(see also CRAB APPLE)

This fruit of legends - ranging from the tale of an apple as the cause of the Trojan War to the steady hand and eye of William Tell - is classified, along with the pear, as a pome fruit (meaning one with a compartmented core), and in fact “pome” means apple in Latin. Over 7,000 varieties of the apple (Pyrus malus or Malus domestica) are grown worldwide, and no wonder, for apple trees are valued not only for their fruit but also for their beauty in gardens and on lawns. Once the tree begins to bear fruit (after some 5 to 10 years for regular trees, but only 2 to 3 years for dwarf trees), it will continue to do so for upward of a century. Cultivated apples are descendants of wild or crab apples and are believed to have originated in Southwest Asia and the region around the Mediterranean. However, because crab apples still grow wild in Central Asia and Europe, some would widen the area of origin. Evidence indicates that this fruit, reputed to be the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden, was being cultivated and stored at least 5,000 years ago, and probably long before that. Apples were grown by the Etruscans, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans and, as with so many other food plants, were spread about Europe within the Roman Empire and thus have been cultivated there for at least 2,000 years. Apples reached the Americas in the seventeenth century with the early colonists, and today about 2,500 varieties are grown in the United States alone. Only 16, however, account for over 90 percent of the total U.S. production, about half of which goes into apple products such as cider, juice, applesauce, and the like. The leading 8 of the top 16, which account for 80 percent of U.S. production, are as follows:

1. Golden Delicious, which when ripe is yellow and is the most widely consumed apple in the world. It was developed by accident in West Virginia toward the end of the nineteenth century.