An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but 4500 apples...
December 5, 2016 10:11 PM   Subscribe

Creating a clone army of apple trees. A tiny non-profit in Molalla, Oregon, is working to save a private collection of 4,500 rare apples.
posted by jacquilynne (24 comments total) 27 users marked this as a favorite
 
I have a real oddball one that was in my back yard when I moved into my house. No idea what it is. I had no idea there were so may.
posted by boilermonster at 10:27 PM on December 5, 2016


The flesh in good years is notably hard and crunchy when fresh, though it does soften somewhat with keeping. Fairly tart when fresh-picked, the apples mellow with storage. Arkansas Blacks are considered an excellent keeping apple, and can be stored for six months in appropriate conditions.

-- Arkansas Black (Wikipedia)
posted by lazycomputerkids at 10:43 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm so glad to see this on the Blue. Civil Eats is a great site, and does remarkable food-policy reporting. For example, see "If Trump Goes Hard on Immigration, Who Will Grow, Process, and Serve Our Food?," "Beyond Access: What the Movement for Black Lives’ Policy Says About Food" and "Children in Farm Communities Pay a Steep Price for the Food We Eat."

The entire Agroecology vertical -- with articles like "5 Food Systems Lessons the U.S. Can Learn from Africa," "Patrick Holden Wants to Shine a Light on the True Cost of American Food" and "Farming in Snow Country" -- is a wonderful way to spend hours learning about farming.

Non-subscribers can read a handful of articles for free every month, but a year's subscription is $25. In this era -- with the sharp urban/rural divides played up in cyclical election media, to say nothing of how intimately the American economy is tied into the agricultural one -- I thought it was an investment worth making.
posted by sobell at 10:48 PM on December 5, 2016 [5 favorites]


I can't wait to read this! This Saturday I'm going to a memorial service for a good friend's aunt (who I knew and was cool), and the order of the day is to do two of her favorite things: eat rare apple varieties and drink beer out of small glasses. My interest is twofold: having interesting verbal Post-It notes to contribute to the party about the world of apples, and to find out how the hell they got rare apples in this Red Delicious and Granny Smith part of the world.
posted by rhizome at 11:33 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


Related: National Fruit Collection, UK. I learnt about it from this fascinating radio programme.

My understanding (confirmed in the article) is that apple trees don't breed true, which is why we clone them. In which case, I'm not sure why they're sending seeds to Svalbard?
posted by Leon at 2:09 AM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


I have a real oddball one that was in my back yard when I moved into my house. No idea what it is. I had no idea there were so may.

Could have been planted from a seed or a discarded core. you can get some really weird ones out of that, because of the way pollination works with apple trees.

Or, it could be a variety meant for (hard) cider.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 4:55 AM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yeah, apples don't grow true from seed. Johnny Appleseed wasn't planting all those apple seeds for fruit. He was planting them for (hard) cider.

Cider was America's traditional alcoholic drink of choice (along with Applejack, Ciderkin, and Perry). Unfortunately 'Temperance fanatics burned or uprooted the orchards and wrought havoc on farms to the point that only dessert or cooking apples escaped the axe or torch; only a small number of cider apple trees survived on farmland abandoned before the 1920s and in the present day are only now being found by pomologists.'
posted by leotrotsky at 6:47 AM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]


i just want greater local availability of black twigs, this is my sole demand
posted by poffin boffin at 8:29 AM on December 6, 2016


boilermonster, if it's a sweet apple, it's likely a cloned variety. If it's tart, then probably just grew from a discarded apple. If it's sweet and it's not identifiable, you might see if there are any local apple specialists. Depending on how old your house is, it could be a lost variety.
posted by tavella at 8:36 AM on December 6, 2016


I have some friends in Portland who are cider enthusiasts. A couple years back they came by 5000 heirloom apple seedlings, all in 1 gallon buckets. They held them for like a year hoping to plant them somewhere before realizing how expensive and non-profitable it would be and walked away from the project. Some other enthusiasts took over, I hope they are successful.

My friend told me part of what's going on is a bunch of universities have old experimental orchards / farms dating back to the 1920s or older, like Luther Burbank days. But now they're getting rid of them because they want to use the land for something more modern or lucrative. And so we lose all these funky old varietals.

(BTW, if you haven't caught on to the modern American cider movement, there's some delicious beverages out there waiting for you. Not that sweet apple juice shit like Strongbow that you see in bars sometimes. Dry wine-like beverages, refreshing and complex. Good stuff.)
posted by Nelson at 8:39 AM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]


Dry wine-like beverages, refreshing and complex. Good stuff

Indeed. Chicagolanders can find some great locally-produced small-batch cider at Farmhouse and Farmbar, where I had some very nice samples last week.
posted by suelac at 8:41 AM on December 6, 2016


lazycomputerkids: "can be stored for six months in appropriate conditions."

