Hi, I’m the History Guy. I have a degree in history,
and I love history. And if you love history too, this is the channel for you.
A century ago an American might have enjoyed a bite of Crisp Green Cheese for breakfast,
might have lunched on stewed Mammoth Black Twig, and drink a beverage made from juice
squeezed from a Rainbow. And if that seems like an odd diet, it was actually quite common,
because those are just three of the more than 7,000 named varieties of apples that were commonly
cultivated in the United States just a hundred years ago, and were a staple of the American
diet. It might come as a surprise to a modern American, many of whom have never tasted more
than a handful of the varieties of apples, largely chosen from the eleven varieties that account for
90% of apple sales in the United States today. But in the 19th century, Americans cultivated
as many as fifteen thousand different kinds of apples, more than any other country on Earth.
And an estimated 80 percent of those are now gone, possibly extinct, literally forgotten to
history. And that is too bad, because the history of American’s apples says much about the history
of America. From the first days when Europeans arrived on her shores, to the large modern and
diverse nation that we have today, the history of America's apples is as American as apple pie.
Apples are deciduous trees from the rose family, they produce what is called a pomaceous fruit,
a class which includes pears and quinces; the study and cultivation of fruit is called
homology. The apple tree originated in Central Asia, and the apples have been cultivated by
humans for food in Asia, and Europe for thousands of years. Apple seedlings are
examples of what is called extreme heterozygotes, and what that means is that the seeds of an apple
differ significantly genetically from the parent plant. And so if you plant seeds from an apple,
the tree that grows will not produce the same sort of apple as the one from which
you got the seeds. Because of this most apple trees are produced by grafting,
which takes a piece from a tree's previous growth, called the Scion, and grafts it onto a healthy
root structure. This allows the farmer to clone an existing tree to reproduce its variety of apple,
or also to create specific hybrids of apples with preferred characteristics.
The varieties that have been chosen for the characteristics, and deliberately cultivated,
are called cultivars, and today there are more than 7,500 known apple cultivars worldwide.
When Europeans first came to America, for example the Massachusetts Plymouth Colony starting in
1620, settlers brought with them scions from English apple trees, representing cultivars that
had been chosen after hundreds of years of careful breeding. But over the course of the next 300
years Americans would develop a staggering number of varieties of apples, by some estimates as many
as fifteen thousand different varieties of apples. So why would they do this, why would they run the
risk of planting random seedlings, when they could use scions to create fine English apples?
There are a few reasons that America was fertile ground for Apple experimentation. First,
many of the European cultivars did not succeed well in America, which had different soils,
and climates. English varieties could be vulnerable in America for example, because
late frost's are far more common in New England, than old England. Second, America is a vast land
with many different climates, and cultures. A variety that may thrive in New England,
may not in the deep south. For example, in the north, varieties that are keepers, apples that
remain good throughout the winter, may be more important than in the south where winters are
milder. American farmers tended to have more land at their disposal than European farmers, allowing
greater margin to experiment. In fact, some states passed laws requiring that a percentage of every
farmer's land be dedicated to fruit trees, and as the farms were being newly cultivated,
American farmers had less time to devote to the process of grafting. And the risk was
somewhat low, since even though chance seedlings often produce a small or sour apple, many of the
fruits were used to press for cider, which can be done from almost any apple, or to feed pigs.
So for many reasons Americans did not rely on European varieties, but planted seedlings,
producing a huge variety of apples for a number of purposes. Some are good for cooking,
and some for eating fresh, some for keeping in winter, and many for making hard cider. And when
the seedling produced a desirable type of apple, that variety could then be duplicated through
grafting. For example, the Golden Delicious apple, one of the most popular apples in America today,
came from a chance seedling on a farm in West Virginia. All Golden Delicious apples produced
in the world come from clones of that one tree. And to show the enormous possibility for creating
varieties of apples, when the genome of the Golden Delicious was sequenced in 2010, the
plant had the highest number of genes of any plant studied to date, more than fifty seven thousand.
