Apple Tree
(Pyrus Malus)

AMONG fruit-trees, the Apple is perhaps more characteristic of the north temperate zone than is any other. The whole genus of rosaceous plants to which it belongs, known by the Latin name of the pear, Pyrus, is confined, in a wild state, to the temperate and cold parts of the northern hemisphere, though Apples are now cultivated at the Cape, in Australia, and in New Zealand. The Apple species cannot be grown within the tropics or north of the Arctic Circle; but it rejoices in the dry climate and warm summers of Canada and the United States, and thus the white and pink blossoms of this tree and of its allies, the pears, services, and rowans, brightening the spring landscape in woodland and hedgerow when bare of leaves, are a peculiar glory of our latitudes.

The Apple stands  possesses a colored corolla, the greater number of arboreal flora have inconspicuous flowers without any corolla at all, and the rest, such as cherry, hawthorn, thorn, elder, and guelder-rose, are of so pure a white that we often feel in spring as though we had returned to the sight of winter's snows. As the fruit par excellence of the Teutonic area, the Apple has appropriated as its popular name what was once a common Germanic term for fruit of any kind, Appfel being once apl, and often apulder, connected with "maple" and "mapulder," and being still extended to many totally different fruit-bearing plants, such as thorn-apples and love-apples. The Anglo-Saxon name for the blackberry, for instance, was the bramble-apple; and that rare old traveler, Sir John Mandeville, speaking of the cedars of Lebanon, says, "they beren longe Apples, and als grete as a man's heved." Though both Apples and apples of gold are spoken of in several parts of the Bible, the tree now so called is believed not to have been cultivated by the Hebrews, the citron or some other fruit being referred to.

The Apple seldom occurs of a large size in a wild state in England, and is often exposed to the indignity of being cut down with the hedgerow. In our orchards the short stems slope in every direction, not being rooted in the ground with sufficient firmness to resist being blown to one side by the gale--an accident to which they are rendered more liable by the custom of cutting off the tap-roots to facilitate transplanting. Where the soil is poor or badly drained, or the trees are crowded, the bark is often lichen-covered, and the gnarled and knotted branches are the chief habitat, or "host," as the botanists facetiously term it, of that unwelcome guest, the mistletoe. This parasite grows as freely upon the crab-apple as on the cultivated varieties, and preying on the life-fluids of the tree, is able to maintain its own verdure all the year round, whilst it is not infrequently absolutely fatal to young Apple-trees in our western orchard counties.

Like the wild plum, the wild Apple has its branches frequently armed with thorns, and the wood of the crab is used to some extent in turnery, a crab-tree cudgel being proverbial for its hardness.

There are generally three principal branches, which spring from the trunk at an angle of from ninety to a hundred and twenty degrees, so as to produce a habit more spreading than that of the pear; and the subsequent branches and twigs spread out from one another at angles slightly exceeding a right angle, giving the tree an irregularly rounded head which is so characteristic as to be recognizable at a distance.

The leaves make their appearance rather before the flowers, which do not generally open before May, by which time the pear has generally lost its blossoms and completed the growth of its foliage. The leaves of the Apple have at first a brownish tinge, and though individually pretty, are not effective among the flowers, whilst they subsequently become a dull darkish green, which has not much beauty. They are oblong and rounded, with an abrupt point--"acuminate," as it is technically termed--not egg-shaped and tapering gradually--"acute"--as are those of the pear.

Far beyond the pale white beauty of the pear-blossom, however, which seems cold in the yet early spring, is that of the delicately blushing, rosy and white-streaked, round buds of the Apple. Even in May, that time of flowers, when--

"The meadow by the river seems a sea
Of liquid silver with the cuckoo-flowers"--

that season of marsh-marigolds and cowslips, of wild hyacinths and purple orchids, of the horse-chestnut, the lilac, and the guelder-rose, of paeonies and tulips--there is no more beautiful sight than far-stretching orchards. In the exquisite folding of the petals in each short-stalked flower over its golden heart of stamens, we have a bloom far more becoming to a bride than the ivory pallor of the exotic orange-flower. When we look for the deeper meaning of, and reason for all this lavished beauty, we must confess ourselves as yet to be much at a loss. The succession of variously-hued flowers as spring advances into summer, and summer into autumn (so that blue flowers, as a rule, precede white ones, whilst these in their turn open before the purple, yellow, and red blossoms of the summer), would seem to be due in some imperfectly explained manner to the increasing intensity of the sun's light as it travels northward from the winter to the summer solstice. 

