Stuff I didn't know

Just read (think it was Bon Appetit) that there are 7,000 apple varieties in the world. And only about 100 are commercially produced in the U. S.

Just read (think it was Bon Appetit) that there are 7,000 apple varieties in the world. And only about 100 are commercially produced in the U. S.

What is the difference between bean counters and apple counters? ( not a joke)

Somehow, I think you're going to tell us, Bob.

Very many of those varieties would be sour and not considered "edible" by humans...

The apples planted by Johnny Appleseed were all of the sour varieties. Why was he doing the world a favor by planting them?

Because cider was more common than beer in early America, and sour apples work just fine for making hard cider.

Carrie Nation carried an axe mainly as a threat to chop down apple trees and reduce the available alcohol.

IIRC apples originated somewhere around the ancient area of Armenia, just like wine making did. And that is where you find the most variety in the wild apple genes.

Somehow, I think you're going to tell us, Bob.

Nope! honest injun! I've never heard of apple counters til now, so wondered if a degree was required like in bean counters?

Well, don't forget nut counters...or to be more precise, nut namers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGmNqzbsuiY

Very many of those varieties would be sour and not considered "edible" by humans...

The apples planted by Johnny Appleseed were all of the sour varieties. Why was he doing the world a favor by planting them?

Because cider was more common than beer in early America, and sour apples work just fine for making hard cider.

Carrie Nation carried an axe mainly as a threat to chop down apple trees and reduce the available alcohol.

IIRC apples originated somewhere around the ancient area of Armenia, just like wine making did. And that is where you find the most variety in the wild apple genes.

Add to your facts that the genome of the apple is hypervariable such that the seeds of an apple will give rise to plants bearing little resemblance to the parent apple or each other. (I suspect that you've read "Botany of Desire" too, Frank). IIRC, the historical source of the apple is believed to have been within present-day Kazakhstan.

Mark Lipton

Isn't that what they mean when they say apples are heterozygomatic?

(I don't often get to use that word, so I get it in when I can.)

Okay, you professors go back to talking to each other and impressing the babes.

Hoke,

I think you meant heterozygous, and it is somewhat related to what's being discussed here. Apple trees (and humans) are diploid organisms, meaning that they have one complete set of chromosomes from each parent. For any particular gene site (locus), if the two copies of that gene are identical (the same allele, or variant of the gene), the organism is homozygous for that gene. If the two copies are different, the organism is heterozygous for that gene.

Any particular variety of apple tree, such as Golden Delicious, has its own particular combination of alleles for each gene site. The catch is that some of them are heterozygous--you have to have different alleles at gene site X in order to get a Golden Delicious. If you're homozygous for either allele at site X, you get a different variety of apple. And most likely it will be too sour for eating. Most apple varieties don't breed true--if you fertilize a Golden Delicious flower with pollen from a Golden Delicious, trees grown from the seeds are unlikely to be Golden Delicious because they will probably have different combinations of alleles at key gene sites. And, as Mark Lipton pointed out, apple trees have a LOT of multi-allele gene sites. This is why apple trees generally are cloned, not grown from seeds.

Grape vines have a similar problem--seeds from, say, a cabernet sauvignon vine are unlikely to grow into cabernet sauvignon vines. Most commercial tomato varieties have similar issues. Plant the seeds from a Burpee Big Boy and you'll get tomato plants yielding tomatoes of all sorts of different shapes, sizes, and colors.

-Paul W.

I'll let this cat out of the bag because I think only Jenise is close enough to attend and she probably isn't watching this thread.

UBC has an apple festival every year that features stuff you will never see just about anywhere else. She-who-must-be-obeyed attends with her cart and comes back with several months worth of interesting apples. BTW, apples keep very well at wine cellar temperatures and add a certain je ne sais quoi to the olfactory ambience of the cellar.

http://www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/apple-festival

Bill, when you cellar-age apples, don't you find they get concentrated and, well, 'winey'?

The thing I like about the apples from this sale is that they are fresh, as opposed to apples than have been stored for up to 6 months before you buy them in the grocery store.

It would be better to store them at lower than cellar temp (fridge crisper, for instance) but the storage in the open in the cellar does minimize ethylene build up which enhances over-ripening.

We frankly don't keep them long enough to have them get all winey on us

At any rate, the point of my original post is that those thousands of species of wild apples are generally "inedible."

The fussy splicing of apple trees (and grape vines) comes from the fact that we want our apples (and grapes) to be super sweet and have a good texture and other elements that are not present in your standard wild apple (or grape).

Anyway. I had read that one of the best things to have with a glass of Sauternes was a "Cox's Orange Pippin." You can't get those in the US. I was delighted to find them in a market fair on one of our trips to England. Not all THAT special but it had been a sort of Holy Grail for me since I had read about them.

And today I am wishing I had a wine cellar bushel basket of Northern Spy apples. Mmm. We would get them on trips to Vermont when we had family there to visit. They would only sell them after a good frost, they are late apples. ("This is a LATE parrot!!")

