I stopped worrying about it after finding a quote attributed to Peter himself, where he was complaining how many seedlings of (some currently unknown ‘russian’ variety) had been sold by travelling salesman as being his own ‘Gideon’ variety. In addition, there’s a New York apple called ‘Primate’ which in other descriptions was declared ‘so much like Gideon as to be indistinguishable’. Add in they all are probably ‘variations on a Duchesse theme’, and it really seems much less critical.
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Geez, if they’re all similar to Duchess I’ve been wasting my time. DoO is not my kind of apple.
At least they should be hardy and I’m sure deer will enjoy them
I didn’t mean to ‘limit’ the potential options for what exists in the DoO gene pool. Think of it like varieties of dogs; anything with a tail that curls ‘up and over’ the back is descended from the ‘Spitz’ variety of canines- an Arctic variant- but in that ‘group’ (or its crossbreds) fits everything from the tiniest Pomeranian to the German Shepherd. In reality, once the ‘Russian’ varieties came here, who knows how complex the combinations have become? I don’t think the current ‘apple genetics’ programs are that in depth, they were developed to identify and link ‘traits’ to specific genes rather than establish lineages after all.
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If nothing else, the pollen from both will be good additions locally.
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