Plant of the Day

Friday 29 May 2026

In the amazing Amisfield Walled Garden, East Lothian, that is gardened by community, volunteers, were these espalier trained Malus domestica ‘James Grieve’ (apple). This is a Scottish variety developed some time before 1893 when it was first recorded. The fruit is medium sized and stippled with orange-red.

Another fruit tree from the garden behind the motel.

There was also this one, with almost egg-shaped fruit.

Originally described by Linnaeus in 1753 as Pyrus malus, and put in the same genus as the pears and quinces. However, the English gardener and botanist Philip Miller published an alternate classification in 1754, in The Gardeners Dictionary, with the apple species separated from Pyrus. Additional confusion persisted for centuries with Malus pumila also being a widely used binomial for the species, and not to mention the 100 or more other synonyms. It wasn't until 2017 that the International Association for Plant Taxonomy finally settled on domestica.

The domestic apple evolved in Central Asia from the wild apple Malus sieversii, and were probably first cultivated in the Tian Shan Mountains 4-10,000 years ago. They were then spread widely across Eurasia, hybridising with crabapples (M. baccata, orientalis, and sylvestris), producing the fruit known today. Surprisingly they're not much larger than the original, but has been selected for colour, flavour, acidity, firmness, sweetness and shelf life.

But that's all complicated by the reluctance of the plants to breed true - seeds will usually produce trees and fruit very different to their parent tree, and while this gives rise to some very good plants on occasion, almost all apples are grown from branches grafted onto suitable rootstock.

There are more than 7,500 known cultivars of apples. The UK's National Fruit Collection in Kent includes over 2,000. Personally, I'm most fond of the Granny Smith, a chance seedling found in 1868 in Sydney, Australia, by Maria Ann Smith, and cultivated by her and other local gardeners into one of the most popular apple varities in the world, with large, firm, tart green fruit with excellent cooking, storing (up to 9 months or more), and fresh eating qualities. It's probably a hybrid of domestica and sylvestris.

Apples of course feature prominently in legend and religion across Eurasia - Eris' apple of discord indirectly led to the Trojan War, for example.

Partner (other OP) gifted me this awesome book for my birthday! It covers some really old endangered varieties of apples and pears from the Netherlands, France, the UK and a few other countries and was originally released in 1758 by Johann Hermann Knoop, who is considered the father of pomology. The book has some incredible illustrations and is written in old Dutch.