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New varieties of apple are two a penny. Every single seed you plant from an apple will come up as a different variety. Most of them will be completely impractic

New varieties of apple are two a penny. Every single seed you plant from an apple will come up as a different variety. Most of them will be completely impractical as an eating/cooking apple, and most of the trees will grow huge. The rarity is getting an apple variety that tastes good and grows well. Then you have the added complexity of having to graft it onto a useful root stock to get a reasonable-sized productive tree.

kranner 6y ago
Michael Pollan's book The Botany of Desire has this and a lot more on apples for anyone interested.
chrisseaton 6y ago
> Every single seed you plant from an apple will come up as a different variety. What's the meaning of the word 'variety' then? What is its use if 'different variety' is just the same as 'different individual plant' if every seed produces a different variety. Surely 'variety' must have more meaning than that?
- gilrain 6y ago
  It's a different individual plant which gained popularity by tasting good or otherwise being useful.
- phito 6y ago
  I would say that a variety is one individual that has been selected and cloned for some of its traits.
- PeterisP 6y ago
  In general, a variety would be something that's stable and reproducible with the same properties and sufficiently distinct from others. In sexual reproduction you'd expect the variety to be stable if and only if you breed it within itself, and any cross-breeding to result in something that's new. Apple trees are generally pollinated by a large number of other apple seedlings, so it may make sense to consider every individual plant grown from seed as a potential separate variety, so we generally don't do that as the vast majority of these random cross-breeds are bad. Only experimental breeders would even consider apples from individual grown-from-seed plants, everyone else uses genetically identical clones grafted onto rootstock that's (AFAIK) also cloned.
- vikramkr 6y ago
  You don't grow apples from seed commercially. They are cloned.
- mnw21cam 6y ago
  Yes. For some types of plant, a variety means a population that is a stable and has similar characteristics, and you can grow these from seed, and they will generally look like their parent plants. Apples are not like that. Each plant grown from seed is vastly different from the mother plant, and you don't even know what the father plant is, because it could be an apple, a crab apple, a quince, etc. Most of these random plants are useless for fruit. And so, for apples we use the name "variety" to mean clones of one single plant. So, all "bramley" apple trees are clones of the original bramley apple tree in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, UK. This is done by taking a cutting of the tree, and grafting it onto a specially grown root. So when someone says they have found a new variety of apple, what they actually mean is that they found an apple tree that grew from seed, and it actually looks and tastes nice, and therefore might be worth cloning and spreading around the world.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    Ah so 'variety' sort of implicitly means 'useful, viable, variety'?
    - jfengel 6y ago
      Exactly. Though in this case, the discovery was just that it was visually interesting, and it's sort of a coincidence that it's even edible. The odds are it won't become useful or viable.
      - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
        If it's large, edible, tasts good and lasts well (which IIRC apples usually do) why not?
        jfengel 6y ago
        It needs to be shippable without bruising. It needs to take well to grafting. It needs to be resistant to pests and diseases, and thrive well on the kinds of fertilizers readily available to farmers. It needs to grow well in orchards. It needs to be easy for pickers to pick. It needs to grow fairly regular shapes and not look too ugly. Without all of that, it could perhaps find itself a niche spot in specialty orchards if it tastes amazing or otherwise piques people's attention. There are a few thousand varieties grown that way. But a lot of those are in danger of disappearing if people lose interest, and we've already lost thousands of named varieties of apple. To really take off it needs to be friendly to farmers in all of the ways I mentioned, or they just won't grow it.
- fedreserved 6y ago
  I'm the cannabis community they use the term cultivar to take care of the distinction. For example granny smith would be the variety or strain in cannabis terms. The seed from the granny smith that you would grow out would be the cultivar. Call it baby granny smith. That cultivar would grow uniquely, have its own traits that would most likely differ from the parent plant .
- colechristensen 6y ago
  Apples don’t “breed true” or in other words there aren’t any “purebred” apples. The seed in any given tasty apple will produce a mostly inedible apple. You could make a variety of apples breed true, but you have to selectively breed many individuals over many generations, and from seed to apple can be up to ten years, so it would have to be an enormous project to take on that you’d probably have to convince your grandchildren was worth pursuing. The alternative is cloning by grafting on to root stock, which is so very much easier. A lot of the food, especially fruit, that you eat are the same kind of clones. Bananas and avocados are a couple of examples. A fun related fact is that there was this trend in the 50s and 60s of irradiating seeds or planting things in a circle around a radiation source hoping for useful mutations which could then be cloned and produced commercially. Atomic gardening actually produced several popular varieties of produce. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_gardening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_gardening
jrlocke 6y ago
Within the article it's revealed that not only is this a new variety, it's a potentially useful tasty eating and cider apple.
- v77 6y ago
  This is also true for a huge number of apple species. Also,'cider apple' generally refers to apples that aren't that great for fresh eating but processing into pies/cider/juices. This is a pretty goofy story to make international news.
ogre_codes 6y ago
This was more-or-less my thought here too. We have perhaps 20 wild Apple trees growing on our property. We've slowly been culling the less good ones and encouraging the good ones. I'm a bit skeptical that this will come to anything. Likely the journalist who heard the story doesn't know how common this is?
hinkley 6y ago
Mark Shepard is, last I heard, attempting the "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" approach with apples. I think he, like many of us, has a problem with statistics. Based on the number of apples he's planting, he has maybe a 20% chance of getting an edible apple. Though he might develop a decent cider or root-stock apple.
- hedora 6y ago
  It’s common knowledge (I thought) that you need to plant approximately 1000 trees from seed to get one “marketable” variety. Put another way, if you plant from seed, 99% of the resulting trees will produce terrible apples.
  - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
    Ur maths...
  - hinkley 6y ago
    Yeah, I meant to mention that but I over-edited myself. Shepard was planning to plant on the order of 500 trees and see if he gets anything. Any tree that struggles just gets culled, to keep the efforts cheap. There are some uses for apple wood or roots and unpalatable apples that should at least let him break even.

