I'm thinking, what a typical looking apple.
It's round and a bit oblate, one slightly tapered, one not, a streaky red blush that is a little washed out covering about two thirds of a spring green peel.
It's not a McIntosh or a Cortland, but it might be, if you don't look too closely.
If you do, you will see slight ribbing and small, light tan lenticel dots (You'll have to look very closely to see them in the unblushed area)
There are some small creases in the stem well.
Crunch much?
It is vinous and floral and perfectly balanced. There's some plain old sweet cider in the mix too.
It's denser and more substantial than most of the extended Mac family, in a very satisfying way. The peel is a bit chewy.
I'm eating mine on Halloween (seriously, waiting for the trick or treaters),
and this is just the perfect taste of fall. I really like the dense,
crisp texture.
Salome reminds me in some ways of Baldwin, which I have not been able to get this year.
In fact, if you told me this was a Mac x Baldwin cross, I would believe it.
It's not, though.
Jesse Downs, of Down Home Farm in Readstown, Wisconsin, sent me this apple. He writes,
Recent genetic testing shows that it is the same as Maine apple Cherryfield Red, and a seedling of Westfield SNF.
The genetic testing is surely the one commissioned recently by the Maine Organic Famers Association.
That analysis also found that Cherryfield is the same as Benton Red, another Maine variety.
Out on a Limb, the Maine apple resource frequented by John Bunker, says that Cherryfield
was introduced by Wyman B. Collins of Cherryfield, Washington County, in about 1850.
But Salome has a conflicting origin story.
Song of Salome
They do not agree about who did the originating, but I am convinced, at least provisionally, by the following account at Pomiferous.
That story is that Elias Hathaway found Salome growing in an abandoned nursery in 1853, and sold rights to it to a nurseryman named Arthur Bryant in 1884.
Salome is named for Hathaway's mother.
Discord
Even if "seedling" does not mean "found seedling, pippin" (as it probably does), 1853 is too early to find a grafted scion of a circa 1850 apple in an abandoned nursery. The reverse is also true.
Probably, someone fudged the dates. Out on a Limb is on the case:
We’re attempting to sort out which name came first. Stay tuned!
Under any name, it's really good. Thanks, Jesse.
And just to confuse things there is an apple variety from Cherryville, NC, named Cherryfield Black, so called not for its color but the family name Black. It is an early summer variety.
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