Apples
Apples you buy in the supermarket do not taste as good as they used to. Conclusively, it has now been shown that this is because they have been subjected to gas and kept in storage for up to a year or more before reaching the supermarket shelves. Hence, they are stale. But not only that, they form a limited range of commercial fruit varieties.
As Gardening Australia said recently, “During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the diversity was incredibly wide. Old nursery and garden catalogues had pages filled with plums, peaches, pears and apples of every variety, few of which are grown today. It is sad to think of what has been lost, but fortunately some orchards are preserving our history to make a fantastic variety of fruit trees available again to the home gardener.”
The magazine then indicated one orchard that is keeping our traditional crops alive. It is an orchard I knew well in my teenage years when I visited the site, often with friends who were the grandchildren of the original Mr Petty. Petty’s Orchard in Templestowe is one of Melbourne’s oldest commercial orchards, and it holds the largest collection of apple varieties on mainland Australia. One of the reasons that these great varieties of apples are being lost is because it has not been fashionable to grow them in home gardens. And another reason is that supermarkets dictate that we have only four or five varieties, because it is much easier for them to limit the number they handle.
Organisations such as the Heritage Fruit Group are renovating old orchards, sourcing historic fruit varieties and encouraging community initiative and participation. In a home garden situation, several varieties of old apples can be grafted onto a stock plant to preserve them with the potential of adding more later. In the orchard 23 varieties of apples from the collection have been grafted onto the stumps of some existing old Red Delicious trees. Many of the trees in the orchard are multi-grafted having cooking as well as eating apples on the one tree. In a backyard situation, having several varieties on the one tree also aids in cross pollination as well as spreading the fruit load for several different ripening times.
The apples ripen over a long period of time and are usually classified as early, mid-early, mid and late varieties. There are different apples for different purposes, whether they are for eating, or cooking, or both. Our kitchen table always has a large bowl full of fresh fruit, for most of the year, from our own fruit trees. We have a score or more different types of fruit. We have an orangery with many kind of oranges, limes and lemons, and the slope they are on, the depth of the mulch and the constant drip irrigation means heavily laden crops for most of the year.
Nearby are some of the apple trees. The climate of the Central Coast is too Mediterranean, and the cold, damp and frosty climate that so suits apples, is missing. But I love to walk by the apple trees and inspect their fruit. Each night the possums do the same, for they too love the fruit. Both my wife and I love to pick a fresh apple. They are crisp and sweet, one of nature’s choicest fruit. We grow many types of apples. Some of our trees have a number of varieties on the same rootstock.
One great variety is the Pink Lady, which originated in Western Australia by crossing Golden Delicious and Lady William varieties. Pink Ladies are now increasingly popular around the world and are characterised by their true pink colour and smooth texture. The Pink Lady is a crisp apple with an eating flavour similar to a Golden Delicious. Many have said that the Pink Lady variety is a great dessert quality eating apple, and versatile enough to use in baking as well. Pink Ladies are available from the end of May through the middle of October.
Another is the Red Delicious, the most recognised variety in Australia, and one for which the Batlow area of New South Wales is famous. This variety has its origins in the 1780’s in America, from rootstock near Iowa. It then moved on to England around 1812, before expanding throughout the rest of the world. The colour of Red Delicious can be either dark crimson red, or greenish yellow colour with red stripes. A Red Delicious has a crisp, firm, white flesh with an excellent sweet and juicy eating quality. Red Delicious are the most plentiful in terms of availability throughout the year.
Another is the Gravenstein Red, a European variety which dates back to the 1600’s, with a creamy flesh, perfect for picking straight from the tree. Maintaining different varieties gives the opportunity to pick fruit over a longer period of time but also maintains a genetic diversity. Many of these apples have different qualities, and in the future their value may lie in the ability to develop these apples for very specific purposes without needing to genetically engineer them. Heritage varieties are living history, and that is why collections are so precious. Anyone who is the custodian of an old tree should treasure it.
We have an apple tree planted in the wrong position but it fruits well. It is one of our favourites. Granny Smith Apples is a variety now recognised right around the world, but it is an Australian apple. Its origin is symbolic of the early people of society right here in Australia. The variety was grown virtually by accident in 1868 by Maria Anne Smith, in the Ryde district of New South Wales. She threw out some peelings and cores of a crab apple onto a rubbish dump, and from it a new variety grew up and eventually bore a different fruit. Like the early settlers, convict and free who came to Australia, which was the dumping ground for the refuse of English society.
The Granny Smith fruit has a greenish yellow skin colour with hard, crisp and greenish flesh. Granny Smiths are a little more tart in eating quality than red apples and are strongly recommended for cooking, as they hold their texture and flavour once cooked. Granny Smith apples are readily available all months of the year and our trees are stocked right now, provided the possums keep away.