For those who aren't aware this isn't really unusual in apples. Many varieties can be stored for up to a year.

Leon: "I'm not sure why they're sending seeds to Svalbard?"

The only thing I can think of is while apples don't breed true having a wide variety of seeds provides a broad base of genes potentially making it easier to breed for desirable aspects. New apple varieties are often developed from someone noticing a random mutation and then breeding for it.
posted by Mitheral at 8:43 AM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]


Great article, thank you! Apples are so weird.
posted by OrangeDisk at 8:59 AM on December 6, 2016


They're sending seeds to Svalbard to have a store of genetic diversity. One doesn't arrive at new varieties -- capable of adapting to new ecological niches driven by climate change -- without a diverse pool of genes to work with.

Since someone mentioned the Arkansas Black, I should point out that the apple blossom is the official Arkansas state flower. Apples aren't a big industry in the state, and never really were, but as the article mentions these trees were formerly important parts of workaday American home culture. The woods behind the house where I grew up in central Arkansas were littered with dilapidated groves of century-old apple trees, left behind for the forest to reclaim when early waves of settlers tried and moved on from plot to plot. Some were good, many were awful, bitter, rock hard things that even the birds avoided. It's clear how these were brought about: as a kid, my dad would show me how to cut the seedy pericarp out of each halved piece, and then we'd heel scuff a little hole in the ground wherever we happened to be and bury the thing while eating the apple. I've asked him about that as an adult and he said he never questioned it -- he just picked it up from his dad.

I bought this amazing book of Southern apple varieties when I was in college and spent years trying to figure out if any of those old trees had a pedigree. A few were recognizable, but by far most of them seemed like these random from-seed upstarts that people'd been scuffing into the dirt just like their parents had done.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 9:16 AM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]


Yeah, it will preserve the best genes for apples, even if it would take some breeding to get sweet eating apples. Plant a hundred seeds, maybe you get one good apple out of it, but you can still get it.
posted by tavella at 9:21 AM on December 6, 2016


Begun, the Clone Orchards have.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:27 AM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]


I am a big fan of the Cripps (Pink Lady) apples, they are sweet but have a little sour tang at the end that's just lovely and it makes me sad to think how many years of woody bland Red Delicious apples I ate when I could have been eating these.

I never thought of planting seeds like that, late afternoon dreaming hotel--I'm going to start doing that! My kid will love it too. Even if none of what grows are edible.
posted by emjaybee at 9:28 AM on December 6, 2016


If I ever get serious land, I want to become a crazy apple farming lady and eat ALL THE APPLES.
posted by corb at 11:20 AM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


Some were good,
[many were firm-to-hard, nearly sour cooking apples]
many were awful, bitter, rock hard things that even the birds avoided.

Don't ever forget pie and cooking apples!!

There are old trees found in deserted homesteads here in Idaho that yield crops of apples that are so sour and bitter that most people ignore, leaving them for deer or cattle. I'm sure there some that aren't eatable, but there's an art to cooking old varieties that's been completely forgotten. Some reveal their awesomeness after coring, stuffing with butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Unless you've eaten one of these, you just don't know. I never thought I liked baked apples as I'd always had the mushy, bland store bought apples that weren't for cooking.

Other pie apples need just the right amount of seasonings and sugar to make a marvelous fruit pie. Some are best in dishes like cobbler and crisps, where the sweetening comes from the toppings, rather than the sauce.

Others make fantastic jams or relishes, and some are actually used like a vegetable and roasted with meats.

Our forefathers (foremothers, actually) knew what they were doing when they planted these apples.
posted by BlueHorse at 11:56 AM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]


I was so happy to read this article. Thanks for sharing!

In Normandy, France, all sorts of apples and pears are grown to make cider, and more importantly, Calvados. The best are insanely aromatic but bone dry. One of my favorite aged spirits.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 2:03 PM on December 6, 2016


there's an art to cooking old varieties that's been completely forgotten.

And from the opposite side, an art to the apples you use in old recipes. I'm always making old recipes and finding the apples from the store just don't work in it well.
posted by corb at 2:07 PM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh, and there's also pommeaux, a combination of apple juice and calvados. Also wonderful! I bet someone will try making that here in the US soon.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 2:08 PM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


Some of the very sour apples are full of pectin and help all the jams jell.
posted by clew at 6:37 PM on December 6, 2016


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1IOIBpeNKM
posted by tarvuz at 10:13 PM on December 6, 2016


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