
Around the World in Rare and Beautiful Apples - politelemon
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/unusual-apples
======
CalRobert
I bought a house with apple trees last year. One of them makes little red
apples where the color of the flesh has red streaks, like someone dripped
stain on to it or something.

They're _wonderful_. The closest I can describe it (and my wife agrees) is
that it's like if watermelon jolly rancher actually was a natural flavour. But
if you wait more than a day or two after picking they're not particularly good
at all.

Maybe a John Gidley's Pearmain? (
[https://www.fruitid.com/#view/1012](https://www.fruitid.com/#view/1012) ) -
but really don't know. Fruitid is great for fruit identification.

Grow an apple tree (several, actually, to pollinate each other) is what I'm
saying I guess.

~~~
zhynn
You should check Adam's blog and see if they are already there!
[http://adamapples.blogspot.com/](http://adamapples.blogspot.com/)

~~~
CalRobert
Thanks! It's hard to pick a type for sure though.

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teh_klev
This chap's YouTube channel has a good number of videos about growing apples
that are less well known:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/1sustainablehedonist/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/1sustainablehedonist/videos)

If you're based in the the UK, the National Fruit Collection at Brogdale grow
quite a few different varieties of apple seedlings (and other fruits) and has
a reasonable sized seed stock I think you can order from.

[https://brogdaleonline.co.uk/](https://brogdaleonline.co.uk/)

[http://www.nationalfruitcollection.org.uk/index.php](http://www.nationalfruitcollection.org.uk/index.php)

~~~
ratmice
For what its worth these are unlikely to be from seed, as apples are very
unlikely to produce fruit which matches the variety of the parent.

~~~
teh_klev
You're right, what's for sale are are rootstock trees. But I believe you can
get access to seed stock as well.

~~~
dminor
Apples trees grown from seed actually do not match their parent - they are a
genetic mix (just like us). What's more, they will most likely bear fruit that
isn't pleasant to eat.

All the apple varieties you eat have been cultivated from a single original
specimen, via cuttings or (more likely) grafting onto a convenient root stock.

~~~
teh_klev
So does that mean if you only have the seeds available you've effectively lost
that variety? i.e. it's now extinct?

I feel this warrants more research for me.

~~~
dminor
Yes, essentially, if it hasn't otherwise been propagated. Also, the process
for creating a new edible variety is fairly time and resource intensive, since
it involves planting a lot of seeds and waiting a couple years to see if you
get something worthwhile.

The story is also similar for rootstock. Apples are naturally a fairly large
tree, which isn't convenient for harvesting. The rootstocks that apples are
typically grafted onto are genetic variants that don't grow as large.

~~~
teh_klev
Thanks for the education :)

------
JoeAltmaier
Used to live in the middle of town. On a walk with the kids, down 3 blocks and
left at the little market onto a dead-end street, at the end was a little
hayfield with a pond and an apple tree.

The apples on this tree were like cannon-balls. Someone had stacked the fallen
ones this way, in little tetrahedral piles of 4. Bigger - not quite soccer
balls but impractically, ludicrously large dark apples. Never heard of them,
never seen them pictured anywhere.

The tree is gone now, the entire meadow and pond turned into condominiums.

~~~
nudemanonbike
One of the weird things about apples is that every seed contains very
different DNA than whatever it came from.

It sounds like that was just a random variation that someone planted. Did the
apples taste any good? If they had, you might have been able to sell them.
It's very possible that particular variety of apple will never exist again.

~~~
wil421
How is this unique to Apples? Most fruit trees come from clones. If you buy
local the clones will be grafted onto a rootstock that matches your zone. A
lot of vegetable seeds are unlikely to produce identical plants from seeds,
especially if you have multiple squashes. Hass avocados are clones from the
original tress a farmer found in the early 1900s.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Yeah in our garden we plant chili peppers, Anaheim, jalapeno etc. Tried
replanting seeds one year, and while the fruit looked (mostly) like the parent
plant, the heat was all over the map. It was chili roulette!

~~~
wil421
I had a few Franken-squash take over my garden one year. They even seeded
themselves. The place I order seeds from will even warn you if the peppers can
be cross pollinated easily.

~~~
kjs3
Yeah...I've had some really odd 'volunteers' come up the year after planting
mixes of squashes. Melons are are apparently notorious for crossing as well.

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Jedd
Braddick's Non-pareil

That's my favourite apple ever, and I may well have tasted it from one of the
only two trees remaining -- at Faversham, Kent, UK.

Quite possibly I got them on a _really_ good day, or they just spoke to my
taste buds.

Either way there's a few thousand apple varieties we know about, yet most
people have tried a few dozen. Similarly cherries, and pears.

