Alma-Ata – the ‘father of apples’
Apple philology:
- Kingdom: Plantae
- Division: Magnoliophyta
- Class: Magnoliopsida
- Order: Rosales
- Family: Rosaceae
- Subfamily: Maloideae
- Genus: Malus
- Species: M. domestica
The wild ancestor of Malus domestica is Malus sieversii. It has no common name in English, but is known in Kazakhstan, where it is native, as 'alma'; the region where it is thought to originate is called Alma-Ata, or 'father of the apples'.
Why do we favor heirloom tomatoes while rejecting heirloom apples?
The crabapple is the only apple native to North America. 
Apple trees do not reproduce true to seed. If you take five seeds from an apple you like and plant them, you will probably end up with five different kinds of apples, none of which even resemble the original apple. Thus, planting an apple seed from a particular apple will not produce a tree of that same variety. The seed is a cross of the tree the fruit was grown on and the variety that was the cross pollinator.
Apples have five seed pockets or carpels. Each pocket contains seeds. The number of seeds per carpel is determined by the vigor and health of the plant. Different varieties of apples will have different number of seeds.
Most of the apples we eat today are cultivars bread for specific traits:
- Swiss Gourmet – ( known also as Arlet) cross of Golden Delicious and Ida Red which was developed in Switzerland.
- Empire - cross between McIntosh and Red Delicious
- Gala - cross between the Kidd's Orange Red and the Golden delicious, introduced to the United States in the 1970s.
- Jonagold - a cross between Jonathon and Golden Delicious
- Jonathon is a 200 year old variety from New York state.
- Fuji - cross between two American apple varieties, the Red Delicious and old Virginia Ralls Genet, developed by growers at the Tohoku Research Station in Morioka, Japan in the late 1930s and brought to market in 1962.
- Honeycrisp – cross between Macoun and Honeygold, developed at the Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station's Horticultural Research Center at the University of Minnesota.
The Honeycrisp mystery: US Plant Patent 7197 as well as Report 225-1992 (AD-MR-5877-B) from the Horticultural Research Center indicate that the Honeycrisp is a hybrid of the apple cultivars Macoun and Honeygold. However, genetic fingerprinting conducted by a group of researchers that included those attributed on the patent later determined that neither of these cultivars is a parent of the Honeycrisp, but that the Keepsake (another apple developed by the same U of M crossbreeding program) is one of the parents. The other parent has not been identified, but might be a numbered selection, that could even have been discarded by now. ( This last fact is from wikipedia and has not been verified.)
Apple Facts:
- A medium size apple contains approximately 80 calories and 5 grams of fiber.
- Apples are a member of the rose family.
- Apples harvested from an average tree can fill 20 bushel boxes that weigh approx. 42 pounds each, each bushel box filled with approx. 120 apples of the over 2,400 apples hanging on the tree.
- Americans eat 19.6 pounds or about 65 fresh apples every year.
- 25 percent of an apple's volume is air. That is why they float.
- Archeologists have found evidence that humans have been enjoying apples since at least 6500 B.C.
- Europeans eat almost twice as many fresh apples as do Americans.
- It takes about 10 medium sized apples to make a 24 oz. jar of Mott's apple sauce.
- China is the top apple producing country in the world, followed by the United States, Poland, Turkey, and Italy.
- The apple market like most other food markets in the United States is evolving: Juice apples are graduating to become peelers, peelers are going in bags and apples formerly bagged are going into boxes.
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