Commercially grown fruit trees are always grafted for a reason. It clones the desired variety. When you grow a fruit tree from seed...the result is almost always a poor quality tree/fruit.

Yes I know. I'm not growing commercially. I had a harvest last year (from trees I did not get to see blossom) and was satisfied with the fruit. I know that one of the trees I harvested from was one of these that has petal-less flowers.

I would like to know if apetalous flowers are associated with any other traits.

It's true seedlings vary, it's not true they're all usually mediocre - many cultivars have arisen as seedlings.

I'm revising my description of the flowers. They do have petals. The petals are just of reduced size and different coloration than normal. From a distance, the casual observer might not even see that the trees are in bloom.

For comparison here are normal flowers from another tree.

I will be keeping my eye on this thread, I am far behind this stage of flowering. I am glad to see this post as many said I would not do well to grow from seeds. I started seeds this past fall.

habjolokia, then this next photo is for you. Peaches grown fro seed.

Just don't be as timid as I was about thinning. Your red leaf seedling is interesting. There was one like that growing out of the limestone retaining wall on the edge of my lot. The wall belongs to the neighbor, who said he had not planted it. He says he does not even like peaches. (??!) He said I could "have" it, but he ended up cutting it out when he repaired the wall. I never got to see what it produced.

Matthias,

Peaches have two kinds of blossoms, showy and non-showy. The smaller flowers are a non-showy kind. The showy ones are beautiful.

The size of the blossoms have nothing to do with the quality or the size of the fruit.

There are many non-showy peach varieties that produce delicious fruit.

Growing peach trees from seedling, you have a chance to get decent-tasting fruit. I'd say you have better chance to get good fruit from peach seedlings than from apple seedlings.

Matthias, that's awesome! Thanks for the pic, they look so good! I can't wait to get these peach trees to that point. When you say thinning you mean the fruit? If so should they be a certain distance between the fruit? The red leaf peach was from a neighbor's dwarf peach tree. Was walking the neighborhood with my Wife and daughter and there was a rotting peach on the sidewalk and we picked it up, it was pretty far gone with some bugs in it but the seed was intact. I put it in the fridge in a tupperware container and moist paper towel with the other seeds and it germinated. It's sad they have two dwarf red peach trees and one is vined over getting choked with other bushes around it all crowding it out, they are not the original owners so they could care less for the trees. I suspect they won't last long.

eastmeetwest, thank you for that terminology -- showy and non-showy. With that, I was able to find this earlier thread in which someone shows another small flowered peach. I presume I can find more info elsewhere, too. Thanks.

http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/1471384/color-of-reliance-peach-tree-blossoms

habjolokia, yes, I was referring to thinning the fruit. I have tried to make myself remove baby peaches to leave at least six inches between fruit. It has been hard to make myself do so, especially when I think of how much the birds and squirrels will raid the trees. I'll do better at it it this year.