North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Alan Haigh" <alandhaigh@gmail.com>]

Not long ago someone defined the Cameo apple as "bland" on a posting.  I just sampled my first apples from this cultivar and would like to offer a different opinion.  Cameo has been a stand-out in my nursery in terms of being a strong grower with very nice structure and I was pleased to discover that it's apples are very attractive and have a very good texture- crunchy and dense with a relatively thin skin.  They are also quite juicy with a pleasing acid-sugar balance which along with it's ability to hold its texture when cooked make it a superior culinary apple as well.  They were amongst the least insect scarred apples in my barely sprayed nursery.

 

I think that the definition of "bland" may have come from the Cameo's relative lack of aromatics- a complaint often made of Honeycrisp.  I think it would be ungenerous to reject this otherwise stellar cultivar for a single shortcoming- no cultivar is perfect.

 

I should of course include the disclaimer that my opinion is based on an extremely limited sampling and only a single season.  The trees were grown in less than optimum sunlight and in southeastern NY,  Zone 6.  It may be a different kind of apple when grown elsewhere, or even here on another growing season.  It may also be of different quality when harvested from more mature trees than the young ones in my nursery. 

 

I'm always reluctant to be excessively critical of chance seedlings that someone has sufficiently fallen in love with to pay the thousands required to obtain a patent.  To a fruit grower this must be like having your own child criticized.  Anyone with enough confidence to invest this kind of money probably has a good reason for believing their cultivar is special.