Historic Fruit Varieties, in Watercolour

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Pomological Watercolor Collection — 7,500 paintings of heritage apples, pears, peaches and more, 1886–1942 — browsable by variety.

Before colour photography, the USDA paid artists to paint every fruit cultivar it studied. The result is a stunning public-domain archive of thousands of varieties, many now lost to commerce. Here it is organised the way people actually look for it — by the fruit and the variety name.