As some of my apples ripen and I don’t know what they are, I hope this group can help id them. This one is a bit tart and not crisp. The skin is firm. Not a very large apple.
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Just wanted to add… these were on the ground under the tree and were graciously picked by the local critters…
Bob:
What state are in you to be getting ripe apple now? From the photos and your statement that they are not crisp it sure looks like some type of McIntosh hybrid or
paulared? Just a guess based on the shape and assuming it must be some type of early apple. Early McIntosh? I remember tasting those once in August (in Wisconsin). They were fantastic but I recall very biennial bearing so nobody wants to grow early McIntosh around here. Just my thoughts based on the season and your photos.
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I was also thinking McIntosh.
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Ohio, I thought it might be too early Macintosh. Also, it’s not crisp.
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What else in your area is ripe?
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Maybe Empire!
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Here in S.E. WI, Early McIntosh (not to be confused with McIntosh) ripens in August.
McIntosh ripens in mid-late Sept and Empire always seems to be early October.
The last time I saw Early McIntosh trees for sale was from Miller’s Nursery before they were sold out to Stark Nursery. I hope yours is Early McIntosh. Is your tree very biennial bearing? I recall Early McIntosh to have a good fruit set one year and then basically no fruit the following year. It was a mighty tasty apple when I had it so many years ago.
I grow LindaMac strain of McIntosh and it is just starting to show some color to the fruit. I suppose Ohio is much farther along in their growing season but I would think Empire may be a bit too early to pick at this time.
I suppose with the many McIntosh crosses out there it will be hard to positively i.d. but based on the time of year I will stick to Early McIntosh as a possibility.
Any other readers growing Early McIntosh? If so, are yours already ripening?
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I don’t have Early Mac, but that second sentence nails it for me as well Spartan.
I don’t have much to add except that for me the Empire color seems always to be much deeper red than the Mac during the more common September harvesting of the Mac’s.
Here are two shots from '15. As you can see from the dates I started taking Mac’s in mid September, but still had some on the tree on Oct 9th. As you might expect, the later apples were more colored, but it’s usually mid/late September on my Mac and early October before Empire is ready here.
Mac’s will start raining down when they’re ready, and so while the September 19th picture shows a fair amount of yellow background they were good to go.
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It very well could be an Early Mac as I purchase several from Stark back in the day. I thought a Mac would have firmer flesh. It is very white but really mushy.
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I have a young UltraMac that I bought from Stark Bro’s in '14. It put on about a half a dozen apples this year, and they were picked maybe 7-10 days ago. We’d had hail come through so a couple had hail hits and they were coloring up already so I grabbed them. But like most Mac’s they don’t keep the best. They were crunchy off the tree, but I still have a couple on the counter and I just had a slice of one - mushy…
But it looks like this UltraMac may ripen quite earlier than my plain old big Mac tree.
I’m not totally certain if this will be the case, but it seems to me that pretty young trees often seem to show riper looking fruit early when there’s only a few and weather has been toasty. So I think the actual harvest date on a more mature UltraMac is still probably unknown for me, but I suspect earlier.
Here’s a couple shots of the Starkspur UltraMac if it will help any. The cut apple is VERY aromatic and discolors pretty quickly after cutting.
The two pictures are just to show both sides of the whole uncut apple for color comparison.
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Instead of creating a new thread, I tagged along @BobC’s thread.
Can anyone identify these two apples, please? They are both small apples.
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Not sure about the one on the left, but the one on the right is a dead ringer for my Muscat de Venus.
Based on color, size, the slightly flattened shape, and the fact that you already have one Etter apple, is there any chance that the one on the left might be Crimson Gold?
Jerry,
My Muscat de Venus has more color to it.
Here is my MdV on a more colored and less colored sides and the bottom of the same apple.
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The unknown one has a pale yellow color on the bottom half of the fruit.