Discovered quite possibly the best dessert quality feral apple I’ve ever tasted this week. It is definitely past its prime right now, getting quite mealy on the tree, but the flavor had me so intrigued I ate several to the core anyway. A great sign of this fruits potential. The tree is growing along a back road in my hometown, multi trunked, clearly has been mowed down and hacked back by the road crews several times over the years, but it is doing quite well for itself considering. Large, clean (considering the tree is growing in a ditch completely untended during the wettest growing season in memory), aromatic, attractive yellow fruit with the perfect sugar acid balance. This apple is extremely sweet with an average brix of 15-16 (most local orchard fruit I’ve tested is running 11-12 brix this year).
I’m calling it “Mama Duck”. The backstory is an interesting one I think. This apple is growing on the edge of a farm (and road) where a woman used to live that the locals would call “Mama Duck”, it was her CB radio handle back in the day when they first came out. She was a local legend of sorts, liked and respected by all. She was known for running a strong crew of blueberry rakers on her farm in the summers and out fishing and hunting even the most accomplished outdoorsmen. When Mama Duck passed away she was buried at the top of her very steep blueberry baron that overlooked her farm…and it just so happens this apple as well. I couldn’t think of a more fitting name.
I’m excited to grow and learn the habits of this apple. It will definitely be finding a home in my orchard and nursery.
For sure will be going back for scion. And yes, it’s crazy how well apples like it here, they line the roads here. I drive by hundreds on just my ride to work every morning.
I mean it should be obvious when you travel away from home domestically or internationally that it’s a different environment. I just always find it fascinating.
Local weeds in England are beautiful flowers by the road to me… And I’m sure visa versa for people who travel here… There is always something they aren’t used to but I no longer even see or notice.
Seeing things that only exist on a super market growing in the wild so to speak is cool.
I’m the same with snow since we rarely get to see it here.
That’s one thing that stands out in my memory from when I visited Maine in 2010. We drove from Portland to the Machiasport area and back. It seemed like there were wild apples growing everywhere, especially in areas very close to the coast.
I find wild apples and crabs here, but nowhere near the numbers that grow in ME.
Sure. As long as things go as planned and I can make it back to the tree this winter, I’ll throw a few scion on my website for those interested. Check back this winter.
i have a few trees i found that may be worthy to graft but they are cooking apples. very rare to find a wild dessert apple growing this far north. if you do its usually a crab. im interested in some scion as well. i would trade you for some of those crab that lady told me about. going there tom. to sample it.
Great find. I’d love to go apple hunting but sadly the most id be likely to find is some forgotten blueberries. If you do get a scion going you’ll have to update us. Great name given the context.
I found some weird pears while I was out looking for wild pawpaws. Rock hard, so I didn’t taste one. Definitely don’t have a gene conferring immunity to sooty blotch and/or fly speck.
It takes about 10 years to evaluate an apple and certainly comparing yours to apples that do not surpass 12 brix is a pretty low bar. I’ve never had an apple under about 14 that I consider good and when we don’t get the crazy rain we have this year, some varieties can surpass 20. None I’ve harvested are below about 14 brix, even this year, except some Ginger Golds that I let drop and rot- but the season for apples is really just beginning here for me. It is the wettest growing season in the last 30 years in my part of NY. I am typing while it rains, in fact, when I should be packing up for work in the orchards I manage.
If you got a ton of rain there, perhaps all the weeds at the base of the tree helped remove some of that excess water and improved the brix. The tree doesn’t look overloaded with fruit either, which often dooms untended seedlings to bad reviews- biennial over cropping of small, bland apples.
I have noticed over the years that green or yellow apples are often the ones that produce fruit in the wild.
Good luck, I hope your evaluation holds up to 2033. I realize that everything I’ve written here may be old to you, given you have a nursery and an apparent high interest in apple trees, but this is a group discussion and I’m not sure which members of our group have your experience.
Absolutely. No one here (I hope) is claiming this to be the next coming. Heck, I haven’t even seen it at peak ripeness let alone a whole growing season. I’m just impressed enough (I have the luxury of sampling hundreds of feral apples) to name it, graft it and continue to learn it . If others want to come along for the ride I’m happy to allow them to do so.
Also as far as the brix, yes, we have had a total washout this year and all the local orchard fruit I have tested seems to have suffered dramatically sweetness wise.
This is a great year for evaluating variety performances under the influence of way too much water and too few sunny days. I’m wondering it this isn’t a new trend as interior high heat draws more moist and cooler marine air inland. It has been quite a while since we had a true drought summer. Further inland, even in NYS, it is a somewhat different story.
We are getting about another 4" today after 3" less than a week ago and had one rain that brought 8" overnight quite a few weeks ago. That last event never happened before, to my knowledge, without hurricane storm influence.
Forecasts have been unusually unreliable as well, where predicted rainfall is often doubled on the day a storm arrives as with the current one.
