What makes an apple an Heirloom Apple? Why do we call the apples of the Crossnore Heritage Orchard, “Heirloom Apples”?
An “heirloom” is something of great value that is handed down for generations. For over 300 years these apple varieties have been grown in home orchards, providing sustenance and traditional memories for generations of American families.
First, let’s start with some Background information.
When Europeans began exploring North America about 450 years ago, they discovered there were no apples trees. There were actually no apples anywhere in the Western Hemisphere at that time!
Our ancestors braved the high seas of the Atlantic Ocean during in the 1600 and 1700s to get here and most could not, practically speaking, bring their apple trees with them. So many of them brought apple seeds from their home countries stored in their baggage.
Mostly from the British Isles and Western Europe our ancestors were quite familiar with apples. Their families had grown apples for hundreds of years and used them for many purposes. They would plant their first orchards with these apple seeds, much like “Johnny Appleseed” did in the late 1700s. They would start their new trees from seed in small nursery beds, then transplant the seedling apple trees into their “seedling tree orchards”.
What is a seedling orchard? If you plant a seed from a a specific apple, the new apple tree that grows will produce apples, but they will be a brand new apple! The new tree will not produce the original apple that the seed came from. This is because apple trees are cross-pollinated; which leads to a random combination of genetic possibilities from both parent trees. The seeds will produce an apple, but not the same apple as either of the parent trees.
They knew this well before hand and they also knew that in their “seedling tree orchard” some of the new apples would be unpalatable, even bitter, while others would be sweet. However, when harvested and pressed together they would produce a useful and delicious juice they called “apple cider”. Most of this apple cider would be fermented, stored, and consumed throughout the winter.
They also knew that among the seedling apple trees they grew, perhaps 1 in 100 might produce a very good apple, a highly useful apple! These apples might have a very sweet, distinctive flavor. They might also have excellent baking characteristics for pies or be best for cider or vinegar. The early settlers were also looking for the best apples to dry and others for to store underground in cellars. Some apple trees were more insect and disease tolerant. They were selecting apple trees based on apples bringing many different qualities.
When our ancestors discovered and selected these “best” apple trees, they would name and soon after, start grafting them. Grafting is an ancient technique that would produce new copies of the original, called clones. These copies of their best apple trees were usually shared with extended family members and neighbors. (For more information, watch for a new page called, “Grafting Apple Trees”.
After 1775, our ancestors of Colonial America quickly spread westward beyond the Appalachian Mountains. For the journey many carried with them grafting wood, also known as “scionwood”, to the new territories. Over a period of less than 100 more years, hundreds of these best American born apple varieties would be growing across most of North America! Here today the very best of these selected apple varieties are now part of American history and remembered as our ‘Heirloom Apples’.
All the apple trees in the Crossnore Heritage Orchard have this same origin story. Plus there are many more heirloom apple varieties not in our communtiy orchard, and each of them were discovered and selected this same way. Today our nation’s heirloom apples are the best American apples selected and saved for us, by our ancestors.
A search for “Southern” heirloom apple varieties was started by a North Carolinian named Creighton Lee Calhoun. Upon retirement in 1980, Mr. Calhoun began searching for the heirloom apples of North Carolina and his search naturally continued into adjoining states as well. He found some of these historic apples still growing in rural communities and on old farms across the South. He continued his search in old fruit-tree catalogs from the 1800s. He and his wife Edith found these after visiting several Southern Agricultural Universities, and the National Agricultural Library in Washington DC. . There he found references for many southern heirloom apple varieties from the past and realized many older apple varieties were missing.
They continued searching the country side, looking for these apple trees. By 2010, Mr. Calhoun published in his seminal book, “Old Southern Apples”. In it he listed a total of 1,800 apple varieties that were once grown in the South. Unfortunatley, he found only 450 were still known to exist.
Lee Calhoun inspired many more heirloom apple hunters to join him in this work. In recent years many apple hunters are at work searching rural areas across the United States., and finding more lost apples! Unfortunately the results are still not encourageing. Nationally it’s estimated that across the United States there may have been 5,000 apple varieties originally selected for grafting and grown by our ancestors. Americans continued to grow many of them in home orchards until around 1900. However, in recent years it’s been realized we may have only around 1,200 left.
So, what happened to all these heirloom apple varieties now missing? One idea is that over the course of about 100 years, maybe 1870 to 1970, a large percentage of the small farms of America, and with them their home orchards, may have just disappeared! As sad as that is, what can we do? Planting heirloom apple varieties in any home orchard today, is one way to help preserve these varieties.
Over the last 20 years heirloom apple tree varieties have become more available. Several nurseries in North Carolina have been established specialising in heirloom varieties. Cooperative. Extension Center Plant Sales in Western NC and across the state are now offering heirloom apple varieties. Nationally there is growing interest in these varieties, and new sources of the apple trees and the scionwood to start new home orchards.
If you don’t have the land to plant apple trees, you can help by donating your time or money to preservation orchards, like this one. Together we can make a better effort to keep these gems of American history growing in our modern landscapes.
Soon the Crossnore Heritage Orchard will be a 501c3 non-profit organization. We’ll welcome donations of any size going for the upkeep of this community heirloom apple orchard. The trees planted in this Orchard will out-live most of us. They have a life expectency of 75-100 years.
