As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
I love history and the context of legend meeting reality in the information gleaned there.
There is a nursery, which again I have no affiliation with other than customer contract years ago, which has some wonderful varieties of fruits and plants. In the listed apples is one called the Johnny Appleseed Apple with this description.
Johnny Appleseed Apple / MM106 [SPRING]
In the 1830's, thousands of apple trees were planted in Ohio by one John Chapman, who earned the nickname Johnny Appleseed for his work. Nearly two centuries later, it is extremely rare to find a tree documented to be a graft from one of Johnny's trees, but Raintree acquired one.
It was tracked down by Scott Scogerboe, who found an old newspaper article that told of an Ohio homestead where Johnny Appleseed had planted a tree. Early in the 20th century, a student who visited the homestead took a cutting, grafted a new tree and planted it in his family's yard. The child who planted the grafted tree, now elderly, retired from the same school where Scott found the ancient tree.
Since apples from Chapman's trees were used by settlers mostly for making hard cider, their fresh eating quality wasn't the highest priority. Nevertheless, the history of this tree makes it a wonderful living legend.
Zones 4-9.
I find it absolutely stunning in the above information which can be gleaned from the description in of all the work John Chapman accomplished, almost none of his work survives. One would think that seedlings from his original trees would have by chance reseeded in wet and fertile Ohio, but that was not the case.
If you notice something in the description though, it proves what I have been writing of in Lame Cherry white papers on genetics in apples. John Chapman was sourcing his apples not for eating or pies, but was planting apples from cider apples and those apples were reproducing from the original cider trees as cider trees.
A cider apple is in most cases, juicy, hard, tannin and not something for eating or pies. I will interject in the Red Delicious apples I have had limited contact with, the are an odd "old apple" too in genetics in they have baron trees, trees of not the greatest fruit and in one I found growing literally on a road here was a perfect cider apple that I was most disgusted with as a I was hauling hay, stopped and picked an apple in late October which was hard as a rock and it was full of tannin, but juicy.
That is what is remarkable in the work of Peter Gideon of Minnesota in he purchased thousands of apple seeds from the east coast and only one tree survived in a cross with a Siberian Crab apple he had, and that apple became the Wealthy. Minnesota has had fortune in their apples breed not only true from seed in most cases, but in enough instances, they breed better than the parent.
John Chapman could not make eating apples out of his cider apples, but it is a good lesson to learn, and to enjoy the quality of Chapman's eye in his apples were very pretty and well formed. I am aware of some apple trees still viable here that a long dead homesteader planted which are 100 years old, but that era is fast approaching an end.
I hope my natural dwarf and semi dwarf trees I have from crosses of McIntosh, Wealthy and Haralson will live for a hundred years, but I love their abundance and am in the process of planning for more seedlings to be spouted and add to this tradition. There are a few of us around who are sprouting seedling and adding to the genetics of hardy apples, I would that there were thousands more.
It is though wonderful to behold a picture of an apple that John Chapman actually looked at this apple, picked this apple and planted this apple. It is one of the few living histories people have.
Nuff Said
agtG
