, bigger and squishier.

Who directed the 1996 stop-motion film of James and the Giant Peach?

Henry Selick directed it three years after The Nightmare Before Christmas; Tim Burton produced both, and his name sits in the first film's full title, so he is often taken for the director.

In English-language versions of 1985's Super Mario Bros., Princess Peach went by what name?

Princess Toadstool was her name in the English manual; in Japan she was Peach from the start, and Western games only made the switch during the 1990s.

Who voices Princess Peach in the 2023 animated Mario movie?

Anya Taylor-Joy voices a Peach who is no damsel in distress: she puts Mario through an obstacle course before agreeing to take him along to face Bowser.

Which Peaches & Herb ballad topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 1979?

Reunited topped the Hot 100 for four weeks in 1979; Herb Fame had earlier quit music to join the Washington, D.C., police before reviving the duo with a new 'Peaches', Linda Greene.

Momotarō, the Japanese folk hero born from a giant fruit, is known in English as what?

Peach Boy is the usual English title: momo is peach and Tarō a common boy's name, so the literal reading is 'Peach Tarō'; an old couple find him inside a giant peach floating down the river.

In the Chinese fable The Peach Blossom Spring, what does a fisherman find beyond a grove of peach trees?

A hidden utopian village is what he finds: its people fled the chaos of the Qin dynasty and never left; though he marks his route home, nobody can ever find the place again.

Which city began marking New Year's Eve in 1989 by lowering a giant peach instead of a ball?

Atlanta's Peach Drop lowers an 800-pound fibreglass peach down a 138-foot tower as a nod to Georgia's 'Peach State' nickname; the event has been cancelled and revived more than once since 2020.

Grower Samuel Rumph named the Elberta peach after whom?

His wife lent the peach her name: Rumph developed it on his farm near Marshallville, and it shipped so much better than older types that it stayed Georgia's leading peach until 1960.

Despite Georgia's 'Peach State' nickname, which state grows by far the most peaches in the US?

California is the runaway leader, supplying over half of the nation's fresh peaches and nearly all its processed ones in 2017; Georgia ranked only third in 2014, behind South Carolina too.

Japan's Peach Festival on 3 March is better known for displays of what?

Ornamental dolls of the emperor, empress and their court fill red-carpeted stands for Hinamatsuri, Girls' Day; they are packed away promptly, since leaving them out is said to delay a daughter's marriage.

The Peach Pit was the diner hangout in which 1990s teen drama?

Beverly Hills, 90210 gathered its gang at the Peach Pit, and its owner outlasted the show: when the sequel series 90210 began in 2008, the same actor came back to play Nat again.

Peach, apple and pear trees all belong to the plant family named after which garden flower?

Rose: botanists place these fruit trees in the rose's family because their blossom follows the same plan as a wild rose's, five petals around a cluster of many stamens.

Charles Darwin speculated the peach was a modified version of which nut-bearing relative?

Almond was Darwin's guess, but later research into the peach's relatives showed otherwise: the almond shares its genus yet is only a more distant cousin.

Which English king is said to have died in 1216 after a 'surfeit of peaches'?

King John died at Newark Castle in October 1216; tales soon spread of poisoned ale or a surfeit of peaches, but dysentery was the real cause.

In old slang, what did it mean to 'peach'?

To inform, or turn informer: this 'peach' was clipped from an old verb meaning to accuse, from the same root as 'impeach', and has nothing to do with the fruit.

In Super Mario 64, Princess Peach's letter invites Mario to her castle with the promise of what?

A cake is what her letter promises; Bowser seizes the castle before Mario arrives, so he only gets it in the closing scene, after rescuing her.

Commercial peach trees are usually propagated by which technique?

Budding onto a rootstock is the standard method: a bud of the chosen cultivar is inserted under the bark of a seedling rootstock such as Lovell or Nemaguard, so the tree fruits true to type.