Apples to apples: What you didn’t know about this humble fruit
Great apples aren’t merely grown. They’re grafted.
In the above installment of the new web series How Does It Grow, host Nicole Cotroneo Jolly explains that every apple seed is genetically unique, which means that each may grow into a completely different apple than its “parent.”
So, odd though it may sound, if you stick a Golden Delicious apple seed in the ground, the resulting plant may yield fruit that differs in color, size, and taste from the classic Golden Delicious apple you expect.
This fact of nature presents a problem for farmers who want to grow an entire orchard of Granny Smiths, Empires, or Honeycrisps. But don’t worry: Apple-loving folks figured out how to circumvent the issue a long, long time ago.
"Believe it or not, they use a technique borrowed from the ancient Greeks—it’s called ‘grafting,’" Jolly says. Farmers splice a budding, leafy stem from a desired apple tree on to what’s called a rootstock (on apple trees, this means the exposed root) of a different tree. For example, you might graft a Granny Smith stem onto the rootstock of a Red Delicious sapling. The two fuse together, resulting in a tree producing apples of the grafted stem’s (in this case, the Granny Smith) varietal.
It’s crazy, but true. As Jolly says, apples only “seem like the simplest food to grow.” In reality, things are a bit more complicated, but that only makes us appreciate these juicy fruits more.
Hungry for apples? Check out these recipes:
Wonderfully spiced apple-peel bourbon
Gorgeous riffs on apple pie you need to know
A light, fluffy apple Dutch baby
Were you surprised to learn this about apples? Tell us below!
