Apple Tree From Seed

[Kay Lancaster]

So are the thousands of older cultivars that didn't withstand shipping or long storage, or weren't "pretty enough" in someone's eyes, or just didn't get recognized by a commercial nursery. And they were good apples, some much better than the half dozen or so cultivars you get in most US grocery stores today.

A cross between an ornamental pear of unknown parentage and the Bosc in my grandparents' backyard. Grandpa helped me make it (I was all of 4 or 5 at the time), and then we grew out the seeds. And it wasn't a bad pear at all. Finally succumbed to fireblight many years later.

Doubt that... old roads, old fencelines, and most of them don't look anything like currently favored cultivars.

Sure. Have you tasted some of the "wild" apples being currently imported for germplasm use? Some really good stuff there.

If you

Yes, because people who actually bother to name cultivars are likely to be working with a subset of plants that have something they're trying to improve upon. But chance seedlings play a part, too.... go back in the parentage and you'll find a lot of "unnamed seedling x cox's orange pippin" sorts of entries.

I

And I'd argue, as an old educator, that learning that everything doesn't work the way you think it might is a much more important lesson (in gardening, in life, in science) than success at growing a "kit tree".

Doesn't take that much effort to grow a seedling tree to bearing size, if they can make it through the winter in a planter (a relatively hostile environment.) Back to the OP's question... insulate that planter, cuddle it up against the house, and make sure it doesn't dry out or have standing water in it this winter. Then enjoy what you get with your kids.

Me? I'm a retired botanist. My grandfather, who originally got me interested in gardening, used to take me on day trips for such things as hunting for the stump of the first 'Delicious' apple tree, or over to look at the crab apple test orchard a friend ran. Learning to look and examine and ask questions and perservere are good life lessons you can learn from a little amateur plant breeding, imo.

Kay

[Kay Lancaster]

Doesn't quite work that way -- apples have some interesting genetic instabilities that make even grafting known cultivars less than a sure bet. And seed of any open pollinated, sexually reproduced seed (as opposed to apomictically produced seeds, as dandelions often do) is going to produce offspring different from their parents. (Just like human kids, while they resemble their parents, aren't exact duplicates. And one sibling is not identical to another.)

It's only with some fairly intensive breeding techniques (e.g. linebreeding, back-crosses) that we've been able to produce the uniform fields of plants currently in favor with mechanized agriculture.

John Chapman certainly wasn't toting around bags of grafted apple trees when he decided to spread apple seeds around on his journeys. Some of the seedlings that came up produced very nice apples. Some didn't. It's the same result I'd expect of the OP's little experiment... they may get some nicely flavored apples from the seedlings, and then again, they might get spitters. But whatever they get, it'll be interesting for the kids if the parents help them interpret what they're seeing and experiencing.

someone earlier claimed that the OP would get "crab apples" from the seedlings... this is pretty unlikely, as most of the eating apples are diploids, and most of the crabapples are polyploid (have several sets of chromosomes, rather than simple pairs.)

At any rate, I think kids (and grownups, too, from the sounds of things here!) should try things like growing seeds of an open-pollinated, sexually reproducing crop, just to see some of the hidden genetic variation uncovered... it's really pretty amazing. I also wish I could get more people involved in such activities as comparison tastings of fruits -- or as my husband said after I got him to try about 50 cultivars of apple in a day, "Gee, I wish I'd known before now that there were more apples than Delicious and Jonathan." (He has now found he also likes tomatoes, pears, sweet corn and I'm working on getting him off iceberg lettuce. )

Save some seed of something or other... tomatoes, dwarf marigolds, impatiens, lettuce... grow 'em out and see what you get. It's fun.

Kay

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[Olin]

Not to be irreverent or irrelevant, but

If John Chapman could read this thread he would turn over in his grave. He considered grafting to be "absolute wickedness" according to some accounts. BTW his grave is located in Fort Wayne IN somewhere near his memorial which is located in the park and is accessible from the rear of the parking lot of the Ft. Wayne Memorial Coliseum. It is on a mound surrounded by an iron fence. The stele at the gravesite reads,

"In fond memory of John Chapman, endearingly known as "Johnny Appleseed These grave-site improvements were provided by The Men's Garden Clubs of America and The Johnny Appleseed National Memorial Foundation, Inc. September 25, 1965"

There is some dispute as to the actual burial site but most historians believe it is at least within 50 feet of the corrrect location based on accounts recorded from eyewitnesses at his burial in the old Archer Cemetery in March 1845.

A few people in Ohio and Indiana believe they still have a Johnny Appleseed Tree on their property and tourists can buy Johnny AppleSeed Tree. But the last known surviving Johnny Appleseed tree is located on a farm near Nova, Ohio, some 50 miles west of Akron. The fruit is said to resemble the Albemarle Pippen and they will sell you cuttings.

Olin

[sherwindu]

[sherwindu]

Good is a relative term. How do they compare with a known heritage or well engineered apple like a Honeycrisp?

There are a lot of vegetables and fruit that pigs eat but I wouldn't find them tasty. You can't compare a bird's taste buds to a human. Sometimes, they will eat an apple just to get the moisture out of it.

