Tree Talk: The Apple Tree
America's naturalized fruit
September, to me, means apples – and I adore apple trees. Usually I reserve my adoration for native trees, but apple trees are an exception to my rule. Domestic apple trees, Malus domestica, are what we in the tree business call a "naturalized species," meaning that they've been part of our ecosystems so long that we consider them as belonging. The same term can be applied to cows and carrots. There are persistent arguments in the ecological field about whether or not a "naturalized" species should persist in a modern ecosystem; in my opinion, migration is part of the natural world.
The original apple trees are thought to have grown in Kazakhstan, which at the time would have been known as the mountainous Tien Shan region of Central Asia. An ancestral variety of wild apple still grows on that land today. However, a second theory argues that modern apples can be traced back to simple European crabapples. In either case, the fruit would have hybridized and co-evolved over 9,000 years or more to create the kitchen staple we know today.
And boy, do we know the apple! The apple shows up in social studies texts alongside George Washington and Johnny Appleseed, is a classic "back to school" symbol and historic teacher gift, is cooked into everything from baby food to spiked cider, and has been the muse of countless artistic and literary works throughout time.
The apple symbolizes the religious connotation of sin, the farmers' connotation of pride, the children's connotation of early learning, the consumers' connotation of a crisp fall day, and, of course, pie. And for some reason, America has adopted this nonnative fruit as a symbol of patriotism – and we should have, for the apple tree itself is an immigrant, originally, as so many Americans once were.
My love of this tree doesn't stop at its deeper meanings, of course. Apple trees are soft, structurally and visually, with thinner branches and leaf colors that lean toward pastel. No two varieties are quite the same. Rarely is an apple tree grown from seed, because apple seeds grow fruits of random traits regardless of the parent tree. They are more often grafted (attached to the trunk of a stronger tree type) in order to effectively grow specific apples. They can live 20 to 100 years depending on species and care, and are typically kept or grown smaller (about 6 to 20 feet) so that fruit can be picked more easily.
However, somewhere in the wilder places of this country, wild apple trees grow up to 40 feet tall and produce strange, uncontrolled, unmitigated, "naturalized" fruit. And I think that's beautiful.
Hannah Rhodes is a volunteer at LEAF and a big fan of trees. She can be reached at hannah@leaferie.org
