This could be real good news for folks with an interest in self sustaining life styles. Apples that have sustained their own existence, lost in canyons and forgotten wood lots, having been planted by long past generations of pioneers. Let us hope they will be available once again for some enterprising modern pioneers. 10 pioneer-era apple types thought extinct found in US West - Breitbart
Grand dad had about a dozen different kinds in the orchard. Mac's to sweeten cider, rome's for cooking, courtlands for fall apple, greenings for keepers, don't remember all of them and the farmer who runs the place now, a cousin, cut them all down about 20 years ago in order to plant another couple acres of corn for the government to pay him to grow. His son, a member of the LGBT generation is just waiting for him to die so he can convert the family farm in the family since the late 1860's, into some more cash for his desired lifestyle, but then it seems that priorities change from generation to generation.
Apples and Berries have seen a big resurgence around here! My Grand Parents often told of this little are that had the most amazing berries and apples, and they even told us where this place of wonder was and how to get there, but there was a major land slide and the area had changed, and it's not easily accessible any more. There is a wild strawberry that's simply amazing, they are blood red and super sweet, and they grow all over this one area, and we haven't seen them any other place, So far, they have been doing pretty well at the farm as long as you keep them in hanging beds and keep the bugs and critters out. I also know of two distinct apple species, but don't know the names of them, both are Green, with one having yellow blotches and the other a solid light green, both are very firm and have thick waxy skins, and they cook up well, but don't press very much, making them kind of unique! Most of this little slice of heaven is only accessible by foot on a multi day hike, or by flying in and then hiking about 1/2 mile, the old fire roads have long been over grown and/or washed out and not maintained, plus the land slide(s) have altered the area from what the Grand Folks told of! We had planned to get back up there at the start of the blooms and bring out as many starts as we could, but then the Rona hit and we had to bug, so that's not going to happen this season!
The task is huge. North America once had 17,000 named varieties of domesticated apples, but only about 4,500 are known to exist today. The Lost Apple Project believes settlers planted a few hundred varieties in their corner of the Pacific Northwest alone as they moved across the U. S. West to try their hands at the pioneer life. These newcomers planted orchards with enough variety to get them through the long winter, with apples that ripened from early spring until the first frosts. Many were brought with the settlers in buckets from their homes on the East Coast and in the Midwest. Then, as now, trees planted for eating apples were not raised from seeds; cuttings taken from existing trees were grafted onto a generic root stock and raised to maturity. These cloned trees remove the genetic variation that often makes “wild” apples inedible. and Botanists from the Temperate Orchard Society identified them by comparing the collected apples to watercolor illustrations created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the 1800s and early 1900s and by poring over written descriptions in old botany textbooks and reference guides, some of them more than 150 years old. One apple, the Gold Ridge, was particularly hard to identify because the experts couldn’t find any illustrations or descriptions of it anywhere. Finally, botanist Joanie Cooper went page by page through a reference book written by a botanist who died in 1912 until she found it. awesome and Vets to boot!
There is a YUGE amount of Data collected at the Oregon State University farming and indigenous crops depts as well as the the Repositories to which you MUST provide seed,root, or genetic samplings in order to use the reserves, and you must become a member and contribute to the collective, doing so keeps the specific genetics separated and still allows experimentation! As a Mint farmer, I had to meat many requirements to be a part of that, and got to see the inner workings of how that all works, and it's pretty amazing! If you want Heirloom or Pioneer seed, this is where you go to find it!
