North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Doreen Howard" <doreenh@ticon.net>]

I just got back from a short trip to So. IL where the apples are ripening.
This is important to me for two reasons:
1.  I am an apple fanatic--eat a couple every day and love the diversity of
flavors.
2.  I currently don't have an apple tree

I brought home Sanza, Ginger Gold, Geneva Early Crabs, Sterns, Pink Pearl
and Rosemary Russet.  The Galas will be picked in the next couple of days.
This orchard is Zone 5b, BTW.

Here is an interesting tidbit sent to me by an apple expert that I thought
I'd pass along to you apple enthusiasts.

"Michael Pollen did a huge NY Times article about genetic diversity in
apples a few years ago.  (But he had some of his facts wrong.  I checked
this by calling Phil Forsline at Cornell who verified that Pollen had
misquoted him as saying that the "antique" apples had greater disease
resistance than newer ones.  That's a common misconception, so I was unhappy
that someone of Pollen's stature was perpetuating it.  Pollen probably still
believes it but he didn't get it from Forsline.  Forsline's point that
Pollen misunderstood was that the native apples in Kazakistan (where apples
originated) seem to have evolved around the old world strains of scab.  They
claim there are many trees of clean fruit in the wild apple forests in
Kazakistan  (wouldn't you love to see that?!)  That is where the diversity
in apple genes lies.  All cultivated apples (including the antiques) are
from a very narrow slice of the gene pool.  You know the scab resitant trait
(in Freedom, Liberty, the whole PurdueRutgersIllinois series - PRIma,
PRIcilla, Sir PRIze, EnterPRIise, William's PRIde, etc.) was introduced from
native American crabs.  That leads me to the theory that our native crabs
had a chance to evolve around new world scabs.  Forsline says the old-world
and new-world strains of scab are different."

Doreen Howard




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