Margil

Margil was recently identified as a parent of the great Cox's Orange Pippin, upending a century of conventional wisdom. ¶ 

I was especially curious to try this apple. ¶ 

These are conical and ribbed, and not always symmetrical. Medium to large. There's a promising aroma

My Margils have a painterly mix of blush, a fine russet, and bare peel, all variations on an orange theme. Indeed it is hard to tell where the russet ends. 

The blush is patchy but there are a few vertical bands that are quite saturated. 

The apple has a matte finish which makes it even harder to distinguish the russeted from the not. You need a magnifying glass to see the lenticels and even then it's not clear what might just be a speck of russet.

Tasting Margil

The best of these had yielding fine-grained flesh, on the dry side for an apple, a very light yellow. One was downright soft. They might be a little overdue.

The flavors are quite rich, if confused and challenging to parse. There is a hint of oranges, lemon, and mango, also something toasty or chestnutty and perhaps a little cream soda. 

The pleasing acidity helps these flavors to pop and provides for a little generic spiciness.

One can believe this is a parent of Cox, though the flavors are neither so well organized nor clear.

History, pedegree, biology

Robert Hogg (1884; 141–42), in his Fruit Manual, says Margil may have originated in France sometime before its first record in England in the 1750s.

For more than 100 years, the Ribston Pippin was thought (by Hogg and many others) to be a parent of Cox's, the latter originating in a small town west of London around 1830.

Recent genetic sequencing suggests that Margil is the likely parent of both Cox and Ribston. Gene science is upsetting many long-held ideas about apple pedigrees.

From the report:

Figure 3 of Howard et al., "Pedigree reconstruction for triploid apple cultivars using single nucleotide polymorphism array data" Plants, People, Planet 5:1 (2023) 98–111. https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.10313 CC BY 4.0

As Dr Matt Ordidge, a co-author of this research, notes,

There is no avoiding the potential of paternity testing (even after nearly 200 years) in the world of heritage fruit!