Source: https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220705-the-uks-heritage-apple-renaissance
An alarming 81% of traditional apple orchards have vanished from Britain, but activists are planting British heritage varieties in community plots in all shapes and sizes.
Tom Adams is a detective. But he doesn’t track criminals – his targets are “lost” apple varieties hiding unsuspected in orchards around the UK, and his work taps into a renewed British passion for its rich larder of heritage apples.
While you’d be lucky to find half a dozen apple varieties in any supermarket (some of those imported), there are currently around 2,200 species of apple recorded in Britain’s National Fruit Collection at Brogdale Farm in Kent, with new discoveries being made by apple hunters around the country.
Adams’ apple-detecting beat focuses on The Marches, an ancient heartland of British apple growing that takes a bite out of the counties of Shropshire and Herefordshire where England merges into Wales. It was here, in a neglected orchard, that a single tree bearing mysterious bright yellow apples stirred his curiosity. No one knew when it was planted and neither Adams’ expert eye nor archival records could quickly identify the variety.
It took deep delving in the archives plus gene testing before the mystery apple was finally identified as a Bringewood Pippin. “It’s a late dessert/cider apple originally raised around 1800 by the horticulturalist Thomas Andrew Knight – a cross between Golden Pippin and Golden Harvey,” explained Adams. “It was also quite possible this was the only remaining tree of its kind left in the country.”
This single Shropshire orchard turned out to be a hotspot for apple rediscoveries, with three other “lost” varieties joining the Georgian-era Bringewood Pippin. “It was also home to what could have been the last remaining trees of Gypsy King, Rhymer and Round Winter Nonesuch,” Adams revealed. “I took cuttings, and these trees have now been rescued from extinction – they are spread far and wide throughout the country.”
The Bardsey Island apple has a similar story of a solitary tree bearing distinctive fruit – this time on the eponymous little island just off the Llyn Peninsula in North Wales. The tree had stood perhaps for centuries by the ruins of a 13th-Century abbey, and it was curiosity about its apples that persuaded bird watcher Andy Clarke to take some to local fruit expert Ian Sturrock. Sent for DNA analysis, the result came back that this was a previously unknown apple, prompting the media to hail the tree as the rarest in the world back in 2000. Thanks again to grafts, people around the UK are now growing this medium-sized sweet and juicy pink eating apple, and are enjoying its distinctive lemon aroma.
A 2022 study by the National Trust found that an alarming 81% of traditional orchards have vanished from England and Wales since the early 1900s, due to land use changes related to farming and urbanisation. Not only has this limited people’s experience of countless heritage apple varieties, but it has also impacted on biodiversity and the wildlife drawn to the mix of woodland, hedgerow and meadow grassland in traditional orchards.
But a growing army of apple activists are pushing back, dipping into the pool of British heritage varieties to plant new community orchards in all shapes and sizes.
The Common Ground environment group was a key pioneer of this British apple renaissance, beginning its first campaign to save traditional orchards more than 30 years ago – including, in 1990, designating 21 October as an annual Apple Day to spread the word.
Common Ground co-founder Sue Clifford spoke to The Guardian in 2017 about the surge in orchard planting. “It is astonishing how people have picked up the idea of planting small orchards,” she said. “There is much more planting now, a growing urban and rural movement, and a resurgence of interest in ciders. Community orchards are becoming very important to places, and people are rightly proud of them.”
In Birmingham, a “Ring of Blossom” will be created around Britain’s second largest city to provide an apple-y legacy following the Commonwealth Games in July. More than 500 trees will be planted this autumn as part of a National Trust plan to create an echo of the 180-plus orchards that once encircled the city.
BBC Travel – Forgotten Foods
New orchard makers can plant trees based on a host of criteria to create pleasing variety. There’s the taste of the fruit, of course – but also how vigorously a tree grows, or even what date in spring it bursts into blossom. A community orchard planted in the Cornish town of Newquay in 2015 features 120 heritage varieties, each with its own appeal.
Brighton Permaculture Trust (BPT) oversees a community orchard programme on England’s south coast that has planted fruit trees in small village schools across Sussex as well as large secondary city schools in Brighton. Other spots range from a tiny plot at the city’s London Road train station to fruit-filled oases on council estates at Craven Vale and Hollingdean. Two hundred trees are thriving on a hillside beside Brighton Racecourse, while a new orchard will be planted this winter in Bevendean, one of the city’s most socially deprived areas.
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Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/1009618.stm
Island is home to rarest apple
An apple found nowhere else in the world has been discovered growing on a Welsh holy island.
The variety of apple – believed to date back to the 13th Century when it was grown by monks – was spotted on remote Bardsey Island.
Visitor Ian Sturrock picked a fruit from an apple tree on a trip to the island off the north Wales coast and sent it to experts.
Experts at the Brogdale Agricultural Trust, in Faversham, Kent, have examined the apple and named it, appropriately enough, the Bardsey Apple.
Dr Joan Morgan – one of the world’s leading experts on apples – said it was the only one of its variety in the world.
Unique variety
She said: “The apples were boldly striped in pink over cream, ribbed and crowned. We could not put a name to it – and who would wish it to be anything other than the Bardsey Apple?”
Brogdale is the home of the national fruit collection with more than 2,000 different varieties from all over the world.
The Bardsey apple has now been added to the collection.
Mr Sturrock plans to take cuttings from the single tree and grow the apples at his home on the mainland in Bangor, Gwynedd.
He said: “I took the apples off the tree to use in a bird trap.
‘Rarest tree’
“I didn’t realise the significance of the find until I took it to Brogdale. Dr Joan Morgan said it is the rarest apple tree in the world.”
It is thought monks who lived on the island from the 13th Century might have cultivated the tree for food.
The apple also appears to be completely disease-resistant, which is unique for fruit trees in north Wales.
“If the monks were selecting trees over hundreds of years, they would have selected disease-resistant trees,” said Mr Sturrock.
