Red Delicious?

appleback
Originally uploaded by Randuwa.

I love apples! And not just Red Delicious presented upon delicious backsides!

Apples are cool. Apples are interesting. Apples are complex.

Some Facts:

#1 (Malus Domestica) is a unique plant. It doesn't produce offspring like itself. Each apple seed holds the possibility of creating an utterly unique and amazing fruit, and more than likely, NOT! But every specific type of apple in the market is the result of a unique tree that grew from the seeds of another in a particular place and time. And all the trees that make the same fruit are CLONES. Period. (No cloning BUSH, no more apples!--no doubt that is just too complex an idea for our psuedo-President to get....but I digress, yet again.)

The first Golden Delicious sprouted on a hilltop in West Virginia. The first Red Delicious was actually whacked down by a farmer in Iowa for a couple of years, but proved so tenacious, that he finally let it grow! And Granny Smith lived in Australia, where her namesake apple tree grew from some random seed.

#2 Apples as a plant come from Central Asia: Kazakhstan, to be specific.

#3 In the early years of our country, apple trees were very common and varieties unique to each colony and region. There is a farm in New York state that houses over 3,000 varieties and is committed to preserving examples of all of these antique cultivars.

#4 The early fame of apples was not the meat of the fruit, but the juice. Apple juice was the most common and easily created alcoholic drink. Cider was alcohol. There was no refrigeration, and there was no such thing as apple juice vs. "hard cider" -- it was all "hard." People grew apple trees to make liquor.

#5 Johnny “Appleseed” Chapman was a pervert....not that there's anything wrong with that. His legacy has a gilded relationship to his reality.

#6 Carrie Nation's Axe was more about chopping down apple trees than busting up kegs of liquor! It was an act of civil disobedience that led a nascent industry into the modern world of the ad campaign and spawned the slogan, “An apple a day, keeps the doctor away.” In a world of media spin, this should come as no surprise, but a hundred years ago, it was a radical concept. And it saved the apple as a good fruit and staple of our fruit regime.

Now, BACK to this little Red Delicious......!