Adam's Apples

Karim Habibi strides through his seedling orchard like a god, casually dispensing death.  ¶  This is the part of Keeper's Nursery where Karim plants seeds he hopes will grow into tasty new apple varieties.  ¶  Most of them don't make the cut. Off with their heads!

We all know that apples are from Kazakhstan . But today, gene resequencing techniques are telling us more about the long voyage of the apple from the wilds of the Tien Shen mountains to the U-Pick orchard. In particular, the modern European-style apple is a cross between the original Kazakh apple, Malus sieversii, and the European crab apple, M. sylvestris.

Since 2014, Eliza Greenman has been sharing her perspective and knowledge about growing apples in her blog, Unconventional Stories from an Apple Farmer . Greenman's observations often have a critical edge that borders on the subversive, from her exhortation to " Eat Ugly Apples " to her questions about "the ethics currently involved in producing the status quo" in the fruit world.

A reader writes, Last winter, my husband and I bought a house on 15 acres of land in the mountains of western Maine. It had a little orchard, but since the previous tenants had fed the deer apples right in the middle of the orchard, our trees were eaten to nubs. Nonetheless, we found about a dozen wild apple trees that had been planted by the deer maybe 30 years ago and had survived the browsing, the -20° winters, and the aggressive blocking of light by the neighboring pines. When we asked ourselves what does our land want to grow, the wild trees told us on no uncertain terms: apples.

And rejoinder videos. Steven Edholm, the polymathic paeleolith from  Turkeysong ("a homestead in the beautiful coastal mountains of Northern California" as well as a blog) took the time to respond to yesterday's video about apple breeding from one of the big commercial breeders in New Zealand. I've edited his remarks lightly; emphasis is added. I noticed a while back how much breeding is the beginning of a line of thinking toward more and more sophisticated marketing. It seems like the trend is a little more skewed toward consumer satisfaction now. I'm not convinced that they always know what consumers will want, given a broad choice [ya think?—Adam.], but apple quality in stores has certainly improved tremendously since I was a kid. As many apples as it seems like they are releasing the entire industrial apple system will never be about diversity, or about really serving human needs or culture in a broader sens...

Apple breeders consider consumer and production "fruit-quality traits" and even global economic strategy.

Watercore in a Lady Apple.  ¶  Eat enough apples and you are sure to encounter watercore : strangely translucent, glassy flesh super-saturated with juice and sugar.  ¶  You'd think juiciness would be a straightforward trait specific to each apple variety.  ¶  Coarse-grained apples, with large cells, hold more juice than fine-grained, smaller-cell breeds. Watermelon vs potato. Sometimes however things get a little haywire and the tree forces water, tree-sap really, into the apple so fast that some of it ends up between the cells.

Sow Carolina Gold rice and you'll generally grow Carolina Gold, the same as the parent. You can save some for seed if you like. Sow seeds from a Honeycrisp apple and, with a little sun and rain, you'll grow apple trees, but not Honeycrisps. Unlike rice, apples do not breed true; apple varieties must be propagated by grafting scionwood onto rootstock .

The first sight that greeted my eyes at Hutchins Farm (in Concord, Mass.) two days after Tropical Storm Irene were trees full of apples clustered like grapes. I'd worried about the trees, and the apples, in the blow that we got. Mac's Apples, in southern New Hampshire, had reported that "well-pruned trees heavy with fruit were very stable," but it was reassuring to see for myself. To underscore the good news, a chalkboard at Hutchins made this cheerful report: Made it through Irene with only minimal damage—hope everyone fared as well!

Today, gentle reader, step into my laboratory for a tale of science run amok. As related a few years ago in The Fruit Blog, two years before the accident at Three Mile Island researchers in Ohio decided that a little radiation might create a better Melrose.