In the Apple-blossom the stigmas are, as a rule, mature before the pollen is ripe, a condition known technically as "proterogynous," so that self-fertilization cannot usually take place in this species; and by their beauty and their abundant honey the flowers attract many kinds of bees and other insects. We have yet much to learn, however, as to the individual tastes in color of the various insects, and as to whether we can connect in any way, by the theory of sexual selection, their own coloring with that of the flowers they frequent. With regard to the plant, the advantage to the species of an occasional cross has been conclusively shown.

The wealth of beauty of the Apple in flower, whether massed together in our orchards, or happened upon as a pleasing surprise in a hedgerow, or "deep in the thicket of some wood," is succeeded by another charm, perhaps not equal, but at least not despicable--that of the tree in fruit. In the wild state crab-apples are mostly of a deep red tint, as that accurate observer the poet Clare describes them:--

"Crabs sun-reddened with a tempting cheek."

There would seem, however, to be more than one variety in this respect, since crabs are occasionally found of a pure golden yellow, reminding us of Phillips' "Pippin burnish'd o'er with gold."

Whatever its form in other respects, the Apple is easily distinguished from the pear by its "umbilicus," or depression at the base to receive the stalk. Its rounded outline, with one side perchance "sun-reddened," has often caused it to suggest the plump and rosy cheeks of an English maiden; but when we ask the raison d'etre of this rosy-cheeked, succulent and juicy fruit, we are again met by some of the most interesting problems of modern botany. The act of fertilization or impregnation seems to have an effect comparable to that of the puncture of a gallfly in determining the flow of nutriment in the direction of the fertilized seeds and their enclosing ovary: the petals and stamens wither and fall; and in nearly every fruit enlargement of the ovary, and often of some adjacent structures, takes place. A succulent fruit is thus produced, often having some gay autumn tint, red, gold, or purple, attractive to the bird-world by its color, and by its lusciousness when ripe. In the Apple the five ovaries are not at first united, but are subsequently overgrown and completely joined by the development of the so-called "calyx-tube," an outgrowth from the flower-stalk, which shuts in the parchment-like core, and carries up with it the withered calyx-leaves to form a crown on the summit of the fruit.

The ripe Apple falling to the ground, reminding us in its fall of the somewhat apocryphal tale of Newton and the discovery of gravitation, must often have become the prey of the wild boars, deer, and cattle of the primeval forests of Europe. Otherwise its firm skin may for some time keep the decaying pulp together so as to manure the germinating seed; and the tough dark brown skin of the seed itself offers such resistance both to damp and to the digestive process as to secure to it a fair chance of sprouting in due time and place--not too early, and away from the overshadowing of its parent tree, so that it may have a good start for success in the struggle for existence. If we have wet weather during the forty days at the end of July and in August traditionally connected with the Translation of Swithin, sainted Bishop of Winchester, whose feast is July 15th, the Apples will have the means of becoming large and juicy before they ripen.

Though it is impossible here even to enumerate the chief cultivated kinds of Apple, it may be noted that botanists distinguish two varieties of wild English crabs: Pyrus Malus acerba, having the young branches, calyxtube, and underside of the leaf smooth, and P. Malus mitis, having the same parts downy.

The unripe fruits of the wild Apple are used in the manufacture of verjuice, now chiefly made in France, which, when fermented and sweetened, makes a pleasant drink; but in the sixteenth century the fruit was in more esteem than it now is. Christmas was then the season

"When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,"

they being served in hot ale; nor was this from any want of cultivated Apples. Even Pliny speaks of twenty-two varieties; and Shakespeare mentions, besides the crab, the pippin, the pomewater, the apple-john, the codling, the carraway, the leathercoat, and the bitter-sweeting; whilst his contemporary, Gerard, says that in his time "the stocke or kindred of Apples was infinite." John Parkinson, in his "Paradisus Terrestris" (1629), enumerates fifty-seven sorts; and though Ray in 1688 only mentions seventy-eight as grown round London, his friend and contemporary, Samuel Hartlib, alludes to the existence of two hundred kinds. At the present day there are stated to be five thousand varieties in cultivation.

In many an old manor-house or comfortable farmstead, where a generation ago there was no lawn, as at present, or at most a green bowling-alley, shut in by a yew hedge, the orchard of cider-apples, in whose long grass grew winter-aconite, snowdrops, and daffodils, was planted close to the parlor windows; and even nowadays one or two separate trees, either of wild crab or of some grafted sort, might well find a place on the edge of the shrubbery or near the water-side, where its rosy petals may light up the green budding background, or pleasingly litter the surface of the water.

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