Johnny Appleseed spread a lot of seeds in his lifetime, but most of them produced apples that were not very tasty, and were used instead for cider or mash to feed the animals. In those days, for most pioneers it was a question of survival, not enhancing their palette.

Sherwin D.

[sherwindu]

I think you are the one that needs the textbooks. Read on ...

I am not pretending to be a biologist or a plant geneticist. However, I do know a solid layman's idea of how apple trees propagate. The term recessive gene is not my invention but is part of the laws of Mendelian inheritance created by Gregor Mendel. If you have a problem with that, take it up with him.

It's so common that I have never seen one in my 20 years of growing apples, visiting numerous orchards, or just talking to fellow apple growers.

What you call oddball I have only observed in very small variations in size, color, and taste of the apple. I am not familiar with any radically different apples appearing suddenly on just one branch.

U. of Minnesota describes mosaicism as: 'Mosaic variegated aneuploidy (MVA) is a rare recessive condition'. Evidently they think that it's ok to use the term recessive.

We are not talking here about genetic engineering! This is simply about the natural genetic effects of planting an apple seed. This kid planting an apple seed is not going to take it to his laboratory to do high tech genetic engineering!

Sherwin D.

[sherwindu]

First of all, I grow a goodly number of these heritage apples, so you obviously missed my point.

Not sure which ones you are suggesting. Where can I find out more about them?

No arguement there. However, I just want to point out that the number of successes of chance seedlings is not that great. The Cox's Orange Pippen (which I grew until it died last year) has been bred into many other varieties, of which I still have it as part of my Freyberg apple.

OK. What is more rewarding? Sticking a seed into the ground, or grafting a tree? I think the seed planting sounds more like a 'kit'.

That's the point. What attachment can you have to something that can be grown with about the same effort as a carrot.

In the real cold climates, I would bury the pot for added protection.

Sherwin D.

[sherwindu]

I would change that to very few. Since there was no scientific tracking of his trees, we can only surmise the results.

Doubt it very much.

I would not put a kid into a statistically losing project when there are much better related things, like grafting.

Problem here is that this will be a standard tree, which will take the kid at least 7 years to taste their first apple.

For those plants, I agree.

Sherwin D.

[sherwindu]

As I mentioned in another posting, John Chapman's contribution was to provide

a source of fruit to remote farmers and settlers, who would otherwise not have any access to apples. These apples were ok for making cider or feeding the animals. The cider was necessary to provide a nutritious drink in the Winter

months, when there was no substitute.

Chapman was certainly an eccentric, possibly driven by religious fervor, but as I have explained, he did contribute to the promoting of fruit growing in this country.

If you worry about John Chapman turning in his grave, give a few thoughts to Sir Issac Newton, who's theories were a great contribution, but were found to be not applicable to all facets of our universe.

By the way, in doing some surfing about Chapman, I came across this interesting site about growing apples from seeds:

Sherwin D.

[Kay Lancaster]

I have no problem with the notion of recessive genes, but you wrote "recessed genes" and also seemed to have no real grasp of some of the other issues of apple genetics.

Furthermore, recessive genes probably aren't at the heart of variation in apples.

It's pretty common. If it weren't so late in the season here, I could probably find several branch sports on apples within a mile or so of my house.

Mosaic variegated aneupoloidy is different from mosaicism. An organism exhibiting mosaicism has patches of cells with a different genome than other patches of cells. Mosaic Variegated Aneuplody Syndrome is a rare genetic disorder of humans, causing mitotic non-disjunction of cells, leading to groups of aneuploid cells (cells with the wrong numbers of chromosomes.) If this is the page you looked at:

ain't about apples.

Who said he or she was? Find another strawman. I'm done.

Kay

[sherwindu]

Here we go with the old semantics attack. If you can't win an argument on substance, attack someone on their use of language. You can hypothesize all you want about my abilities, but I question yours, as well. I don't need to have to have a degree in biology to know that there are certain traits carried over in various generations of apples, as well as other living matter. Exactly what other issues of apple genetics are you referring to? Your theories about how easily apples can mutate into something desirable is way removed from reality. I suggest you stick with your plums, where you may have some stronger arguments.

I think that in this case, one can learn more about apple growing by experiencing it first hand, rather than burying oneself in a lot of textbooks, especially those on genetics. However, I do read books, surf the net, and review articles to keep up with the latest information on apple growing. I am not a research scientist or a genetic engineer trying to develop new varieties of apples.

They certainly are when you try to reproduce an apple by planting it's seed.

I don't believe you.

(MVA) is a rare

No, I didn't look at that page.

the natural

You are the one that went off on a tangent of genetic engineering, not me. I simply stated that you cannot expect an apple planted from seed to have the basic characteristics of the parent apple it came from. Do you still want to dispute that!

In talking with a fellow apple grower today, he told me that he had heard from several sources that the odds of getting a decent apple from a planted seed was about 1 in

10,000. Now if

you are talking Prunus ( peaches, plums, apricots ), this is not the case, as those plants are better genetically capable of passing on their traits through their seeds.

I certainly hope so. I'm getting tired of trying to put certain ideas people have about growing apples into the proper perspective. If you are an academic or genetic expert, you shouldn't push your credentials in people's faces, especially when you mislead them about the real world.

Sherwin D.