Where I'm from (very rural Northern California) there are quite a lot of old apple trees, some more or less tended, some entirely feral, AFAIK none of them harvested for sale anymore. The bears love them.
None are listed on the AppleSearch site, which doesn't surprise me: the first non-indigenous people showed up here in the 1840's and by then apple cultivation was a big deal elsewhere.
But it makes me wonder: do feral apple trees not eventually form their own varietals through mutation?
> Many apples grow readily from seeds. However, more than with most perennial fruits, apples must be propagated asexually by grafting to obtain the sweetness and other desirable characteristics of the parent. This is because seedling apples are an example of "extreme heterozygotes", in that rather than inheriting genes from their parents to create a new apple with parental characteristics, they are instead significantly different from their parents, perhaps to compete with the many pests. ...
> Because apples do not breed true when planted as seeds, grafting is generally used to produce new apple trees
That means that if you plant the seeds from a Gala apple, you are almost certainly not going to get an apple tree which produces Gala apples.
Not only that, but they are likely not going to be tasty. The folk story about Johnny Appleseed is that he planted apple seeds wherever he went (Wikipedia says he actually planted nurseries). If someone had done that, it would have been apples for pigs, and for hard cider.
I think what I see around here is a great example of that. I have about two dozen or so apple trees that have self-propagated. They don't grow in any particular pattern and they're randomly separated so I assume no one deliberately planted more than one or two of them. The fruit is small: averages about 1 - 2" diameter. A few of them produce really delicious, sweet apples but the majority are very sour and unpleasant.
I've always been really surprised by how different the fruit on one tree is from the one right next to it.
I live in Oregon, and I am an avid whitewater rafter. Sometimes when you stop on the riverbank to camp, especially in more remote places, you'll happen upon an abandoned homestead and in the right season their fruit trees will be bursting with amazing fruit! I guess I hadn't thought about the idea that they could be heirloom types that aren't found anymore, but I will think about it when I find them now.
Iowa was an apple growing region until the 1940's when a frost killed a crop, and cultivation moved elsewhere (Oregon?)
Mentioned here before, 30 years ago taking the youngsters on a walk, made a different turn and ended up in a small meadow with a pond and a single apple tree. Surrounded by town and left until last to develop because it was hilly I guess.
There were apples under the tree, fallen to the ground. Apples the size between softballs and soccer balls. Somebody had stacked like cannon balls. Very dark.
Anyway I never heard of something like that. I never saw them again since the meadow was developed soon after (i.e. bulldozed and turned into condos).
Interesting, although if we really want some new types of apples you can go to Kazakhstan, where there are literal forests of wild apply trees. Some people believe Kazakhstan is the place of origin for apple trees.
They didn't really answer the most important question: how do they taste?
Seems to follow that apple varieties ended up lost to the dustbin of history because they didn't taste very good? If the project had found "an apple from 150 years ago that's better than Honeycrisp"... that'd be super interesting to figure out why it got lost in the first place (and start growing them!).
Many varieties of cultivated plants can die out for reasons other than their usefulness. I spent some time living on a farm in Maine and two stories I heard there come to mind, one about wheat, and the other about tomatoes.
Wheat was once cultivated as far north as Maine, where cold-hardy varieties were developed in order to lengthen the growing season and allow local farmers to supply the state's bakeries in what would otherwise be an inhospitable climate to more productive, but less hardy varieties of wheat grown in warmer areas further south. However, once the railroads reached Maine in the 19th century and were able to bring cheaper grain to market, farmers stopped growing wheat and the varieties grown then are now completely lost. Many northern homesteaders would love to have that seed today but it's gone.
