 |
| Image 'n' text courtesy o' the fine folks at All About Apples |
Parentage / Origin: Sport of Rome Beauty
Harvest / Season: Harvest: late September - October: Season: September - November
Description: Very round fruit, medium to very large, with handsomely striped to almost solid red, thick skin. A favorite for baking and drying, and outstanding as a baked apple. Inferior for eating due to dryish flesh and very mild, unremarkable flavor. A good keeper on and off the tree. Once a major commercial variety, now losing market share.
Tree Characteristics: Tree medium sized and spreading with age. Terminal bearing, difficult to train. Spur types are often desirable. Precocious and annual producer.Scab resistant.
Here's a fact that most city folk prob'ly don't know. (Most country folk prob'ly don't know it, neither, so you city folks shouldn't feel too bad 'bout that.) Ever' apple tree that produces an edible apple is a fluke o' nature. It's a chance occurrence. It's a happy little miracle.
To understand how that is, you first need to know how you go 'bout getting an apple tree. Well, to get an apple tree, first you need to get an apple seed. 'N' to get an apple seed, you need to join the ovules (think of 'em as kind o' like an egg) from the female part of an apple blossom with the pollen from the male part of an apple blossom. (That's right, we're talking 'bout apple sex, here, so if you find that disturbing er offensive, you might just want to skip this post 'n' wait fer the next one.) Once you get the two o' those together, you get a viable apple seed that a tree can grow from.
Simple enough, right? Well, fer most plants, it might be as simple as that. But for the apples, it ain't so cut 'n' dried. See, apples're a might partic'lar 'bout where they'll accept their pollen from. Even though a single apple blossom produces both ovules 'n' pollen, that don't always mean they're compatible with each other. In fact, in most cases they ain't, 'cause they got a chemical in 'em that will reject the pollen from their own flowers er flowers of other trees o' the same variety. Basically, you can classify the "mating" of apples into three categories.
Firstly, at one end o' the spectrum, you got what we'll call the "incestuous" apple varieties. These are apples that are capable o' self pollination. They ain't too many apple varieties that fall into this category, but the Rome Beauty is a good example o' this kind. The incestuous trees are capable o' pollinating their own flowers, the flowers of other trees o' the same variety, 'n' the flowers o' trees of other varieties. So, if you want to grow apples but only have room fer one tree, you need to get one o' the incestuous varieties.
Secondly, at the other end o' the spectrum, you got what we'll call the "eunuch" apple varieties. These are apples that ain't capable of any kind o' pollination. Again, they ain't too many apple varieties that fall into this category, but the Gravenstein is a good example o' this kind. The eunuchs are not only incapable o' pollinating their own flowers er the flowers of other trees o' the same variety, but they cain't even pollinate the flowers o' trees of other varieties. So, if you want to grow eunuch varieties, you will need at least one er two other varieties of apple trees around. If you want to get apples off all the trees, then the barest minimum you could get by with would be one eunuch 'n' one incestuous.
Thirdly, right smack in the middle o' the spectrum, you got what we'll call the "gregarious" apple varieties. These are apples that rely on cross-pollination. The vast majority of apple varieties fall into this category. The gregarious trees are not capable o' pollinating their own flowers ner the flowers of other trees o' the same variety, but they can pollinate, 'n' be pollinated by, the flowers o' trees of other varieties. So, if you want to grow apples from gregarious varieties, you'll need at least one other variety of apple tree growing somewhere nearby.
So, now you might begin to understand a little why a palatable apple is such a happy little miracle. With most apple varieties being able to only produce viable seeds from cross-pollination with other varieties, you cain't be sure what kind o' tree you're going to get when you plant a seed. 'N' since each seed is the product of one ovule 'n' one grain o' pollen, which could have come from who knows where, you cain't even be sure that any two seeds from the same apple will produce similar trees.
As if all that weren't complicated enough, you get one more odd little quirk 'bout apple trees to th'ow into the mix. Most trees that grow from seeds tend to do what they call "return to the wild", which means it tends to produce fruit that is more likely to be some kind o' wild crab apple than something fit to put in your mouth. That's 'cause, fer the longest time, the only apples you could find were some type o' crab apple, so each seed is full o' mostly wild crab apple genes. But that's getting into the history of apples, which is a story we'll save fer another time.
