The sight and scent of heritage apples often brings out an emotional response in people, who suddenly recall the apples of their youth.
PHOTO: DERRICK LUNDY
The sight and scent of heritage apples often brings out an emotional response in people, who suddenly recall the apples of their youth.
PHOTO: DERRICK LUNDY
In 2010, an Italian-led consortium announced it had decoded the complete genome of the apple (Golden Delicious). It had about fifty-seven thousand genes, the highest number of any plant genome studied to date and more genes than the human genome (about thirty thousand).1
The old saying, “An apple a day, keeps the doctor away,” may come from an old English adage, “To eat an apple before going to bed, will make the doctor beg his bread.” 2
Apple seeds are mildly poisonous, containing a small amount of amygdalin, a cyanogenic glycoside.
In Canada, major apple production areas include British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. Approximately 60 per cent of apples produced in Canada are sold as fresh fruit. The remainder is used for juice, cider, pie filling, and baked goods.3
It happened again as I flipped through photographs from the Salt Spring Apple Festival and spotted an image which, taken from a balcony, looked down over a horde of people crowding around apple display tables. The tables, organized in a long circle, had “apple experts” available for questions on the inside. I looked at those experts, with a bit of apple-knowledge envy, and saw a familiar figure. Daphne? My good friend Daphne? Fellow soccer-travel mom? Fellow high-school-sports-on-the-bleachers buddy? Fellow Scotch-tasting groupie? Yes, as it turned out, someone else in my life was an apple crackerjack.
“I love working the apple festival,” Daphne practically gushed when I asked her about it. Daphne is really not a “gusher,” so once again I was surprised by the passion that ferments inside apple people. “People who are into apples are so romantic about it,” she said. “They get dreamy because they associate apples with memories and stories.”
Their reactions to the apples are emotional, she added, like “Oh, my grandmother used to have one of those apple trees near her back porch and I remember sitting under it when I was a kid.”
A collection of Gravenstein apples at Apple Luscious Organic Orchard shows the diversity of shapes and sizes of just one variety of apple. The shapes have too much variation for commercial growers, but as “apple man” Harry Burton points out, the apples are delicious! Gravenstein is an all-time favourite for many heritage apple lovers.
Often, it’s the scent of the apple that triggers memories, and Daphne recalled one woman who sought to identify an apple this way, holding it in one hand, smelling it, and comparing it to each apple on the display table. But what struck Daphne the most were the stories and ultimately the nostalgia that apples—especially heritage apples—evoked. I’d also come across this passion as I talked to apple people and read articles they’d written. For example, I found an article, “Singing the Praises of Gravenstein,” by Dr. Jim Rahe, a Simon Fraser University professor of plant pathology.
“Who hasn’t heard of . . . heritage variety Gravenstein?” he enthused. “The standard for crisp and juicy—Gravenstein! Sprightly flavour—Gravenstein! Great for sauce, for pies, for juicing, for drying—Gravenstein! Apples like Grandma used to bake—Gravenstein!”
He went on to write an eighteen-hundred-word article—part history, part anecdote, but mostly informative—discussing and comparing test plantings he did in the 1980s of twelve different strains of Gravenstein. He concluded by saying, “I relate this story to encourage our members to compare strains of old heritage varieties. Who knows, you just might find a nugget among the stones. And talking about them at parties can be a lot of fun!” 4
Although the article itself was interesting, it was the tone that captivated me; again, the unbridled passion that heritage apples inspire. I think it’s this, more than anything definitive, that describes the “what” of heritage apples. On a purely subjective level, heritage varieties are those apples that link us to our past; apples that elicit memories and history and passion. For those who want a more conclusive definition of heritage apples, that issue remains under debate. One school of thought says the “cultivar” (defined as “a variety of plant that originated and persisted under cultivation”) must be over one hundred years old, other people say fifty. Some gardeners consider 1951 to be the latest year a plant can have originated and still be called heritage, since that year marked the widespread introduction of purposeful controlled hybridization.
Tools of the trade: a collection of items used in grafting sits on a table at the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden’s annual apple festival, in preparation for a grafting demonstration.
“Really, a heritage variety is one that’s been around for a long time; it has a heritage that is part of our heritage,” said apple identification expert Clay Whitney. “You can’t really put a date on it.”
