Adam's Apples

Will you look at that gorgeous apple! The crimson blush is so saturated that the prominent lenticel dots look white in stark contrast. A relief map of red-brown crackles resemble scars. You can feel them with your fingertips, like a Braille interpretation of a Jackson Pollock painting.

In the midst of the tedious Age of HoneyCrispySweetieCrunch®, the name of this apple made me laugh. At least someone has a sense of humor!

This is an interesting looking apple by many metrics. Large and round, with really no perceptible ribbing, the Caney Fork Limbertwig is a light lemon yellow about two-fifths blushed with the mottled orange red that you see. Dark lenticels brood within the blush. They are raised bumps in the unblushed yellow. And check out that long, skinny stem.

I had to travel all the way to Colorado to find this apple from Washington State. Lucy Rose, and her sister Lucy Glo , are in supermarkets in many parts of the U.S. They have not, however, made it to eastern Massachusetts. This does seem to be the Year of Red Flesh here at Adam's Apples, does it not? Lucy Glo is also red fleshed, though she is otherwise unlike her sister.

What's striking about this apple? It's the unusual color: a "glo" that is the result of a pastel orange-pink color peering through an otherwise pale green peel. (Click on any photo for a closer look.) This look reminds me of the tan exterior of the Pink Pearl . Which raises an interesting question...

In the 17th Century, left-wing puritans would frequently find themselves before magistrates for disrupting church services, refusing to pay tithes, and otherwise resisting the public order. Then they would dig deeper holes for themselves by addressing the judge with the egalitarian "thee" instead of the respectful "you." It is perhaps in this spirit that Steven Edholm, the originator of today's apple, informs me that the correct spelling is, all caps, " BITE ME !" including an obligatory exclamation point.

Behold this large apple, shapely and tapered (if a little lopsided), a cheerful yellow with patches of orange-pink blush. Russetted lenticels stand out against the light background, and there is a very small amount of ribbing.

Kingston Black is famous! But not for eating.

This small, classically shaped apple has a deep red blush decorated with a rugged archipelago of russet and distinctive light lenticel dots. The peel has a satiny gloss. My Redfield is moderately ribbed and has an open, and deep, calyx. It smells faintly of cinnamon, perhaps residue of actual cinnamon from baked goods in the farm shop where I bought the apple.

The Starkeys are particularly good this year, the way the Baldwins were last year. So I thought I'd taste one again.

This small, crabapple-sized fruit, with its glossy deep red peel and striking pink flesh, is gorgeous. But is it good to eat?

The broad stripes on the apple at left do not appear to be usual, but I wanted you to see it alongside the more-typical apple on the right. Both are Ellison's Orange. Consequently there are two examples of this English apple to enjoy. These fruits are on the small side of large, a cheerful spring green layered with a subdued orange-red blush and a fair amount of rusetting. The surface finish ranges from matte to rough.

Note the dark red bulls-eye near the center. Outwardly, Scarlet Surprise is a round, red apple, pretty if not remarkable. Now imagine biting in to discover that the color is more than skin deep. Surprise! To avoid surprises, the grower had sliced samples on display. But the true surprise lies in this apple's interesting flavors. Scarlet is a medium sized apple, round and orange-touched red, with very little ribbing at all and small light lenticel dots. The peel is glossy with natural wax, and there is a slight light-colored bloom in a few spots. Inside Instead of biting in, I cut. The sliced apple smells of berries and pumpkin. The striking magenta-pink flesh is yielding and without much of a crunch, but it is juicy and pleasant,  coarse grained. The Surprise is well balanced, though on the tart side of that range. The flavors include raspberries and citrus with a marshmallow note (the candy, not the herb ). I found a little  grapefruit  flavor in parts of the ap...

Suddenly, this new variety is everywhere. My supermarket has them in the merely large size, and the grocery chain Trader Joe's has big ones for sale loose and little ones by the bag. Stemilt, the grower with one of two North American licenses for this apple, sent me six huge ones, and that's what I have before me today.

When I started this blog, I had the notion that this apple was not a real variety. That the name was just a generic catchall for any number of different early apples. Not so, of course: Early McIntosh has a first-rate pedigree, with McIntosh himself providing the parenting pollen and Yellow Transparent the seed. Though I figured that out a while ago, this is my first bite.

I wrote about Hightop just two weeks ago. It was not ripe then, but sometimes one is fortunate enough to get a second chance.

Today's apple has attracted an extraordinary amount of attention from growers in Washington State. The state university there developed and is promoting the new variety. The growers are responding by ordering and planting thousands of trees. Cosmic Crisp is a very handsome apple, quite big, with a saturated blush of orange-tinted crimson decorated by lenticel dots. These run the gamut from tiny and distinct to large and diffuse. Ribbing also runs a range from moderate to pronounced. My photo sample is tapered but most of the others are rounder and blocky.

NEW APPLE This new Honeycrisp x Braeburn cross is emerging from the development stage (grafting and planting trees) to retail (enough fruit-bearing trees to bring apples to market). Its saturated blush is a deep crimson—darker in person than in my photo.