Three years ago, I purchased two Sangre de Toro apple trees from Cummins that turned out to not be true to label. Sangre de Toro is supposed to be an late autumn apple, deeply red, hence the name Bull’s blood. My apple trees are definitely a summer apple instead. Very healthy and mildly sweet, not spectacular, just ok. Maybe someone can recognize the variety.
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I really hate nursery’s sending wrong tree. It is a lot of time wasted to find out.
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I would contact Cummins nursery and ask for a list of the cultivars they were selling in the year that you purchased your tree. Cummins carries a fair number of trees year after year but they also have cultivars that they carry rarely or even only one year. I would explain the situation… that you want help to identify a misidentified tree.
They are thousands of apple cultivars many of which look very similar. You need some way to narrow the list of possibilities down to something that people can help you with. Also it’s possible that the apple was only partially misidentified. In this case the rootstock on the label is correct but the cultivar is wrong. This could also aid in identification.
So-
I would contact Cummins and get a list with the cultivars and cultivar/rootstocks sold the year you purchased your tree. Then look at the list for cultivars that were sold on the same rootstock that your tree was delivered on. Most likely you will find your apple. If you can’t, move to the full list and see if you can find an apple with the same characteristics as your apple. If you run into trouble you could post again on this thread.
You can use the links below for pictures of apple candidates as well as the Cummins website.
https://pomiferous.com/applebyname/co-op-34-id-1493
Apple - Florina - tasting notes, identification, reviews
Also let us know if your successful. Good luck hunting.
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Scanning quickly through Cummins’ catalog, one possible match for your mystery apple would be Zestar: it’s an early apple, your taste description squares pretty well with the ones I’ve had, the shape and coloring look generally right, supposed to be disease resistant so it makes sense that it would be a healthy tree, and the prominent lenticels (white spots) are pretty distinctive. And it’s a fairly popular variety, so it’s more likely that they would have a good amount of trees in stock, which makes it relatively more likely that some might end up going into the wrong order.
Check out these pictures and see what you think: Zestar!® Apple on G.11 - Cummins Nursery - Fruit Trees, Scions, and Rootstocks for Apples, Pears, Cherries, Plums, Peaches, and Nectarines.
Picture 2 is the one where I see a strong resemblance.
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Thank you, @poncirusguy, @mroot, @JinMA ! I’ll email Cummins to try to solve the mystery. Thank you for your suggestions.
Mystery solved, Steve Cummins identified the apple as Dayton. Now on a quest to find out more about it!
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