Branch management

Apples today, yesterday, and tomorrow

by Sally Cragin

Illustration by Lennie Peterson

This is the time of year when you can appreciate the apple's rich history in New England. If you're not going to a "pick your own" orchard, undoubtedly you'll pick up a bag of Macintosh, Cortlands, Baldwins, Empires, or a Delicious at the local farmstand or grocery store. Whether we have drought or floods, New England orchid owners make sure that apples arrive in abundance. New England produces about 5.5 million bushels of apples per year. And Maine is the leader (with a million and a half) but Massachusetts is not far behind.

Something about apples captures the imagination in a way no other fruit does. Poets from antiquity onward have been inspired to memorialize it in poems, songs, and aphorisms. Centuries before Christ, the poet Sappho was contemplating the ambiguous advantages of chastity and compared them to an apple tree late in the harvest:

Like a sweet apple

Turning red

High on the tip

Of the topmost branch.

Forgotten by pickers

They couldn't reach it

Sunlight increases the amount of red on a red apple (golden apples are not phototropically dependent). "So, the apple on Sappho's tree is especially desirable because its location at the top of the tree allows for maximum sunlight," says classicist Lora L. Holland of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "Thus, the apple turns very red, which was thought hard -- impossible -- to reach. So, for the Greeks, the apple was erotic, not exotic."

Of course, the most famous apple is the one proffered by the serpent to Eve, thence to Adam, though the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is never named by family, genus, or species. It became an apple only when Northern Europeans depicted it as the fruit that struck them as most desirable and irresistible. But the notion of a fruit or apple being the locus of temptation -- a temptation that can erupt into full-scale human misery -- goes back to the Trojan War. Legend has it, at the marriage of Peleus and Thetis all the gods were invited, save Eris (goddess of discord). In her rage, and at the wedding, she hurled a golden apple inscribed "For the fairest." Zeus basically ducked out of this competition. Instead, he chose Paris, a humble shepherd, to decide who was the fairest among Aphrodite, Athena, and Hera. When Paris named Aphrodite, she helped him elope with the beautiful Helen, wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta. Off they went to Troy, and the rest is, well, epic poetry.

American writers have found the common apple to be emblematic of a variety of states of being and of philosophical points of view. We have Ben Franklin to thank for "a rotten apple spoils his fellows." Fifty or so years later, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote his friend Ralph Rusk, "An apple never falls far from the tree." And when the Alcott family made a hapless sojourn at Fruitlands, 12-year-old Louisa wrote in her diary about surviving that winter in Harvard "on apples and cold water." (The Alcotts were no mere proto-vegans. While they ate no animal-produced comestibles, they also rejected food that grew in the ground, like potatoes and carrots. Only fruit that "aspired" -- that is, grew in the air -- was acceptable to father Bronson.)

Dana Sulin, a third-generation apple farmer at Sulin Orchards in Fitchburg, watches the weather more closely than you or I do. "In July, we had three-and-a-half inches of rain, but August was extremely hot, so the tree (to save itself) began dropping apples," he says. "We lost a lot on the ground. What was looking like a good crop the week before Labor Day got pretty bad." Still, Sulin Orchards will have plenty to pick and choose from, with the dominant crop being, of course, the tasty Macintosh.

"Macintosh is a relatively old apple," says Duane Greene, professor of pomology at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, where more than 200 varieties are being grown at the horticultural station. "It originated in Ontario and is well-suited to grow here in New England." New England, New York, and Michigan all have ideal winters and growing seasons for Macintosh as "they need a certain number of chill hours in the winter," says Sulin. "A peach tree needs fewer chill hours, so they can grow them in Georgia. It's a regional thing. A Cortland won't do well in Texas and Florida."

And as far as Macs go, the world can't get enough of them. Ned O'Neill works for his family business, J.P. Sullivan of Ayer, a wholesale distributor of apples, with Macs being the top-selling apple. We may take them for granted here, but people all over the country regard them as a special treat. "It takes a lot of care to get them to people in good condition -- to get them picked, packaged, and shipped right," he says. "They require more handling than Red Delicious, which is a hard apple. Florida is our biggest market away from home, because there are a lot of transplants." Macs' popularity coincides with the advent of large-scale refrigeration technology (or "controlled atmosphere technology"). "One precipitating event was the hurricane of 1937 that killed many apples," says Greene. "It wasn't until then that Macintosh became popular." Before that "Baldwin was number one, [as were] older varieties."

In fact, if you look at early American art -- primitives, landscapes, or still lifes, you'd be hard-pressed to liken the misshapen, irregular, mottled fruits with the gleaming globes available in today's supermarkets. But beauty comes at a cost -- the classic "teacher's apple," Red Delicious, is often the only fruit that people know. "It's an apple of mediocre quality as a result of selection of mutations for cosmetics rather than taste," says Greene. There's a recent revival of interest in antique varieties like Roxbury Russet, Baldwin, and Empire apples, but Greene urges consumers to sample some of the new hybrids, particularly the Honeycrisp, which may be in stores this fall.

Developed first in Minnesota, the Honeycrisp is not a conventional-looking apple; it's quite large and shaped more like a Cortland or a Mac than a conical Delicious. And the taste is spectacular. "I've been talking about it since 1992," says Greene. "I took some Honeycrisp from Massachusetts to a horticulture show. It was the highest-rated apple in a blind taste test." In 1996, Dana Sulin planted several Honeycrisp trees at his orchard, and expects them to bear fruit next year. "People say it's the best apple they've ever eaten."

For now, we'll make do with the apples of our eye -- a well-chilled bag of blushing Macs. Remember what they say about apples and the medical profession. Take it from an orchardman who knows: Dana Sulin reports he "goes to a doctor very seldom." n

Sally Cragin attended Applewild School, where the apples really were wild.

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