Adam's Apples

New Zealand is an apple-breeding powerhouse. When its harvest arrives here this time of year I have come to hope (but not expect) to find some apple that is wholly new to me. Today I am pleased to taste Lemonade, the first of two new Kiwi apples that I found at a specialty market on my way to work Tuesday morning. Lemonade is a strikingly elongated lemon yellow with green highlights. It is large and without ribbing, though the base is crowned with a circle of bumps. Some samples have a faint orange-pink blush over as much as a fifth or so of the peel. The shiny surface of this fruit is articulated into shallow bumps and ridges that further suggest the glossy rind of a lemon.

Fueled by dwarf rootstocks and a growing interest in apples, urban and suburban gardeners are increasingly planting apple trees in their backyards, according to a story published yesterday in the Boston Globe.

Storm clouds gather behind nascent apples earlier today at Nagog Hill Farm in Littleton.

In what has become a painful annual ritual, the Environmental Working Group last month again named apples as the produce most tainted with chemicals , the worst of of its "Dirty Dozen." The group also made a splash this spring with a report that 80% of American apples are "coated" with a chemical banned in Europe , effectively shutting down the export market . Farmers use pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, fertilizers, and preservatives to deliver unblemished fresh-tasting apples to market. Consumers for the most part demand the quality that these chemicals deliver.

An apple branch tip makes this reply to sun and rain in Arlington, Mass., earlier today. Here are the earlier parts of this series: 1 2 3