The Culinary History Of America’s Favorite Fruit: Apples
Botanically speaking, the Malus genus of trees hails from the Rosaceae family of rose bushes. They are popular with pollinators and aesthetically pleasing, particularly when covered in their signature white and pink springtime blossoms, but much more importantly they yield a fruit that is among the most widely beloved and cultivated across the globe: the apple (Malus Domestica).
Per Illinois University Extension, sour, inedible crab apples are the only kind of apples that are native to U.S. soil; the rest originated in Asia. The apple that spawned Malus Domestica and all of the delicious hybrids that have since followed, is known scientifically as Malus sieversii. It came from Kazakhstan and was identified by a Russian scientist named Nikolai Vavilov in 1929 (via BBC Travel), back when wild apple trees covered untamed forests and hybridized themselves without restriction. Historians believe the Silk Road trade, notes Smithsonian Magazine, is what brought Malus sieversii out of Kazakhstan and into the rest of the world.
To grow and care for an apple tree, you’ll need a modest amount of space, some cold weather, and a ton of sunshine. However, if you’d like yours to bear fruit, you’ll need one more thing: a second apple tree. That’s because apple trees can only produce fruit if they receive pollen from another variety of apple trees, as explained by the University of Minnesota Extension.
Apples arrive in America
Malus Domestica finally made its way to American shores towards the end of the 1500s in the hands and pockets of French Jesuits, says North Carolina Historic Sites. Not long after that, apples hitched a ride across the ocean with the Pilgrims in the early 17th century, landing in what would become Massachusetts. The trees did so well in their new environment that, by the mid-1600s, it is believed that most of Maryland was covered in orchards.
The majority of trees grown in early colonial orchards produced fruits that were too tart to eat. Spitters, as they were called, were instead crushed into apple cider, which fermented quickly. No one appeared bothered by the alcoholic properties of the hard cider that was consumed by everyone, including children. Soon authorities declared that every able-bodied person was required to clear and improve land to keep it, reports Smithsonian Magazine, and planting an orchard was an easy way to do so.
Unfortunately, this solution to one problem did nothing to solve another; the colonists needed to hydrate their families and feed them. But just as domestic apple trees needed to be imported to the New World, so did the honey bee.
Well, no freeze last night. It didn’t get as cold as the night before so I didn’t need to cover everything after all.
You just never know.
Malus sieversii apples supposedly have a MUCH wider range of flavors than domesticated apples, and are very disease and pest resistant. One of my goals is to establish a dozen or or more of the better-tasting Malus sieversii trees on my farm. Getting hold of them is incredibly difficult, but I keep trying.