Dr. Bob Weeden, a passionate heritage apple grower and former biology professor, agreed. “No one, I think, can ‘know’ when heritage varieties gave way to modern ones, as it is definitional. I like a definition that notes the distinction between, on one hand, varieties that resulted from natural chance and were found along hedgerows or in seed orchards where folks grew thousands of chance hybrids in hopes of finding a good one to propagate, and [on the other hand] those coming from purposeful crosses of untampered pollen. There won’t be ‘a date’ for that, as the two techniques overlapped—still do!”
To understand all this, one needs to know a bit about apple sex, which in the wild gives birth to seedlings that create entirely new strains of apples. Apple sex in controlled environments by apple breeders also results in new varieties via seedlings, but those are a little more predictable. And, of course, apple varieties can be reproduced exactly and deliberately via grafting. Apple reproduction is an example of something called “heterozygosity”—rather than inheriting DNA from their parents and creating apples with the same characteristics, apples are instead different from their parents, sometimes radically.
The good news for the apple, as Michael Pollan notes in The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World, is that this variability has allowed it grow all over the world under extremely varied climates and conditions.
“Wherever the apple tree goes,” Pollan writes, “its offspring propose so many different variations on what it means to be an apple—at least five per apple, several thousand per tree—that a couple of these novelties are almost always bound to have whatever qualities it takes to adapt and prosper in a new home.” 5
In earlier times, apples were often grown from seeds, which can be carried more easily than seedlings over distances. Pioneers brought them to North America, sometimes saving the seeds from apples they consumed during their voyage across the ocean. Today, most new apple cultivars originate as seedlings, which either arise by chance or are bred deliberately by crossing cultivars with promising characteristics. The words “seedling,” “pippin,” and “kernel,” in the name of an apple suggest it originated as a seedling.
But how do apple breeders create new apples?
“How do apples have sex?” I wondered aloud.
“Soft-light and moody music?” Bruce offered. “Probably not candles, though.”
He is amusing at times.
This is how it happens. Whether or not an apple is reproducing in the wild or assisted by a breeder, the seed is a cross between the female parent (the flower of the tree from which the apple came) and the male parent (the variety of apple tree that produced the pollen). So in the wild, a Cox’s Orange Pippin could be pollinated by a nearby King, and the result would be a cross between the two. It’s hard, therefore, to determine the parentage of a seedling found growing at the side of the road because the origin of the parent blossoms is unknown. Apple breeders use the same principle, but much more deliberately. Here, pollination is controlled by covering the apple blossoms with fabric to prevent anything random occurring. When the blossoms are open and ready for pollination, the breeder uncovers them and manually applies pollen from the blossoms of a known variety before covering them up again. The seeds from these hand-pollinated apples are collected and planted. Hundreds or thousands of seeds can be planted in the hopes of finding a desirable variety (grower Harry Burton says the odds of a seed producing a better variety are less than one in ten thousand) and it takes four to eight years for each of those trees, started from seed, to produce fruit. So apple breeding is a long-term, large-scale project.
Once you have an apple that you want to reproduce, you turn to grafting, a technique in use for thousands of years, most likely discovered by the Chinese in at least 2000 BC. Grafting, like cloning, ensures that the new tree is exactly like the parent tree. A detached shoot or twig from the desired tree, called the scion (pronounced SY-uhn) is attached to the rootstock, which is the working part that interacts with the soil to take root and nourish the new tree.
When compared to a hand, the size of a Wolf River apple becomes apparent. No wonder they are a favourite for apple pies.
Once when I visited Harry, I had a chance to watch him deftly graft about a dozen apple trees. The room, in an outbuilding near his house, was chockablock with floor-to-ceiling boxes, obviously used for apple distribution come harvest. But Harry had carved himself out a small space, where he sat, pulled out his knife and calipers, and showed me how to make the perfectly angled cuts to create the tongues that would allow the scion and rootstock to join and eventually grow together. The trick, Harry explained, is to get enough of the cambium (the growing layers, just under the bark) touching, so that they can meld together and allow fluids to pass up and down the tree across the graft. Once the scion and rootstock are joined, grafting tape strengthens the join and keeps in moisture. The new seedling is put in water and—the sooner the better—planted. Harry plants grafted seedlings in April, the tape comes off in July, and in a few years the two parts will have grown together, producing a single tree.
Grafting can also be accomplished in August using a T-bud graft. Here, a mature bud at the base of a leaf stem from the desired apple species is inserted below the bark of the rootstock in a T-shaped cut about fifteen centimetres above the ground. The entire stem is wrapped several times with grafting tape to seal the bud in place, and keep it moist and tight against the rootstock cambium layer. This dormant bud will not grow until the following spring, when the tree is cut off above the bud, and the new bud starts to grow.