So, you must be thinking 'bout now, how come they's so many trees producing so many apples that you can go into any store 'n' buy something edible? Well, that all comes 'bout 'cause o' the way they propagate trees in commercial orchards. But, again, that's another story fer another time. Fer now, let's just leave it at this: next time you bite into a nice, tasty, juicy apple (er pie, er tart, er fritter, er what have you), just remember that you're biting into a happy little miracle from a happy little tree.
Simple enough, right? Well, fer most plants, it might be as simple as that. But for the apples, it ain't so cut 'n' dried. See, apples're a might partic'lar 'bout where they'll accept their pollen from. Even though a single apple blossom produces both ovules 'n' pollen, that don't always mean they're compatible with each other. In fact, in most cases they ain't, 'cause they got a chemical in 'em that will reject the pollen from their own flowers er flowers of other trees o' the same variety. Basically, you can classify the "mating" of apples into three categories.
Firstly, at one end o' the spectrum, you got what we'll call the "incestuous" apple varieties. These are apples that are capable o' self pollination. They ain't too many apple varieties that fall into this category, but the Rome Beauty is a good example o' this kind. The incestuous trees are capable o' pollinating their own flowers, the flowers of other trees o' the same variety, 'n' the flowers o' trees of other varieties. So, if you want to grow apples but only have room fer one tree, you need to get one o' the incestuous varieties.
Secondly, at the other end o' the spectrum, you got what we'll call the "eunuch" apple varieties. These are apples that ain't capable of any kind o' pollination. Again, they ain't too many apple varieties that fall into this category, but the Gravenstein is a good example o' this kind. The eunuchs are not only incapable o' pollinating their own flowers er the flowers of other trees o' the same variety, but they cain't even pollinate the flowers o' trees of other varieties. So, if you want to grow eunuch varieties, you will need at least one er two other varieties of apple trees around. If you want to get apples off all the trees, then the barest minimum you could get by with would be one eunuch 'n' one incestuous.
Thirdly, right smack in the middle o' the spectrum, you got what we'll call the "gregarious" apple varieties. These are apples that rely on cross-pollination. The vast majority of apple varieties fall into this category. The gregarious trees are not capable o' pollinating their own flowers ner the flowers of other trees o' the same variety, but they can pollinate, 'n' be pollinated by, the flowers o' trees of other varieties. So, if you want to grow apples from gregarious varieties, you'll need at least one other variety of apple tree growing somewhere nearby.
So, now you might begin to understand a little why a palatable apple is such a happy little miracle. With most apple varieties being able to only produce viable seeds from cross-pollination with other varieties, you cain't be sure what kind o' tree you're going to get when you plant a seed. 'N' since each seed is the product of one ovule 'n' one grain o' pollen, which could have come from who knows where, you cain't even be sure that any two seeds from the same apple will produce similar trees.
As if all that weren't complicated enough, you get one more odd little quirk 'bout apple trees to th'ow into the mix. Most trees that grow from seeds tend to do what they call "return to the wild", which means it tends to produce fruit that is more likely to be some kind o' wild crab apple than something fit to put in your mouth. That's 'cause, fer the longest time, the only apples you could find were some type o' crab apple, so each seed is full o' mostly wild crab apple genes. But that's getting into the history of apples, which is a story we'll save fer another time.
So, you must be thinking 'bout now, how come they's so many trees producing so many apples that you can go into any store 'n' buy something edible? Well, that all comes 'bout 'cause o' the way they propagate trees in commercial orchards. But, again, that's another story fer another time. Fer now, let's just leave it at this: next time you bite into a nice, tasty, juicy apple (er pie, er tart, er fritter, er what have you), just remember that you're biting into a happy little miracle from a happy little tree.
No comments:
Post a Comment
This here is a public forum, so keep the language clean 'n' your negative comments 'bout others to yourself.