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? (Or father tree; this form of reproduction is asexual after all.)

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.