I stumbled upon two really nice abandoned apple trees today, in Southern New Hampshire. They were on the wrong side of a chain link fence between a parking lot and a wetland. Both had quite good apples, but the one that really got my attention was the one pictured below.
I’m fairly confident they were intentionally planted at one point and not just random seedlings, as they both had a second trunk with small apples like this expect from a rootstock. Also, I know that area had houses as recently as 20 years ago, so it’s entirely possible they were planted when it was someone’s backyard and miraculously dodged the bulldozers.
This one was deep red on the tree, suggesting Red Delicious. 1 1/2 -2" apples, relatively clear of flyspeck, scab, and codling moth. Flesh was very crisp, fairly dense. Taste was quite sweet with a good balancing tartness. Juice was sweet enough to leave a sticky residue, which is impressive with the cool, rain-soaked summer we’ve had. Leaves on the tree were noticeably small. The closest I can come up with is Chestnut, but the fruit looks like it’s shaped and colored differently. Anyone have any ideas? I plan to collect scion this winter and graft it who knows where.
Also, I looked back as far as I could on aerial imagery, and it looks like that lot became a fast food restaurant back in 1984. So either the trees are over 40 years old (quite possible) or someone along the way planted apple trees at their fast food location.
Cool find! About Kerr: I don’t grow Kerr, but from the Fedco pictures, the color looks different, and I don’t see the prominent lenticels that appear on your apple.
That’s an interesting suggestion. Shape doesn’t look quite right still, but I only took pictures of a few apples. Pomiferous says the Newtown Spitzenburg has coarse flesh, but I’d say this is more on the medium to close-grained size. Still a contender for the ID, though. I’ll have to see if I can make it back out there and get some more samples. For science, of course…