Rootstock is chosen to control the final size of the tree, and over the years, the effect of different rootstock on the growth of scions has been thoroughly studied. Original old apple trees tower in height. But this makes it difficult to harvest the apples, so many people choose to grow apple trees on medium rootstock or, even more common, on dwarfing rootstock. For commercial growers—or hobby growers—the dwarfing rootstock results in small trees that produce a high volume of fruit. The trees are easier to prune and pick, and the number planted per acre is much higher. However, many growers—like Harry and Bob—don’t like dwarfing rootstock because the reduced vigour of these trees results in the need for more attention in terms of watering, staking, and fertilization.
Bright red apples shine on a dwarf tree at the UBC Botanical Garden in Vancouver. Every year, thousands of people flock to the annual apple festival held there.
Most apples are bred for eating fresh (dessert apples), though some are cultivated specifically for cooking or producing cider. Cider apples are often too tart and astringent to eat fresh, but they give the beverage a structure of flavour that dessert apples don’t.
Over the years, the types of popular apple cultivars have changed to meet the demands and tastes of consumers (which vary among different regions in the world) and the needs of commercial growers. Consumers generally favour apples that are sweet and crisp, while growers want varieties that yield high numbers, ship and store well, and are resistant to disease. They want apples that are colourful, pretty, and well-shaped. Heritage apples can be oddly shaped, russeted, and have a variety of textures and colours. Although some may taste better than modern cultivars, they may be harder to grow or lack good storage or transportation capabilities.
A few heritage cultivars are still produced on a large scale (like Cox’s Orange Pippin in the United Kingdom and, of course, McIntosh in North America), and many have been kept alive by home gardeners and people like Harry and Bob who sell directly to local markets. In grocery stores today, there’s a limited range of commercial apple varieties available, especially compared to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the diversity was huge. But there are many groups all over the world working in different ways to preserve heritage varieties. One of these, a group called LifeCycles in Victoria, BC, runs the Fruit Tree Project, which links people who have surplus fruit trees in their yards with volunteers who are able to harvest them. The harvested produce is split among homeowners, volunteers, food banks, community groups, and businesses.
According to its website, the Fruit Tree Project is a “celebration of a simpler time when we fed ourselves from our own orchards and gardens, timed the passage of seasons by the ripening of fruit and discussed pie recipes over the fence with our neighbours.”
It also points out some of the “how” and “why” heritage apples have fallen into disfavour and disuse in modern society:
“In the 1800s, Victoria became the legendary fruit-growing centre of BC. The stately old fruit trees in backyards across the city are the legacy of orchards that once flourished in the region’s mild climate and fertile soils. The sad part of the story is that the apple has seen its heyday. With our busier lifestyles, few of us find time to cultivate and harvest apple trees and many of Victoria’s old apple trees now drop their annual loads on someone’s lawn. While the wasps gorge on homegrown fruit, Victorians bring home bags of shiny Granny Smiths shipped from the Okanagan, the US or New Zealand. Such market varieties are chosen for durability and good looks rather than flavour, quality or historical importance. As a result, many varieties that were valued in the past for exceptional texture, taste, good storage ability or tradition are being lost. With them goes centuries of history and careful selection along with our ability to discern and appreciate subtle nuances of their flavours.” 6
There are other reasons why people want to preserve heritage apples (and other heritage fruit). Some are motivated to grow heritage varieties because they taste better and may even have higher nutritional value—such as Harry’s red-fleshed apples. Biodiversity is a big factor for many, such as Clay Whitney who sees genetic diversity as crucial in fighting disease like canker. Others grow heritage apples for more cultural reasons, like the preservation of living history, while some just want the challenge of growing rare varieties or have a particular interest in traditional growing techniques.
And then, of course, there is that passion that heritage apples inspire—that enthusiasm exhibited by Daphne and those “dreamy” apple people she meets year after year at the festival. Like the exuberant writer Jim Rahe, Daphne cited Gravenstein as her favourite apple—the red variety in particular. In the heritage apple orchard of her dreams, said Daphne (who is a landscaper by trade), she would grow a tree each of Red Gravenstein, King (for juice and applesauce), Granny Smith (because it keeps for a long time), Northern Spy (“for fun”), Pippin (“for candy”), and Belle de Boskoop (for cooking).
