3 ms·

Apple detectives solved mystery of ancient tree and rewrote the history of fruit

2 points by nkurz 10d ago

altmanaltman 8d ago
Why is the headline written in a magical realism style in an article about the analysis of the apple tree? "Solved mystery of ancient tree"? "Rewrote the history of fruit"? Like okay, it's cool but it's not Game of Thrones
- bythreads 8d ago
  Thinking gucci is gucci
- amelius 8d ago
  It's the Reality Distortion Field™. Best known from The Bible, Steve Jobs, Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler. Slightly more than half of the population is susceptible.
  - jhbggjnjih 8d ago
    > Best known from The Bible, Steve Jobs, Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler. You did not just put these 4 things/people together in a single sentence. Tell me you didn’t. Please. Christ HN is turning into reddit.
    - amelius 8d ago
      The old reddit, I hope.
- dmos62 8d ago
  An excuse to say "apple detectives"? Choice of words drew me in, and I'm happy it did. This is quirky news; it's making a bit of geekery interesting to distracted geeks, like me.
  - altmanaltman 8d ago
    The subject is interesting and I am not doubting that. The story is interesting as well. But the headline is just weird, especially for an outlet like that. Why do we need to resort to goofy theatrics to attract people to science (interesting in itself) is the problem I have. Same reason why I detest people who genuinely think Kip Thorne's most famous work is Interstellar.
    - dmos62 8d ago
      There's definitely something to be said about not trying to spin stories into something more. And, I'm usually on the other side of the barricade in these discussions. But, when I'm reading about apples, it's me being goofy, so it's nice when the author is tailoring for that. I would absolutely hate it if the same was done when writing about something I care about in a "real" way, for the lack of a better term.
  - pholypilz 8d ago
    [dead]
- petesergeant 8d ago
  I mean "someone sent in an apple they found and it turns out to be an ancestor of most of other apples" supports 3 ad spots max.
CSMastermind 8d ago
Apples have some of wildest biology that I've seen as a non-professional biologist. At many genes, they carry two different alleles instead of two matching ones. They're almost all self-incompatible. A Honeycrisp flower cannot pollinate a Honeycrisp flower. This means that you can't breed them in the traditional sense that we do with other plants. Outside of Granny Smith apples the ones you eat are mostly the results of mutations in the grown plants that we cut off and graft.
- masklinn 8d ago
  Heterozygosity and self-incompatibility are common to fruit trees in general, not specific to apples. I think ancestral citruses (not the crosses) are the primary exception, as well as a few citrus hybrids which create clone seeds asexually. > Outside of Granny Smith apples the ones you eat are mostly the results of mutations in the grown plants that we cut off and graft. Honeycrisp is a chance seedling, though it stems from a horticultural crossbreeding effort it was grown from seed. And commercially useful sport mutations tend to come from popular chance seedlings to start with, since it is necessarily a more limited evolution of the basal cultivar, which needs to exist and in sufficient quantity that you’ll roll out useful mutations eventually (also useful is in the eye of the beholder as we can see with the red so-called delicious).
- Tomte 8d ago
  The coolest thing about some apple cultivars is how their story is "someone found an apple tree at the side of a road with tasty apples", and people kept grafting them to this day. Boskoop, for example.
  - masklinn 8d ago
    Getting to that is one of the reasons why people would kinda just grow apple seeds all over. Plus they were not completely wasted, while not generally edible they’re fine for cider.
- jmartrican 8d ago
  Oh wow you may have just answered a question I been having. I planted some apple trees in my backyard. The AI helping me suggested 3 trees, one of which was a crab-apple tree that it said will be used to pollinate the other two. Maybe it lied to me. But i did follow its instructions. I was wondering why the other two (Honeycrisp and another delicious variety) could not just pollinate each other.
Honali 8d ago
[dead]
HSO 8d ago
first thought on reading the headline was: huh these apple guys have interesting hobbies
- deleted 8d ago
  [deleted]
samch 8d ago
Here is a different link covering the same topic without requiring a subscription: https://www.mainepublic.org/maine/2025-06-02/on-verona-island-historians-discover-one-of-the-oldest-living-apple-trees-in-north-america https://www.mainepublic.org/maine/2025-06-02/on-verona-islan...

