I suspect that there are apple varieties which have never been named, awaiting discovery. A good friend used to own an old house on a large plot of New Hampshire land, across the road from a large commercial orchard. Her property was once a farm, and still had a number of apple trees, some producing recognizable varieties. Among the mysteries was a tree that yielded tasty round apples with pink flesh. When she asked the orchard manager what these were, he was unable to identify them, but asked if he could take cuttings so as to create more trees. Since apples are hybrids, it’s possible that some of the current sports are duplicates of heirloom varieties which fell out of favor.
This is a cool article. It reminds me of that new show on national geographic where they search for animals believed to be extinct.
That pink flesh apple sounds interesting. Any pics?
This is probably different from greygarious’s friend’s apple, but an orchard we visited in Vermont had a type of heirloom apple called Hidden Rose, which looks like this:
My friend’s anonymous apples had deep red skins but the interior looked the same as Hidden Rose.
Michael Pollan’s book, The Botany of Desire, in part describes how different apple varieties made their way west, among a few other crops. Pretty fascinating and well written for those of you who haven’t read it.
I think this article will be behind the pay wall but just in case…
a taste test of the new Cosmic Crisp apple by the Boston Globe.
Mixed results but not especially scientific. I will stick to Macouns.
Yeah, paywall. Macouns are the best apple I have ever tasted, but they might just as well have been called Mackinaw, after the evanescent (and fictional) peach so anticipated by Seinfeld’s Kramer. Both have a two-week window between ripeness and turning mealy/mushy.
But it’s a great 2 weeks!
Sorry about the paywall. Will try a Google cloud
link when I get home from work.
Hopefully this works! Let me know.
I think that’s a watermelon.
The photo or the name? It might also be a melon, but it is most definitely an apple.
I was kidding. The outside/inside color is watermelon-esque.
Sorry. Humor doesn’t always translate online.
Would I ever like to try these! I have sampled all of the dozens of heirloom varieties grown at an apple orchard in NH, but none of them were as visually unusual as the ones in this gallery.
I love Atlas Obscura! Thanks for posting.
Growing up on a farm we had five apple trees. Three produced bitter apples but the fourth produced red delicious and the fifth had three types spliced into it. There was a pear tree and several berries too. I was a kid in heaven.
But my favorite apple today is the Honeycrisp.