Another example I heard from a woman who specializes in selling heirloom tomato seeds and starts. By the way, in contrast to apples, which do not produce identical offspring from seeds, tomatoes do. If you plant apples, expect the unexpected. But if you plant tomatoes, you'll get pretty much the same thing you started with. The tomato grower showed me a delicious variety that was discovered when a schoolboy arrived at school with a tomato and told his teacher "My grandfather says this tomato is special. But he's dying and he doesn't want it to be lost." It turns out that his family had brought over a variety of tomato from Italy as immigrants and had cultivated it for generations. Its quality was the reason it was almost lost forever - so good they kept it their own special secret until time almost ran out.
> But if you plant tomatoes, you'll get pretty much the same thing you started with.
Unfortunately this is not true. Many tomatoes with the best disease resistance are hybrids, and seeds will not produce the same plant with the same disease resistance. Heirlooms varieties will “generally” produce the same plant but you have to be careful about inbreeding.
> It turns out that his family had brought over a variety of tomato from Italy as immigrants and had cultivated it for generations.
The funny part about this is tomatoes are a new world veggie! So the plant went from America to Italy, and then a new variety was brought back to the homeland. I’d love to try this variety!
>Seems to follow that apple varieties ended up lost to the dustbin of history because they didn't taste very good?
Nope. Cider varieties fell out of favor because cider fell out of favor, and most don't taste very good for eating. But heritage eating apples fell out of favor because they do not ship well, or don't grow well in synthetically fertilized dirt, or due to marketing. Most heritage varieties of eating apples taste WAY better than bland crap like honeycrisp. Red delicious were the most produced apple for many years even though basically nobody likes them. Because they look very appealing, and they are very durable so they can be handled roughly and shipped all over. Try a Cox's Orange Pippin and you'll never be able to eat grocery store apples again.
We just replaced our apple trees in our little orchard. I needed a pollinator for the Wagener apples we replaced. I like Wagener's because they're similar to a Johnathan, but stand our clay soils quite a bit better.
The only options the company (Starks Bros. in Louisiana, Mo. literally the only thing in that town) had for pollinators for that tree were $20 red delicious (sold out), $20 yellow delicious (sold out), and the $89 Cox's Orange Pippin. So we ordered one.
I have legitimately never heard of that tree until I ordered one to plant this week. I've said to everyone I know that it had better be the best apple I've ever eaten for that price!
It's a great apple - they're popular in England. My own favourite is probably Worcester Pearmain. England is blessed with a huge variety of apple types, it's just a shame that the supermarkets concentrate on a fairly small selection.
I've tried lots of wild apples, apples from trees with consumable apples grafted on to them etc. Some of them make crab apples taste sweet. Most apples are probably about as sour as lemons and fairly tiny, from grape to small plumb size. They make your belly hurt and generally aren't that pleasant to eat.
They're great for making pie or jam or such things. Homemade Apple crumble(crisp, I dunno whatever same shit...both good) is probably one of the best things next to homemade strawberry rhubarb pie, but either way, they're a far cry even from Granny Smith apples which, I enjoy, but as far as I know, most people use for baking.
I'm not the biggest fan but they aren't terrible. My rule of thumb is that if an apple variety has the word delicious in the name, there's s guarantee it will be mealy and disgusting
Golden Delicious were my favorite variety as a kid/teen in the early 90s, and they never seemed to have the problems you describe back then. Very crisp, with just the right amount of sweet and juicy. I started noticing them going downhill probably in the late 90s or 00s-- I think something went sideways with their cultivation &/or supply chain. Similar thing happened with Red Delicious, I can occasionally still find a good one but they're usually inedible.
Wow, that matches my experience - but I thought I had just developed a more refined taste. Golden and Red are almost and completely inedible to me, respectively.
They do this horror show where they pick them green and then store them for too long, after which they ripen them with ethylene gas and sell them.
I think it happened to Fuji and Gala sometime in the last 5 years. Honeycrisp still doesn't have the volume, so it goes to market without the horror show and is thus still crisp and delightful.
Mass production biases towards produce that is cheap, easy to grow in a wide range of environments, travels well and and is generally reliable. Mass marketing tends towards the bland, as can be seen today in the plague of ruby grapefruit.