2 points by nkurz 10d ago

Why is the headline written in a magical realism style in an article about the analysis of the apple tree? "Solved mystery of ancient tree"? "Rewrote the history of fruit"? Like okay, it's cool but it's not Game of Thrones

bythreads 8d ago
Thinking gucci is gucci
amelius 8d ago
It's the Reality Distortion Field™. Best known from The Bible, Steve Jobs, Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler. Slightly more than half of the population is susceptible.
- jhbggjnjih 8d ago
  > Best known from The Bible, Steve Jobs, Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler. You did not just put these 4 things/people together in a single sentence. Tell me you didn’t. Please. Christ HN is turning into reddit.
  - amelius 8d ago
    The old reddit, I hope.
dmos62 8d ago
An excuse to say "apple detectives"? Choice of words drew me in, and I'm happy it did. This is quirky news; it's making a bit of geekery interesting to distracted geeks, like me.
- altmanaltman 8d ago
  The subject is interesting and I am not doubting that. The story is interesting as well. But the headline is just weird, especially for an outlet like that. Why do we need to resort to goofy theatrics to attract people to science (interesting in itself) is the problem I have. Same reason why I detest people who genuinely think Kip Thorne's most famous work is Interstellar.
  - dmos62 8d ago
    There's definitely something to be said about not trying to spin stories into something more. And, I'm usually on the other side of the barricade in these discussions. But, when I'm reading about apples, it's me being goofy, so it's nice when the author is tailoring for that. I would absolutely hate it if the same was done when writing about something I care about in a "real" way, for the lack of a better term.
- pholypilz 8d ago
  [dead]
petesergeant 8d ago
I mean "someone sent in an apple they found and it turns out to be an ancestor of most of other apples" supports 3 ad spots max.

CSMastermind 8d ago

Apples have some of wildest biology that I've seen as a non-professional biologist. At many genes, they carry two different alleles instead of two matching ones. They're almost all self-incompatible. A Honeycrisp flower cannot pollinate a Honeycrisp flower. This means that you can't breed them in the traditional sense that we do with other plants. Outside of Granny Smith apples the ones you eat are mostly the results of mutations in the grown plants that we cut off and graft.

masklinn 8d ago
Heterozygosity and self-incompatibility are common to fruit trees in general, not specific to apples. I think ancestral citruses (not the crosses) are the primary exception, as well as a few citrus hybrids which create clone seeds asexually. > Outside of Granny Smith apples the ones you eat are mostly the results of mutations in the grown plants that we cut off and graft. Honeycrisp is a chance seedling, though it stems from a horticultural crossbreeding effort it was grown from seed. And commercially useful sport mutations tend to come from popular chance seedlings to start with, since it is necessarily a more limited evolution of the basal cultivar, which needs to exist and in sufficient quantity that you’ll roll out useful mutations eventually (also useful is in the eye of the beholder as we can see with the red so-called delicious).
Tomte 8d ago
The coolest thing about some apple cultivars is how their story is "someone found an apple tree at the side of a road with tasty apples", and people kept grafting them to this day. Boskoop, for example.
- masklinn 8d ago
  Getting to that is one of the reasons why people would kinda just grow apple seeds all over. Plus they were not completely wasted, while not generally edible they’re fine for cider.
jmartrican 8d ago
Oh wow you may have just answered a question I been having. I planted some apple trees in my backyard. The AI helping me suggested 3 trees, one of which was a crab-apple tree that it said will be used to pollinate the other two. Maybe it lied to me. But i did follow its instructions. I was wondering why the other two (Honeycrisp and another delicious variety) could not just pollinate each other.

Honali 8d ago

[dead]

HSO 8d ago

first thought on reading the headline was: huh these apple guys have interesting hobbies

deleted 8d ago
[deleted]

samch 8d ago

Here is a different link covering the same topic without requiring a subscription: https://www.mainepublic.org/maine/2025-06-02/on-verona-island-historians-discover-one-of-the-oldest-living-apple-trees-in-north-america https://www.mainepublic.org/maine/2025-06-02/on-verona-islan...