Before and after

Above, two moments in the life of Duchess of Oldenburg, an antique Russian variety with cooking and keeping qualities.

It's a late-summer apple.

A friend took this and other blossom photos in Harvard, Massachusetts, yesterday.

I'll be posting more throughout the week, though by week's end I expect the blooms to be much fuller than in the photos.

I choose Duchess to start because I have tried it (and thus took a photo), but that's not true of all of them. No "after" for some.

The same as above, uncropped

The blossoms that I posted on Friday are on an undistinguished volunteer crab apple that has popped up in a sort of hedge between my house and a neighbors.

Identification

The appearance of an apple's blossom is sometimes described in apple manuals, but for the most part blossoms are not an aid to identification if the tree's provenance is unknown.

Authorities such as Beach's Apples of New York describe the appearance of buds (acute, appressed, etc.) for varieties listed, but not blossoms.

The ingenious apple identification database maintained by Seattle Tree Fruit Society and others, does not include blossom (or bud) color or shape.

Besides that, the dates on which trees blossom are clues to apple identity.

However, since trees bloom at different times in different place and years, this information is necessarily relative.

Rather than an absolute date on the calendar, you may read things like "a week before McIntosh" or "early," etc.

To me, the budding blossoms are just a particularly lovely promise of the harvest to come.

Note: "appressed" is a word, not a typo.