Hi-
I wanted to see if any of the experts in this forum could help me identify this Apple variety. The tree is about 8 feet tall and I live in usda zone 10a in San Diego area. Thank you!
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I’ve never grown nor eaten the variety, but I’ll register a guess anyhow. (Gravenstein).
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Thank you
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Looks like Gravenstein to me as well.
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I thought I might as well piggyback on this thread as it seems to have run its course. I had to drive into Victoria BC (zone 9a) today and I found a few interesting apple trees along the way. They were on an old abandoned farmstead in a fairly devoloped urban area. Bizarrely it was right across the road from the gas station I stopped at and a mini-mall. The buildings were all collapsing and the property was totally run down, but it still had some apple trees that had nice crops on them. If I had to guess the apple trees were at least 50 years old (likely much older). The trees were probably 30 feet (or more) tall, and looked old and grizzled.
The apples were medium sized and most were a nice red shade and most appeared to be quite clean. The apples had no scab, which for our wet West coast weather is pretty good for a long abandoned stand of fruit trees.
I was rather surprised to see so many nice red apples hanging on derelict trees at this time in December. I stopped and grabbed a few in hopes of identifying the variety. The apples were fairly crisp (but not quite up to today’s standards), the apples were also fairly juicy. The flavour was nice, but not overly sweet with a hint of sourness, (but not much). Kind of a nice refreshing apple, but not overly remarkable by today’s standards. Sorry, but I’m not the best at trying to describe the flavour of most fruit.
I was simply impressed with such a nice crop of clean apples hanging on a completely rundown abandoned old farm in a urban area.
Anyone have any idea on the variety this might be still hanging in December?
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My guess is Esopus Spitzenburg. Most late apples will taste a lot better after some storage, fwiw.
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If these are Spitzenburg apples they look different from what I have seen and from the ones I grow. The skin of a Spitzenburg apple that I grow looks like hot oil or wax with bubbles in it. That skin looks more smooth with no bubble looks. Of course different areas can produce different looking apples of the same variety.
Here’s what my Spitzenburg apples look like at my location.
I have a few more photos on my computer somewhere.
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This from the apple ID posted by @clarkinks . If these are different apples, I hadn’t realized it until now. Heirloom apple identification
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That is very interesting. Nice find. Like many apples where they are grown can determine different characteristics. Those Spitzenburg are very nice looking apples.