Cox's are quite nice, although some have been a bit blah and some have been really good.

Take a look at this list of treees and apples sold up here - and see how many you've ever heard of before.

http://www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/assets/2010-applefest-tree-cultivars.pdf

[Jenise]

I'll let this cat out of the bag because I think only Jenise is close enough to attend and she probably isn't watching this thread.

UBC has an apple festival every year that features stuff you will never see just about anywhere else. She-who-must-be-obeyed attends with her cart and comes back with several months worth of interesting apples. BTW, apples keep very well at wine cellar temperatures and add a certain je ne sais quoi to the olfactory ambience of the cellar.

http://www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/apple-festival

Wouldn't that be a blast? We'd love to go, though we can't bring the fruit home. (The bugs can fly back an forth over the border at will, but god forbid I should ferry one.)

We actually can sometimes find Cox's Orange Pippins at farmers markets. Nice apple. We occasionally get Red Spy- is that same as Northen Spy?

Thanks for interesing info, everyone!

I'll let this cat out of the bag because I think only Jenise is close enough to attend and she probably isn't watching this thread.

UBC has an apple festival every year that features stuff you will never see just about anywhere else. She-who-must-be-obeyed attends with her cart and comes back with several months worth of interesting apples. BTW, apples keep very well at wine cellar temperatures and add a certain je ne sais quoi to the olfactory ambience of the cellar.

http://www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/apple-festival

One of my favorite words, je ne sais quoi Second one is Kerfuffle!

One of my favorite words, je ne sais quoi Second one is Kerfuffle!

A whole bunch of them - flibbertigibbet etc. I must get around to posting a few more in the miscellaneous section.

Funny, we all utilize a slightly different vocabulary and I find that people on the net are finding words I use all the time novel or unknown to them, while they are just what I normally use. Part of that is regional or national differences, I guess. We have a reasonable amount of French contributors to Canadian English, as opposed to American English getting far more from Spanish.

A couple I've been asked about lately are quotidian, which is just a handy word meaning daily (e.g. attending to your quotidian tasks), and ukase, which is a slavic version of mandate or proclamation (probabl;y comes of having taken slavonic literature in translation as an undergraduate). I'll admit to being intentionally obscure once in awhile - I have used the phrase 'He who hebetates is lost" knowing full well that anyone I am saying it to will certainly not know what it means.

Words are fun!

Cox's are quite nice, although some have been a bit blah and some have been really good.

Take a look at this list of treees and apples sold up here - and see how many you've ever heard of before.

http://www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/assets/2010-applefest-tree-cultivars.pdf

What, no McIntoshes or Granny Smiths? How do you live without those?

The section of the condo complex that I live in consists of three quadplex condos surrounding a cul-de-sac. When I first moved in, they planted a flowering apple sapling in the middle of the cul-de-sac. When SUVs became popular, it was no longer practical to have a tree planted in the middle of the cul-de-sac, so they removed it. We had become very fond of our little apple tree, so instead of just discarding it, on our insistence the condo association replanted it near the entrance to the cul-de-sac. It's not doing as well as it might over there (it's near, and partly shaded by, a very large oak tree), but it's flourishing and it produces apples as well as beautiful apple flowers every year. I've never tried eating any of those apples, though. I suspect they're probably not one of the eating varieties. I'll have to try one next season.

-Paul W.

In UK commercially available apples are divided into eating apples and cooking apples.

Cooking apples have a cell structure that collapse when cooked turning into a puree, eating apples keep shape when cooked, so you'd use an eating apple to make - for example - tarte tatin.

There are also 'crab' apples, small sour wild apples in hedgrows that people make into a jelly as an accompiaint to meat dishes.

At any rate, the point of my original post is that those thousands of species of wild apples are generally "inedible."

I believe they are varieties, not species. I'm pretty sure that all domestic apple trees are the same species, just different varieties, just as there are many breeds of dog, but they're all a single species.

-Paul W.

At any rate, the point of my original post is that those thousands of species of wild apples are generally "inedible."

I believe they are varieties, not species. I'm pretty sure that all domestic apple trees are the same species, just different varieties, just as there are many breeds of dog, but they're all a single species.

-Paul W.

Right -- another parallel with grapes, except I think the "fox grapes" are a different species (not looking it up to check)...

Good and extensive stuff in the wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple

At any rate, the point of my original post is that those thousands of species of wild apples are generally "inedible."

I believe they are varieties, not species. I'm pretty sure that all domestic apple trees are the same species, just different varieties, just as there are many breeds of dog, but they're all a single species.

-Paul W.

Right -- another parallel with grapes, except I think the "fox grapes" are a different species (not looking it up to check)...

Good and extensive stuff in the wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple

Even limiting ourselves to grapes that make wine, we have three distinct species: v. vinifera, v. labrusca and v. riparia. Going beyond wine, there are also v. rotundifolia and v. amurensis (great species name!).

Mark Lipton