Ortet

There are tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of Gala trees in the world today. ¶ 

They are clones, genetically identical to the first Gala bred in New Zealand and grown from seed nearly 100 years ago.

Indeed, they are that tree, in that each is a link in an unbroken chain of living tissue from the mother tree, grafted and regrafted onto countless sets of roots.

We know what to call the cultivar: it is Gala. But what is the word for the mother tree?

It is a pippin, of course, grown from seed, But many cultivars are named "pippin," which does not capture the precise relationship of plant to breed.

Agriculture has borrowed a word from biology: ortet, the single organism that is original to a population of asexually reproduced clones.

A stone marks the spot in Ontario where, in 1811, John McIntosh transplanted the tree that would yield the fruit bearing his name. (Other markers are nearby. )

Above is the monument to the Baldwin apple in Wilmington, Massachusetts, near the place where the Baldwin ortet once grew.

Biologists have another name for any of the organisms in a population of clones: ramet. I have never heard that word used by farmers, but each of those Gala trees is one.