They don't have to look great (TFA images _look_ spectacular) to taste great
-- the Braddock is visually unassuming and unappealing

------
dmitriid
I live in Sweden which has an abundance of apples. All year round there are
only two or three Apple varieties in the stores: Royal Gala, Golden, Pink
Lady. Same goes for pears.

Where are the rest of Apple varieties? No one knows.

Well, some people do [1] Profits, economics, transportation.

[1] [https://pitjournal.unc.edu/article/where-have-all-apples-
gon...](https://pitjournal.unc.edu/article/where-have-all-apples-gone-
investigation-disappearance-apple-varieties-and-detectives-who)

~~~
teh_klev
> Where are the rest of Apple varieties? No one knows.

From the article:

 _Due to the demands of industrial farming, only a handful of apple varieties
make it to stores, and even of those, only the most uniform specimens sit on
the shelves. Growers have abandoned many delicious or beautiful varieties that
have delicate skin, lower-yield trees, or greater susceptibility to disease._

Then there's the wholesale destruction of old and disease free orchards which
has seen the availability of once popular cultivars vanish. It's a crime
really.

~~~
yoz-y
> delicate skin, lower-yield trees, or greater susceptibility to disease

All of these are very valid reasons to not try to mass produce them. Even if
they would be available from some person's orchard, they would still not be
available in the shops or markets.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
It was all lead by the supermarkets, in the UK at least.

The two or three favourite varieties in the seventies and eighties have all
disappeared. Not because customers no longer like them, but because the
supermarkets wanted high yield, large size, taste free apples. More profit,
and vast suppliers who'd supply a trillion tonnes at a time.

In the space of a decade the entire stock of trees for the UK's number one and
two were grubbed up. The customers still wanted them, still asked for them,
the supermarket response was "fuck you".

Now it's all Royal Gala, Golden Revolting^W Delicious, Pink Lady, Braeburn.
All bland balls of taste free sugar.

~~~
rsynnott
> Golden Revolting^W Delicious

The proper term is "Yellowish Horrible". A completely pointless apple.

Not sure if they do it in the UK, but Tesco, of all places, sometimes sells
nice local apples when they're in season in Ireland.

------
ratmice
The temperate orchard conservancy is an awesome non-profit, preserving many
rare varieties and distributing scions for grafting onto rootstock.

They only take orders from December through January (i.e. until the end of
this month).

[http://www.temperateorchardconservancy.org/](http://www.temperateorchardconservancy.org/)

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MS90
One correction, Al Bean took the seeds to the moon, not around them.

I can forgive Atlas Obscura for it, however, since the USDA page(1) has it
wrong as well...which severely irks me as it's a government website. It says
"carried around the moon in the early 1970's by Astronaut Bean on Apollo 13
Flight."

Al bean was on Apollo 12, which was in the 1960's, and he walked on the
surface. I submitted a ticket to the site linked in (1) to correct it.

1: [https://npgsweb.ars-
grin.gov/gringlobal/accessiondetail.aspx...](https://npgsweb.ars-
grin.gov/gringlobal/accessiondetail.aspx?id=1013751)

~~~
etrk
It now says:

 _Supposedly, seeds were carried by Alan Bean on Apollo 12 (no citation
provided)._

Do you have a citation for this?

~~~
ASB1969
I also read this Atlas Obscura article-Alan Bean did not carry apple seeds to
the moon. All Astronauts have a list of what they personally took on the
mission (flags, jewelry, military insignia). Apple seeds was not part of Alan
Bean's list. In addition I am unaware of any apple seeds carried as part of an
Apollo 12 NASA experiment. ALSEP, Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package
contained the Apollo 12 science experiments. There is a chance Alan Bean
conducted an experiment with apple seeds on board Skylab, although I do not
remember one. There were many Skylab experiments and apple seeds could have
been part of one of those experiments. That fact could be verified using the
Skylab II mission documentation. Amy Bean

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aaron695
I assume this was written in response to the gentleman whose hobby was
collecting heritage apples (and moonshine stories) in the quite amazing photo
-

[https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/eiyy2u/t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/eiyy2u/this_mans_collection_of_lost_apple_varieties/)

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gitgud
I never thought apples could be so different... I understand the _black swan_
feeling a lot more now...

~~~
grenoire
What's even more interesting is that the fact that we don't see these is a
consequence of the economics surrounding apples, drive by what people
_perceive_ and as such _want_ an apple to be.

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zhynn
If you like in-depth apple reviews, I highly recommend Adam's Apples:
[http://adamapples.blogspot.com/](http://adamapples.blogspot.com/)

It's especially fun to learn the jargon (lenticels, calyx, etc).

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mc32
From what I’ve heard from people who’ve travelled, apples from the Pamir
mountains area are closest to wild apples and have some great varieties with
great flavor.