kranner 6y ago

Michael Pollan's book The Botany of Desire has this and a lot more on apples for anyone interested.

chrisseaton 6y ago

> Every single seed you plant from an apple will come up as a different variety. What's the meaning of the word 'variety' then? What is its use if 'different variety' is just the same as 'different individual plant' if every seed produces a different variety. Surely 'variety' must have more meaning than that?

gilrain 6y ago
It's a different individual plant which gained popularity by tasting good or otherwise being useful.
phito 6y ago
I would say that a variety is one individual that has been selected and cloned for some of its traits.
PeterisP 6y ago
In general, a variety would be something that's stable and reproducible with the same properties and sufficiently distinct from others. In sexual reproduction you'd expect the variety to be stable if and only if you breed it within itself, and any cross-breeding to result in something that's new. Apple trees are generally pollinated by a large number of other apple seedlings, so it may make sense to consider every individual plant grown from seed as a potential separate variety, so we generally don't do that as the vast majority of these random cross-breeds are bad. Only experimental breeders would even consider apples from individual grown-from-seed plants, everyone else uses genetically identical clones grafted onto rootstock that's (AFAIK) also cloned.
vikramkr 6y ago
You don't grow apples from seed commercially. They are cloned.
mnw21cam 6y ago
Yes. For some types of plant, a variety means a population that is a stable and has similar characteristics, and you can grow these from seed, and they will generally look like their parent plants. Apples are not like that. Each plant grown from seed is vastly different from the mother plant, and you don't even know what the father plant is, because it could be an apple, a crab apple, a quince, etc. Most of these random plants are useless for fruit. And so, for apples we use the name "variety" to mean clones of one single plant. So, all "bramley" apple trees are clones of the original bramley apple tree in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, UK. This is done by taking a cutting of the tree, and grafting it onto a specially grown root. So when someone says they have found a new variety of apple, what they actually mean is that they found an apple tree that grew from seed, and it actually looks and tastes nice, and therefore might be worth cloning and spreading around the world.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  Ah so 'variety' sort of implicitly means 'useful, viable, variety'?
  - jfengel 6y ago
    Exactly. Though in this case, the discovery was just that it was visually interesting, and it's sort of a coincidence that it's even edible. The odds are it won't become useful or viable.
    - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
      If it's large, edible, tasts good and lasts well (which IIRC apples usually do) why not?
      - jfengel 6y ago
        It needs to be shippable without bruising. It needs to take well to grafting. It needs to be resistant to pests and diseases, and thrive well on the kinds of fertilizers readily available to farmers. It needs to grow well in orchards. It needs to be easy for pickers to pick. It needs to grow fairly regular shapes and not look too ugly. Without all of that, it could perhaps find itself a niche spot in specialty orchards if it tastes amazing or otherwise piques people's attention. There are a few thousand varieties grown that way. But a lot of those are in danger of disappearing if people lose interest, and we've already lost thousands of named varieties of apple. To really take off it needs to be friendly to farmers in all of the ways I mentioned, or they just won't grow it.
fedreserved 6y ago
I'm the cannabis community they use the term cultivar to take care of the distinction. For example granny smith would be the variety or strain in cannabis terms. The seed from the granny smith that you would grow out would be the cultivar. Call it baby granny smith. That cultivar would grow uniquely, have its own traits that would most likely differ from the parent plant .
colechristensen 6y ago
Apples don’t “breed true” or in other words there aren’t any “purebred” apples. The seed in any given tasty apple will produce a mostly inedible apple. You could make a variety of apples breed true, but you have to selectively breed many individuals over many generations, and from seed to apple can be up to ten years, so it would have to be an enormous project to take on that you’d probably have to convince your grandchildren was worth pursuing. The alternative is cloning by grafting on to root stock, which is so very much easier. A lot of the food, especially fruit, that you eat are the same kind of clones. Bananas and avocados are a couple of examples. A fun related fact is that there was this trend in the 50s and 60s of irradiating seeds or planting things in a circle around a radiation source hoping for useful mutations which could then be cloned and produced commercially. Atomic gardening actually produced several popular varieties of produce. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_gardening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_gardening

jrlocke 6y ago

Within the article it's revealed that not only is this a new variety, it's a potentially useful tasty eating and cider apple.

v77 6y ago
This is also true for a huge number of apple species. Also,'cider apple' generally refers to apples that aren't that great for fresh eating but processing into pies/cider/juices. This is a pretty goofy story to make international news.

ogre_codes 6y ago

This was more-or-less my thought here too. We have perhaps 20 wild Apple trees growing on our property. We've slowly been culling the less good ones and encouraging the good ones. I'm a bit skeptical that this will come to anything. Likely the journalist who heard the story doesn't know how common this is?

hinkley 6y ago

Mark Shepard is, last I heard, attempting the "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" approach with apples. I think he, like many of us, has a problem with statistics. Based on the number of apples he's planting, he has maybe a 20% chance of getting an edible apple. Though he might develop a decent cider or root-stock apple.

hedora 6y ago
It’s common knowledge (I thought) that you need to plant approximately 1000 trees from seed to get one “marketable” variety. Put another way, if you plant from seed, 99% of the resulting trees will produce terrible apples.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
  Ur maths...
- hinkley 6y ago
  Yeah, I meant to mention that but I over-edited myself. Shepard was planning to plant on the order of 500 trees and see if he gets anything. Any tree that struggles just gets culled, to keep the efforts cheap. There are some uses for apple wood or roots and unpalatable apples that should at least let him break even.