Apples
Apples provide versatile fruit rich in nutrients, supporting health and culinary diversity
Baldwin
Malus spp. Winter. Wilmington, Mass., about 1740. Also called Butters Apple or Woodpecker.
Discovered on the Butters Farm by a surveyor planning the Middlesex Canal and noted as a favorite site for local woodpeckers. By 1850 Baldwin was the standard all-purpose home and commercial variety wherever it was grown. It remained dominant in Maine until the terrible winter of 1934 when tens of thousands of trees perished and McIntosh became king.
Large round-conic thick-skinned fruit, almost entirely blushed, mottled and striped with red and deep carmine. Hard crisp juicy yellowish flesh makes excellent eating and cooking. Keeps till spring. Makes top-quality hard cider, blended or alone.
Vigorous adaptable hugely productive long-lived healthy tree. The late renowned entomologist Ron Prokopy described Baldwin as “not practical commercially due to biennialism but the only apple that is both disease and insect resistant.” Blooms early to midseason. Z4. Maine Grown.
Black Oxford
Malus spp. Winter. Hunt Russet x Blue Pearmain. Paris, Oxford County, Maine, about 1790.
This outstanding apple, a favorite long ago around much of Maine, has made a huge comeback. Neck and neck with Honeycrisp as our bestselling apple. Medium-sized round fruit, deep purple with a blackish bloom. From a distance, you might think you’d discovered a huge plum tree. Excellent pies, and superb late cider. Leave the skins on for a delightful pink sauce. Best eating late December to March, but we’ve eaten them in July and they were still quite firm and tasty. They get sweeter and sweeter as the months go by. Good cooking until early summer.
Some insect and disease resistance. Unusual light pink blooms early to mid-season. Z4.
Cherryfield
Malus spp. Fall-Winter. Westfield Seek-No-Further x unknown. Wyman B. Collins intro, Cherryfield, Maine, about 1850. Also called Collins.
Popularized more than 100 years ago by David Wass Campbell of Cherryfield and Welton Munson of the University of Maine. This all-purpose variety does everything well. We love it. Relatively tart with only a hint of sweetness. Makes a fairly quick tart sauce with a smooth texture—the skins mostly dissolve. Good in salads. Makes a highly flavored pie with great color and texture. Excellent sliced up on pizza. Irregular conic shape, washed and striped with pink. Ripens about Oct. 15 and keeps until the end of March.
Rediscovered with the help of Majory Brown, Larry Brown, and Kathy Upton, all of Cherryfield, Maine. Recent DNA profiling appears to show that what we know in Maine as Cherryfield could be a local synonym for the Illinois apple Salome and may also have been known as Benton Red around Kennebec county. It's also possible that we have not yet found the true Cherryfield. As we learn more about this connection, we'll keep you posted.
Tree is vigorous, hardy, spreading and productive. Blooms early-midseason. Z4
Cox’s Orange Pippin
Malus spp. Fall. Possibly a seedling of Ribston Pippin. Near Slough, Bucks, England, around 1825.
Deservedly one of the three or four most famous of all apples. Not only one of the best eating apples ever but also one of the most sought-after in modern apple breeding; parent or grandparent of many other varieties. Revered in the U.K.
Medium-sized all-purpose aromatic fruit is red-orange to red with orange russet striping and wash. Perfectly balanced slightly subacid flavor and crisp juicy tender flesh improve with storage.
Moderately vigorous moderately productive tree bears young and annually. Prefers cooler climates and higher pH (6.5-7.5+). The oldest Maine Cox’s we know is about 60, thriving in Mercer. Scab resistant. Blooms midseason. Z4.
Esopus Spitzenburg
Malus spp. Fall-Winter. Esopus, NY, before 1776.
For more than 200 years “Spitz” has been a choice dessert and culinary variety, mentioned in nearly every list of best-flavored apples. Slightly subacid, crisp and juicy. Excellent acid source for sweet or fermented cider. Medium-large bright red round-conic fruit, covered with russet dots.
Moderately vigorous tree with easily trained wide-angle branches. Forever famous as Thomas Jefferson’s favorite apple though it performs much better in New York and New England than Virginia.