Archaeologists have found evidence that humans have been enjoying apples since at least 6500 B.C. The apple tree originated in an area between the Caspian and the Black Sea. Some believe they may have come to this area even earlier, from Western China. It appears that a single species, still growing in the Ili Valley on the northern slopes of the Tien Shan mountains at the border of northwest China and the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, is the progenitor of the apples we eat today. Leaves taken from trees in this area were analyzed for DNA composition, which showed them all to belong to the same species. Then they were progressively introduced to countries around the world, by the European colonists and settlers. Apples came to Australia as seeds in the First Fleet of 1778 and in the next century by European settlers who brought seeds with them.
Apple varieties range in size from a little larger than a cherry to as large as a grapefruit. There are apples that have an aftertaste of pears, citrus, cinnamon, cloves, coconut, strawberries, grapes and even pineapple! We eat apples fresh, in pies and tarts, stewed, baked, boiled, as a sauce and mixed with many other products and drunk as cider and apple juice. It is a mainstay of baby food, jellies and vinegar. It is one of our most versatile fruits.
Apples have five seed pockets or carpels. Each pocket contains seeds. The number of seeds per carpel is determined by the vigour and health of the plant. Different varieties of apples will have different number of seeds. 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. It was these seeds that Johnny Appleseed carried in his pocket and planted as he travelled the mid-West of USA for fifty years until 1847. He was a pioneer nurseryman who introduced the apple to large parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. He became an American legend while still alive, largely because of his kind and generous ways, his great leadership in conservation, and the symbolic importance of apples. The popular image of Johnny Appleseed has him spreading apple seeds randomly, everywhere he went. In fact, he planted nurseries rather than orchards, built fences around them to protect them from livestock, left the nurseries in the care of a neighbor who sold trees on shares, and returned every year or two to tend the nursery. Soon everyone in the mid-west had a backyard apple tree.
Apples are good for you, as is mentioned in the saying, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Apples don’t have fat, cholesterol or sodium, which may help you maintain heart health and a healthy weight. Apples do have lots of fibre – both soluble and insoluble kinds. Fibre may help promote heart health and maintain regularity. Apples do contain small amounts of potassium, which may promote heart health and help maintain healthy blood pressure.
Australian apple growers are in conflict with New Zealand growers because of the risk of fireblight. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his visiting New Zealand counterpart Helen Clark held talks recently, but there was little progress made concerning a dispute over NZ apple imports. The World Trade Organization (WTO) last month began an investigation, at New Zealand’s request, of Australia’s apple import rules. The New Zealand government argues Australian quarantine restrictions, which ban the import of apples, breach international trade laws. The Australian government has said the rules are necessary to keep the Australian fruit industry safe from pests and diseases.
Finally, you would expect me, with my interest in Biblical and historical issues to mention the apple in our history and faith. Most people will remember Adam and Eve and the apple in the Garden of Eden. But the word “apple” is not mentioned. It is a fruit, but the word evil and the word apple are close in Latin (malus and malum) so it is natural the apple became associated with the traditional means of evil coming into the world. A man’s larynx became known as Adam’s apple because it was thought it was a lump of apple stuck in Adam’s throat. Actually, oranges were called in the ancient world “golden apples”.
Apples are often presented as forbidden fruit. In Greek mythology, the Greek hero Heracles, as a part of his Twelve Labours, was required to travel to the Garden of the Hesperides and pick the golden apples off the Tree of Life growing at its center. The Greek goddess of discord, Eris, became disgruntled after she was excluded from the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, and being a trouble maker tossed a golden apple inscribed Kallisti (‘For the most beautiful one’), into the wedding party. Three goddesses claimed the apple: Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. Paris of Troy was appointed to select the recipient. After being bribed by both Hera and Athena, Aphrodite tempted him with the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Sparta. He awarded the apple to Aphrodite, thus indirectly causing the Trojan War. Atalanta, also of Greek mythology, raced all her suitors in an attempt to avoid marriage. She outran all but Hippomenes who defeated her by using three golden apples to distract her, winning the race and Atalanta’s hand.
I notice a difference in this season’s apples with smaller yet more intensely flavoured fruit, possibly due to the drought. The fruit is smaller this season and very sweet. And while the quality is exceptional, the drought has affected the look of the fruit. This does not impact on the nutrition or taste of the fruit. The fruit holds all the same nutrients as the previous season and the smaller size just means they are higher in natural sugars – making them a little sweeter. If I can keep the possums at bay, we look like being in fresh apples for a long time yet.
Make sure you have an apple every day.
Rev The Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes, A.C., M.L.C.