Seedlings in the news

A Cider Story, or Two

FROM LITTLE SEEDLINGS, CIDER APPLES DO GROW

Photo by Casey Martin

On Sep 25, 2020 the Ithaca Times published this story by Bill Chaisson:

You have seen them along the road and in hedgerows near old orchards. A lot of them look like abandoned, misused straw brooms pointed at the sky. The crowns are thick and their branches head in all directions. They are seedling apple trees. They have sprung from fruit that has been thrown out the window of passing cars, carried some distance by an animal, or otherwise transported some distance from the varietal apple tree where pollination produced them.

Apples — both the ones you eat and most of those made into cider — are kept true to type by grafting shoots onto rootstock. But those varietal trees are fertile. Which is to say, their fruits have seeds and the seeds can and do grow into the new generation. Of course, the genome of the new tree is entirely dependent on the whims of a single bee as it transported pollen from one blossom to another, often enough between trees of different varieties.

The apples from trees that grow from seed — seedling trees — are small, misshapen, and usually very strong tasting. And some of them are perfect for making cider….