Apples were an integral part of America's expansion, as Apple's produced a reliable
supply of food. One of the most memorable stories in US history is that of John Chapman,
otherwise known as Johnny Appleseed. Contrary to the common idea that he randomly planted apples,
Chapman actually established and tended a series of apple tree nurseries, which sold scions to
settlers moving into the Ohio country in the early part of the 19th century. Thus, apples became an
integral part of the western expansion, supplying a ready source of food. At least one tree,
thought to have been planted by Chapman in Nauvoo Ohio, is still producing apples today.
Eventually apple varieties came to represent every region, in virtually every farm or garden.
The period of the 19th century became known as the Golden Age of American Pomology. New
apple varieties were reviewed and celebrated like a popular motion picture maybe today.
Apples became a part of national culture, as one heirloom apple advocate notes, “Apple served both
as cultural markers on the landscape, in ways in which humans actively imbue places with identity,
and history”. It is telling that the cultivation of apples, which started when Europeans first
colonized the east coast of the United States, is now enormously popular in the far west,
where the rich soil of Washington state produces more apples than any other US state.
And Pomology could be lucrative. Some American varieties were so prized,
that they sold in England for as much as ten times the price of English apples. As late as 1905, a US
Department of Agriculture Bulletin suggested that as many as fourteen thousand apple varieties had
been cultivated in the United States. By contrast, today only about ninety varieties are commercially
cultivated, and just eleven varieties account for 90% of US Apple sales. An estimated 80% of the
varieties that used to exist in the US are forever lost to time; gone after no one was left to tend
the trees. There are many reasons that Apple varieties have disappeared. The Baldwin Apple,
for example, an exceptionally good pie apple, and popular for making cider, was once one of the most
popular varieties in America. The Baldwin was nearly eradicated when the particularly
harsh winter of 1933/34 wiped out many of the New England orchards. While not extinct, Baldwin's are
rare today. Many apples, like the once extremely popular Harrison Apple, the pride of New Jersey,
were not suitable for eating, but cultivated for making cider. Many of those were lost when
their economic value disappeared during the era of prohibition. Revenue agents actually went so
far as to cut down apple trees to discourage the making of hard cider. The Harrison was thought
to have gone extinct, until 1975, when a single tree was found alive, on the side of an overgrown
former cider press. Refrigeration decimated the demand for varieties specialized for drying,
as well as for those keepers, that could store for winter. But two trends are most responsible
for the decline in American apple varieties, urbanization, and mass commercial production.
With the advent of railroads, apples could be transported long distances. Production shifted
from regional orchards to larger commercial operations. Apples were then selected for things
like yield, the uniform size and color, and the ability to ship them without bruising. Packability
was emphasized over flavor, a few cultivars proved the best success for commercial apple growing,
and other varieties were pushed out. As Americans moved more towards urban, and suburban life,
fewer people worked the land. The individual apple trees that once graced yards, and were the pride
of small farms became rarer, and people no longer appreciated the unique flavor of a local variety.
None of this is intended to imply that modern varieties are necessarily worse, I mean after all,
the best tasting apples have little value if it can't be moved to a consumer. And the United
States is still the second largest producer of apples in the world today behind China. Tastes
have changed, and most newer varieties of apples are actually scientifically bred to be sweeter.
The very popular Honey Crisp variety today, for example, was patented in 1988, and created by
researchers at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Some scientists have become concerned that
the reduction in varieties makes the apple more susceptible to blight, and there have been some
efforts to increase genetic diversity among the apple crop. Pomology is still alive in America
today, as is evidenced by the nation's many apple festivals, and farmers markets, where sometimes
you can find delicious heirloom apple varieties that evoke the nation's past. And today, people
called Apple detectives, search the wilderness for forgotten apple trees which can live up to 200
years. And in backyards, and forgotten orchards, they are continually rediscovering varieties once
thought lost. For example the Fletcher Sweet, once thought to be extinct, was successfully cloned
from the last living branch, on an almost dead tree, in 2002. That branch is an analogy for the
nation's past, and like the Fletcher Sweet, it has a unique flavor that deserves to be remembered.
I’m the History Guy. I hope you enjoyed this episode of my series, 5 minutes of history,
short snippets of forgotten history 5 to 10 minutes long, and if you did enjoy then
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or comments, feel free to write those in the comment section, and I will be happy to respond.
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