Gardening

An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away

Youre the apple of my eye though youre rotten to the core is claimed to be a song. If so, it must join that other oldie, Dont put the cat in the washing machine, mother, or you might get a sock in the puss. However, in salutation to Mom and apple pie, weve put together the following on the favoured fruit.

• Botanists now believe that popular fruit as we know it today had its origins in eastern central Asia, in southern Siberia and western China, an apple-rich area of varied species.
• Many believe that the apple that Eve plucked from the Tree of Knowledge at the serpents urging was the start of all our misfortunes, which seems a trifle hard on investigative ladies, reptiles and Malus pumila.
• The Greeks thought apples exotic and even designated an "Apple of Discord" in their mythology as a fruit that started so much trouble over a beauty named Helen.
• Early in the present era, the Romans had between 30 and 40 varieties by AD50 and may have introduced them into England, although some argue that the ancient Brits were already brewing alcoholic or hard cider from home-grown varieties and quaffing it down.
• There are about 35 good species, although many more claimed, and more than 2,000 named cultivars.
• In 1828 a Toronto nursery catalog offered over 70 different apples.
• By 1892 L. H. Bailey at Cornell University found 878 different apple trees being sold in North American nurseries.
• About that time, famed plant breeder Luther Burbank believed worldwide there were 8,000 named varieties
• By 1922, there were just 100 varieties in North America, about the same as today.
• Sixteen years ago, it was claimed, probably accurately, that almost half the U.S. apple crop was Red Delicious which, correctly, should be simply called Delicious. It was produced in the 1860s by an Iowa farmer named Hiatt and has only the most nebulous connections to the Yellow Delicious, so named by a savvy nursery owner a half-century later.
• Popular Canadian introductions include McIntosh, whose roots go back into the 1800s of Dundas County, Ontario. Summerland, B.C. introduced Spartan in 1936, while Kentville, Nova Scotia came along with improved McIntosh-types Novamac (1978) and Novaspy (1986).
• Northern Spy, however, is a product of East Bloomfield in New York State, arriving in the late 1800s.
• Cortland apples came from New Yorks states Geneva Experimental Station in 1915, then Empire (1966), Jonagold (1968) and Freedom (1973). Idared emerged from Moscow, Idaho in 1942.
• Golden Delicious was a chance seedling from a West Virginia farm about 1900 and today is Europes most popular apple. New Zealanders used it in a breeding program to create Gala in 1960. Australias 1850s discovery was the green Granny Smith, another chance seedling.
• Japan contributed Mutsu in 1948 but in both Europe and New York State it is known as Crispin.
• England beats them all though with the Golden Russet apple, often sold as Russet, which can be traced back three centuries.
• The Costard however, was recorded in English records in 1292, and gave rise to the term costermonger for a person selling fruit from a pushcart.
• That is an early example of how apples have entered our culture today. You might upset the apple cart (cause trouble), be an apple polisher or flatterer, talk applesauce (nonsense), have apple cheeks (a rosy complexion) or even be the apple of someones eye, like actress Gwyneth Paltrows baby girl who is named Apple.
• While on the entertainment angle, 1975 saw Disney release the western comedy The Apple Dumpling Gang with Don Knotts. The Apple (1980) was a futuristic musical that failed to blossom and then there was the 1991 comedy Meet the Applegates. Beyond that Hollywood has not been particularly fruitful.
• Apple blossoms are more highly regarded elsewhere though, being the state flowers of both Arkansas and Michigan.
• The apple has been looked upon with such favour for so long that many another plant or its fruit has been designated such. So we have Balsam (Clusia major), Belle (Passiflora laurifolia), Bitter (Citrullus colocynthis), Custard (Annoa cherimolia), Pitch (Clusia major), Indian (Datura inoxia), Downy Thorn (also D. inoxia), Mad (Solanum melingena) and the Devils (Mandragum officinarum) apples, to say nothing of those hard galls on oak trees caused by minute wasps called oak apples.
• Finally, sad to say, botanists tell us that the apple isnt a fruit at all. More correctly, it is a pome, developing from the receptacle of the flower and not the ovary, as does any self-respecting fruit. However, the experts who study fruit are called pomologists and their subject pomology. They can go climb a sour apple tree, an expression which, around a century ago, meant they could go to hell.

And then, of course, there was that unfortunate incidence recorded as a limerick:

And this is indeed the end!