Moderately susceptible to scab though we have never sprayed ours with fungicides and the fruit has been great. Blooms mid-late season. Z4.
Frostbite
Malus spp. Fall-Winter. MN 447. Unknown parentage. First fruited in 1921; named and introduced by the U Minn in 2008.
A massively flavored dessert apple, one of our favorites that we most look forward to each fall. Likely the most distinctive, complex and unusually flavored apple you’ll ever try. Astonished eaters have described it as tasting like molasses, olives, sugar cane, cheap whisky, yogurt, tobacco juice, and so on. We love it. The aromatic crisp crystalline apricot-orange flesh, with its occasional red staining, is so juicy it might run down your hand.
The roundish fruit is medium-sized and entirely covered with dark bluish-purple stripes. Lost in the dustbin of weird apples for nearly 90 years before it was finally named and released.
Extremely hardy, productive and reliable; at its best in colder districts. A parent of the popular Sweet Sixteen and Keepsake, and grandparent to Honeycrisp. Blooms midseason. Z3.
Golden Russet
Malus spp. Winter. Uncertain origin. Thought to be from England, New York or New England, before 1800.
Round medium-sized russet fruit. Excellent eating; keeps all winter and well into spring. One of the best apples dried. The champagne of cider apples, ripening late in fall when the best sweet cider is ready to be made: sweet, balanced, thick and smooth. Also recommended as a sharp component for fermented cider.
For more than 100 years, orchardists have been attempting to sort out the various russets. Several different apples have been called Golden Russet. Most resemble one another visually but differ in fruit qualities and tree habits. This is most likely the Golden Russet of western New York.
Vigorous diverging upcurving tree with long willowy branches. Scab resistant. Blooms early to midseason. Z4.
Grimes Golden
Malus spp. Fall. Parentage unknown. West Virginia, 1804.
Tart citrusy crisp dense firm fruit is excellent for both dessert and cooking: wonderful spicy fresh eating, pies, applesauce, and cider. Medium-sized roundish fruit with opaque yellow skin scattered with grey russet dots and an occasional faint blush.
All-around excellent variety is grown in old Maine orchards for more than 100 years. This is a perfect apple for the New England homestead north of Bangor. A bonus is that the fruit doesn’t ripen all at once. In central Maine, they begin to ripen and drop in mid-October. We collect them off the ground and use them right up. Then around Halloween, we pick the bulk of the crop to store in the root cellar until late winter. One of John Bunker’s top five favorite apples.
Productive precocious tree. Blooms mid-late season. Z4.
Hudson’s Golden Gem
Malus spp. Fall. AD Hudson’s Wholesale Nurseries, Tangent, Ore., 1931. A wild seedling discovered in a fence row and introduced soon afterward.
A truly fine dessert variety of unique appearance. Exceptional flavor, and sweet juicy crisp smooth firm-but-melting yellow pear-like flesh. Highly recommended for those who love to eat their apples out of hand. Nearly everyone loves the flavor after a single bite.
Magnificent medium-to-large distinctly conical and beautifully russeted long-stemmed fruit. Skin a soft yellow-tan overlaid with a fine weave of light and dark browns. A favorite in Oregon, more recently gaining notice practically everywhere apples are grown. Stores several months.
Productive scab-resistant tree resists powdery mildew and fireblight. Blooms mid-late. Z4.
Sweet Sixteen
Malus spp. Fall. MN 1630 (MN447 [Frostbite] x Northern Spy) U Minn, 1979.
The first bite into a Sweet Sixteen is always a surprise. Fine-textured crisp flesh contains an astounding unusually complex combination of sweet, nutty and spicy flavors with slight anise essence, sometimes described as cherry, vanilla or even bourbon. We always love Sweet Sixteen season. Truly excellent fresh eating, although it is too sweet for some palates. Also good for pies and sauce.
Round-conic bronze-red medium-sized fruit, striped and washed with rose-red. Annual bearer if thinned. Very hardy moderate-sized vigorous vase-shaped tree grows upright with willowy branches that get loaded with fruit but do not break.
Best grown in northern districts. Keeps till midwinter. Some resistance to scab. Blooms mid to late season. Z3.