Ten Apple Varieties Once Thought Extinct Rediscovered

[NomoneyNohoney]

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/st ... in-us-west

[GrahamPlatt]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Appleseed

[bungeejumper]

Fascinating subject, and one which resonates with this Fool. When we bought Bungee Towers, back in the nineties, it was a barely-habitable Victorian wreck, with a garden that was half Heligan and half King Kong's impenetrable jungle. But its original occupant, a clergyman, had been a keen seedsman who had planted at least fifty pear and apple trees, of which around thirty were (and are) still producing after a century and a half. The question was, what were they?

They weren't like modern pears or apples, that's for sure. Most of them would be considered totally inedible these days, and some of them were downright dangerous. We've nailed down the names of most of them now, with the help of the National Fruit Collection at Brogdale, but there are still a few that defy identification.

Some were (and are) wonderful, and several are still popular varieties that you can find on sale in the shops. But the overwhelming majority have the texture and flavour of cardboard or balsa wood, and some of them could usefully be whittled into chess pieces or maybe clothes pegs. There are very good reasons why nobody grows them any more.

But that's exactly what the Victorians wanted. They couldn't pop down to Sainsbury for Chilean Granny Smiths, so they favoured apples and pears that you could pick in September/October and store until June, and to hell with the texture, it was all about getting your Vit C. Not that they really knew what that was, of course.

Dangerous, did I say? A couple of our pear trees were well over thirty feet, maybe forty, and the half-pound fruits they bore were still like cannonballs in April. If they fell on your bonce from that height, you'd be out cold, and perhaps terminally so. Even after savage tree-lopping from us, they are still capable of knocking the tiles out of any roof that they happen to hit. The culinary custom was to boil them for four to six hours, which would give you a kind of wallpaper paste that you could squirt into pies and pretend it was nutritious.

Oh yes, pies. Hard-working country folk could sometimes get through 5,000 calories a day, and you could never have enough apple pie. And if a tonne or two should finish up in the vicar's cider cup, maybe the good lord would look the other way?

BJ