Apple Picking Time

I grew up in Michigan.  In Michigan the end of August gets one thinking about apples.  Apple picking time is not far away.  As a kid it meant, my mom's amazing apple pies were just around the corner.  Soon we'd be adding a day devoted to making and canning Applesauce and Apple Butter.

Nowadays, you never have to worry about being able to buy an apple.  There are always apples at the grocery store.  Lot's of them: Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, Fuji, Gala, maybe Pink Lady, maybe Honey Crisp.  The abundance could make you think that you are lucky.  You have a lot of choices.  But really you don't, and most people don't even realize that.  Most people don't know much about apples.

Did you know that apples are heterozygotic? Every apple seed creates a unique offspring.  The only way to propagate a specific variety of apple is to graft it.  Otherwise it's a crap shoot--like when two humans make a baby.  And Apples are not unique in this.  Lots of the fruits we enjoy are heterozygotic. 

Today, horticulturalists can fiddle with apples.  More than just crossbreed varieties and with a little luck come up with something new and desirable, they can gene-splice.   But for millennia, all the way back to when apples were first eaten by humans on the woody slopes of the Turgay Valley of modern day Kazakhstan--their place of origin--the apples we know and love had a single progenitor.  A unique tree that grew at a specific time and in a specific place.  That someone found.  Someone liked.  Liked it enough to graft it to other sprouts and share it with others who also liked it that much.  I think that's pretty cool.

Growing up in Michigan, I had so many other choices when apple picking time arrived.  We ate: McIntosh, Baldwin, Grimes Golden, Opalescent, Hyslop, Jonagold, Sweet Winesap, Jonathan, et. al.  There are hundreds of heirloom apples, mostly forgotten, maybe relegated to regional roadside stands.  Remembering a few as apple picking time approaches.

 Named for Walter and Anna Etter, this one was first discovered in the 1860's in California.  It is the result of intentional cross breeding, although the identity of its parent apples is left to speculation.  Probably a Wagener pollinated with a Manx Codlin. 

 The parent tree sprouted on a farm owned by a Mr. Butters around 1730 in Wilmington, Massachusetts.  Ergo the original name was Butters Apple.  This was later replaced by the name Woodpecker apple because of the association of the bird with the parent tree.  This was shorted to Pecker Apple.  Then along came one Colonel Baldwin who was so taken with this apple that he chose to promote it widely and by association it was rechristened the Baldwin.  The parent tree died sometime after 1817 and before 1832.

 The parent tree appeared on the farm of John Lobban at the base of Pilot Mountain in Nelson County, Virginia.  It's first mention was in 1831.

 Named for the creek in Macon County, North Carolina where its parent plant sprouted.  It was widely distributed and planted all across the eastern half of the United States, thus giving it a exceptional distinction.  The Nickajack is also known by well over 40 other names!  First described in 1853 under one of those aliases, the Winter Rose, yet owing to its wide distribution; it is believed to have first appeared in the late 1700's along Nickajack Creek.

In the world of apple nomenclature, there are a variety of base words used to describe apples with similar characteristics: Pippins, Russets, the still ubiquitous Delicious, the beautifully archaic Limbertwig, and Rose among the most common.  The Hidden Rose was first discovered on a farm near Airlie, Oregon owned by Lucky and Audrey Newell.  They liked it, but not enough to propagate it.  It was rediscovered by the next owner of the farm, William Schulz, who also liked it.  Mr. Schultz liked it enough to promote it.  The original tree sprouted around 1955.