Some things you buy in the store don’t even taste remotely like what you grow. Tomatoes are night and day difference. They pick them green for travel robustness, and “ripen” then with ethylene, so you’re eating a red but unripe tomatoes.
Strawberries are another one. Do yourself a favor and get some ripe strawberries locally sometime. They’re nothing like that Drischoll’s stuff in the stores!
Currently in Greece and the strawberries here are not only pretty but extremely flavorful. I don't think I'll ever be able to enjoy the American supermarket shietberry after trying the good stuff over here.
The "right fruit" usually depends on personal tastes plus the application: eating whole fruit, juice/fermented juice, preserves, baking, accent flavor in a salad. There are a lot of reasons that things can end up in the dustbin of history other than taste in one circumstance.
Great point. When I was growing up, my parents property was subdivided from a large old farm and orchard that had been farmed from the Dutch colonial era. We had apple trees that everyone considered junk/crabapples. (Although my mom made pie with them)
Later, we learned they are a well regarded heirloom for cider and other alcohol making purposes! Cider was a big thing in the Early 1900s and has made a resurgence.
Cider was huge, the main reason to plant an orchard. IIRC selling the idea of apples as a healthy thing to eat (and perhaps even apple pie as patriotic) was a clever marketing "pivot" under prohibition -- orchards were otherwise headed the way of the brewers & distilleries.
Additional varieties mean additional flavors. I don't know about you, but I buy six or eight different varieties at the store. Crunch, or sweet, or sour, or just pomme du jour...
We get so focused on 'the BEST', that's how we wind up with a monocrop of banana clones, or the inedible (but pretty) Washington Delicious, etc.
tasty tomatoes are nigh impossible to store fresh. i think i've heard a story about a lab or some other enterprise working on storeable, transportable, tasty tomatoes. first couple companies to get there certainly have my money.
Recently an apple truck turned over, and so the wrecking company ended up selling damaged 50lb boxes of apples for $10. I bought a couple and was disappointed to learn they were red delicious. But they turned out to actually be really good. First time I remember ever liking a red delicious.
Most important question is a matter of two things. History and genetics. You preserve history for it's own sake. And you preserve biodiversity to take advantage of all sorts of traits for breeding. One might be particularly cold hardy, another resistant to blight, and so on. Or not. You preserve them for their own sake. And also because people just love this stuff.
> Seems to follow that apple varieties ended up lost to the dustbin of history because they didn't taste very good?
There was a long, long period in which resistance to rough handling during shipping and long storage was far more important than taste. To some degree, that's still true, although we're in much better shape with respect to tasty fruit and vegetables than people were even as recently as the 1980s.
For decades, just about the only type of tomato you could get in a standard grocery store was the aptly-named "Red Rock" variety. Farmers markets and specialty stores sometimes offered a better selection in rural and large urban areas, but for most of the country it was either Red Rock or grow them yourself.
Have those apples been native to the US West or have they been brought by the early settlers? If they have been brought by the early settlers I would expect to find them in the old world.
Apples as a species originated in central Asia. I assume the rare cultivars they are looking for must have been developed in the United States for the story to make sense.
Funny, I first started to misread it similarly to you, then realized I misunderstood and re-read it and understood it correctly, then I re-read your comment and thought my original misreading was actually the correct one, then I looked at the article and saw I'd re-read it correctly after all.
I thought this was a column on how new hip founders like Steve and Wozniak exist on the west coast and its going to take over the east coast soon, "new silicon valley" etc. Then I reread and just had to click. Wonderful how one sentence can be seen in wildly different perspectives.
None are listed on the AppleSearch site, which doesn't surprise me: the first non-indigenous people showed up here in the 1840's and by then apple cultivation was a big deal elsewhere.
But it makes me wonder: do feral apple trees not eventually form their own varietals through mutation?
(IANAB, for $B == 'Botanist', obviously.)