Apple season is in full force at grocery stores. But even large grocery stores only carry about five or six apple varieties. In my mind that was all there were.
An autumn trip to Julian, California, told me a different story. The town is a former gold mining town about an hour east of San Diego. It has an active tourist business, but equally important are its apple orchards. People come to town specifically to buy locally grown apples.
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Julian’s Apple History
I stopped at one of the roadside stands where my apple education began. It turns out apples have a history as varied and interesting as our own country’s past.
In Julian, the first apple trees were brought to the area in the 1870s shortly after gold was discovered. My apple source, the woman who runs the roadside stand where I stopped, introduced me to numerous varieties of apples. What we see in the groceries is a weak sampling of what is available. Because I was taking home gift apples to “foodies,” she suggested I take a variety. Then when I hadn’t varied my selection enough, she personally chose about 8-10 extra apples I needed to take—and put them in my bag at no charge.
Apple history, like much of our history, is oral—grower to grower. I learned that in Julian there are very old trees that no one living can identify. New growers care for them, but no one who can specify the type. We are losing some of the stories of our past.
Upon further investigation, I learned that there are now “apple detectives” in several sections of our country who are working to save our apple heritage.
Apples of the Past Have Stories to Tell
Apples have been part of our past since at least the 1600s. In the mid-1800s, there were thousands of varieties of apples in the U.S. We know that one of Thomas Jefferson’s favorite apples was the Esopus Spitzenburg. The Spitzenburg apple tree was discovered in the 1700s by an early Dutch settler of that name. It was found along the Hudson River in Ulster County, New York The apple made news when Thomas Jefferson ordered a dozen trees for his orchard in Monticello. (And you can actually still buy these trees today.
Many of the more common varieties of apples have changed through the years. For example, the very popular McIntosh apple began life as the Snow apple. It was bright red Canadian apple with snow-white flesh.
The types of apples available today have greatly diminished because of mass agicultural production. When farms needed to sell in quantity to major food distributors, they could no longer grow many of the specialty apples.
Today the apples chosen by major growers re the types of apples that grow quickly and ship easily without bruising. s a result, today our groceries tend to carry only four or five varieties of apples.
Worried about Heritage
Apple orchardist and expert John Bunker of Maine grew up near the Redwoods in California. When he came east to attend Colby College, he became fascinated by Maine and the apples grown there. After graduation, he committed himself to Maine and began learning as much as he could about agriculture and apple-growing in the area. In 2012, he founded a 10-acre orchard for preservation of heritage apples. the Maine Heritage Orchiard.
He also worked for a mail order company, Fedco Seeds, under which he began Fedco Trees. (Apple trees cannot be grown from seeds. They need to be grafted from the branch of a tree that a grower intends to duplicate.) Bunker has become known for his expertise and often speaks at historical societies and Rotary clubs on the history of Maine apples. He is delighted when people bring him apples from a lone tree that grows in their yard or from a nearby abandoned orchard.
Over the last 30 years he has saved from oblivion anywhere from 80 to 100 varieties.
What Johnny Appleseed Didn’t Know
We have all heard the story of John Chapman (1774-1845)—known as Johnny Appleseed—and how he planted apple seeds in the Mid-Atlantic states, Illinois, and Indiana. He fenced off small nurseries for the seedlings and left them in the care of neighbors. What Johnny Appleseed didn’t know was that good apples must come from grafts of a tree.
Apple seeds don’t establish a tree that gives off the same type of fruit as the original apple. Trees grown from seeds are more likely to result in what we know as crab apples. But his efforts should not be dismissed. The apples from the trees he planted were fine for feeding livestock and making cider. Cider was particularly important in the early 1800s. In so many locations, the water was polluted and made people sick if they drank it. Cider was a welcome alternative.
And if you ever visit a farmstand or a green market and come across a Rolfe, a Wolf River, a Yellow Bellflower, a Rhode Island Greening, a Blue Pearmin, a Fletcher Sweet, or a Sweet Tango, you’ll know an apple detective has preceded you.
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