Daphne’s choice apples include some of those listed by Harry, who polled numerous apple growers to determine which are the biggest heritage apple sellers. He names the top five as Gravenstein, Cox’s Orange Pippin, King, Goldengelb, and Holstein.
Even without her dream orchard, Daphne will continue to enjoy the fruits of her labour at the apple festival and, apparently, she and I can add “apple talk” to our sports-watching days and Scotch-tasting nights. Maybe we can even eat a Red Gravenstein or two.
PHOTO: DERRICK LUNDY
Taste and appearance: Medium to large fruit with skin that is gold and red-striped, often with a lot of russeting. The flesh is pale green, juicy, sharp, rich-flavoured, and very aromatic.
Use: Eating fresh and cooking. Keeps its shape when cooked. Good for pies.
History: This dual-purpose Dutch apple was discovered at Boskoop, Holland, in 1856 and is thought to be a mutation of Reinette de Montfort.
Growing and harvesting: The tree can be slow to bear fruit. It’s picked in late September and early October, and keeps six months.
Other: Particularly high in vitamin C.
Taste and appearance: A smooth, green apple with a sharp-but-sweet flavour.
Use: Eating fresh and cooking. Keeps its shape when cooked and works well in salads with its crisp, slightly acidic flavour.
History: In the Sydney suburb of Ryde, Australia, Granny (Maria) Smith is said to have thrown some rotting French crabapples onto a creek bank near her orchard, now called Granny Smith Memorial Park. From those apples a chance seedling produced the green apple, which, by 1868, was known locally as good for eating and cooking.
Growing and harvesting: The fruit matures late so needs a warm climate to ripen. It’s picked in late October and best eaten after January. It keeps until April.
Other: The tree is susceptible to scab and mildew. By the 1960s Granny Smith was practically synonymous with “apple” and the variety was used by the Beatles as the logo for their company Apple Records.
PHOTO: CLAY WHITNEY
Taste and appearance: Red or green, fairly large, roundish or irregular, and prominently ribbed. The flesh is cream-coloured, crisp, juicy, melting, and aromatic with old-fashioned tart and sweet flavours.
Use: Eating and cooking. Described as “unexcelled” for applesauce and pies, it keeps its shape while cooking.
History: Thought to have been growing in Denmark (or possibly Northern Germany) in about 1669, it was first grown in California in 1820 and in Nova Scotia in 1835.
Growing and harvesting: In North America, it has a reputation for being fussy, and is said to do better in areas where the climate is closer to the milder winters and cooler summers of northern Europe. Picked in late August, it keeps for two months. Can still be used in cooking after three months if kept refrigerated.
Other: The apples ripen over a period of weeks and drop readily, a boon for the home gardener, but a commercial drawback. Gravenstein was declared the national apple of Denmark in 2005.
PHOTO: CLAY WHITNEY
Taste and appearance: Fairly soft, sweet-tasting, with a slight pineapple flavour. Red-orange flush over a yellow skin and some russeting.
Use: Good for eating and cooking (especially pies) and noted for its excellent orange-yellow juice.
History: Discovered by chance in Germany in 1918, in the Holstein region, possibly from Cox’s Orange Pippin. Also known as a Holstein Cox.
Growing and harvesting: Described as vigorous and easy to grow, a great keeper, and able to retain its qualities for a full five months after harvest if kept chilled.
Slightly Curried Apple-Squash Soup
4 big King apples
1 medium-to-large acorn squash
vegetable broth, or water, to cover apples and squash
1 onion
4 garlic cloves
2 Tbsp red curry paste, or 1 Tbsp curry powder
2 Tbsp cumin
salt and pepper, to taste
Peel and core or seed apples and squash. Cut them up, cover with broth or water, and simmer until soft and dissolving. In a separate pan, chop onion and garlic and sauté until translucent. Add spices. Add onion mixture to apple/squash mixture, and mix with a hand blender until smooth. If it’s too thick, add some more broth until it’s just right.
Applesauce
12 Gravenstein apples, quartered
½ cup sugar
2 Tbsp unsalted butter
1 tsp cardamom
1 star anise
1 tsp lemon juice
2 tsp cinnamon
½ cup water
Place all ingredients in a large pot; bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce to a simmer and cook, covered, for 10 minutes. Add more liquid if needed. Cook for an additional 20 minutes, until apples are very soft. Remove star anise. Transfer to a food processor and purée until smooth. Serve hot or cold.