The stone-fruit season is now getting underway after a slow start, writes David Shapley, and we are beginning to seen the full range of yellow and white fleshed varieties of Spanish peaches and nectarines build steadily with the first arrivals from Italy also on show, as usual.

Browsing the displays, I must confess that I always thought Pita was a type of unleavened bread until I noticed an Israeli arrival on Marks & Spencer’s shelves this week.

The white peach which bears the name is classified as “new” and underpinning this the price is a premium £3.99 for four fruit.

In fact, its flat shape indicates that is related to the Saturn family - often known as doughnut peaches - which started to appear in the UK from the US about five years ago. The idea now seems to have caught on in the Mediterranean.

As the temperatures climbed last week the fine weather certainly gave salads a boost. Sainsbury’s has introduced a further new line - it is unlikely to make lettuce redundant, but certainly gives the trade food for thought as to just how far the bagged salad range is still capable of being extended. Pea leaves have already made their debut, but the new line for Sainsbury’s marks the first time I have seen mint added.

To quote industry analysts, this market is becoming “more and more mature” with different mixes, weight and nomenclature, but it was still something of a surprise to see an imported pack of rocket originating from Italy. But how can you buy it for just 59p? The answer is to go to Lidl.

In the same store mushrooms from Ireland at 54p for 250g were described as “breakfast flats”. The name is a blast from the past and a time before the sector had started to use a far wider range of terms to describe the product. The last time I heard the name was when I worked in Covent Garden in the 1950s.

Probably the greatest diversification at this time of the year has occurred with tomatoes.

Add up all the named varieties, uses and descriptions and there are at least a dozen or so different packs available in any store I choose. I even believe segmentation has reached a point where customers could become confused.

Not so in the case of Waitrose, which has introduced what can only be described as a multi-coloured 225g pack in its Speciality range at £1.79. It consists of red and gold mini plum types.

I also came across a new term in its pepper selection. Varieties of course are no longer just bell shaped and the colours of traffic lights, but the brown and white varieties introduced by the Dutch a decade or more ago have not really caught on. In this particular case in Waitrose, the elongated green variety priced at £1.69 was called Marmara, linked on the label as being a direct reference to a Turkish delicacy - although I note the caps are actually grown in the Netherlands.

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