Olpea
Enjoyed the link.
Does anyone know if the research with Kazakhstan apples have produced any named varieties?
Poulin’s Botany of Desire has a very nice chapter on Chapman. The man considered grafting to be defiance to God’s plan, but who knows how many of his trees turned out to be something special that a homesteader ended up propagating clonally, in defiance to Johny’s God? I’ve heard it was common practice to plant maybe 100 seedling apple trees on a homestead and choose 2 or 3 of them to comprise most of an orchard. I’m sure there was a lot of focus on early bearing as well as flavor.
Do you know if they kept the original 100 seedling trees? I would figure they would probably be good for making cider, vinegar, and as cheap livestock food, but I don’t know if that would be enough to keep them or not.
What I meant is that they would graft over most of the original trees to the best of the litter. That’s the story I heard a few years back and that it led to the discovery of all the amazing apples that are the amazing antique varieties many on this forum grow today. While this was going on in America, Europeans were mostly sticking with the same few (hundred) varieties.
I read something similar and believe its a true story. It may have been Lee Calhoon’s book. Hundreds of millions of seedling trees were planted here which produced one of the largest plant breeding experiments in history. Most of the new seedling apples were only good for cider or livestock, but the best varieties were given names and shared with others. Thousands of named varieties were produced during this US “experiment”.
I can’t speak to the question of apples arising from Johnny Appleseed’s work. However, it should be pointed out that Johnny Appleseed’s primary contribution to history was his role as a Methodist circuit rider. He used the planting of apple seeds as a rather clever sermon illustration which connects with several of Jesus’ parables. The apple trees left behind helped people remember the content of sermons that Johnny Appleseed preached years before.
Some years ago (like 10+) I think it was Starks that was selling a Johnny Appleseed tree. Supposedly from one of the original JA trees still growing in Ohio or nearby. I got one, but it did not survive and when I when to ask for a replacement, they no longer had that variety so I had to get something else…
But as others have pointed out, Johnny was NOT into grafting, he was planting seedlings from cider waste seeds. So getting one of his tree’s descendants doesn’t necessarily mean much, other than that tree was good enough for people to keep around.
One of my clients purchased a tree that is supposed to be a graft of a Johnny Appleseed tree. I have no idea if it is authentic- but I’m selling scion wood for $100 dollars a stick. 
They were just talking about him on the news. I forgot why he was in the news but I remember them saying he wasn’t planting apples for eating that they were for cider, and mainly hard cider. They said he got out in the frontier before most people did and planted plots of apples so they could have cider. They also said fresh water was hard to come by and using what water they had and making hard cider it would purify the water. Now I find that hard to believe, but they said it on the news. Not that it makes it true.
Yeah, why would good water be hard to come by in most of the U.S. when settlers first arrived? Certainly aboriginal Americans were not known to destroy the quality of drinking water and most streams would have been fit for drinking, I would assume. Not as if digging a well is high-tech either.
I know that’s what I was thinking.
To my knowledge, cider is just made with apple pressings (i.e. apple juice-no water added). Am I wrong on that?
That’s how I have made it. I guess that would be safe to drink too.
At one point a website in West Virginia indicated that Grimes Golden was Johnny Appleseed’s apple.
I can’t find that site now but here is one where Grimes “supposedly from a seed planted by Johnny Appleseed”