Might try that this week. It’s been a year, so if anything came up it should be easy to spot.
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Something similar happened to a good wild apple tree I found. I thought for sure it was a gonner as they resurfaced the area it had been growing, but a couple weeks ago I saw that multiple suckers had popped up.
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Went to the bakery today and found 2 large crab apple trees in the back parking lot. My daughter loved the flavor and they are really fun to eat. Very sweet and tart. They might need to ripen a little bit longer.
This thread has made me hyper aware of the trees around me. I found a black walnut and hickory tree at my daughters school so I am looking forward to tasting those. Really hoping to come across a persimmon tree…
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There has been myth in circulation that ornamental / wild crabapples are categorically a breeding ground for disease and should be removed near orchards. I have found many of them to be very resistant to the new strains of fireblight and genetically important.
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I just was walking past the local pear rootstock tree and gave one fruit a gentle squeeze and it just popped off into my hand. I carefully tested the other ten or so fruit and one other came off easily. I will see if they will counter ripen this time before cutting them open.
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Those ended up not ripening, but just now we were walking past and noticed that a few fruit had dropped. They also had yellowed up a lot and ever so slightly softened. My taste tester agrees they are delicious:
However, some kind of small tunneling insect had found them as they ripened. Apple maggot maybe?
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I went to check on two apple trees along some old farm roads to see how they did in this unusually early and hot&dry year in total neglect. And I’ll be grafting both next spring.
This one looks like Weißer Wintertaffetapfel:
Still unripe, but edible if you like acidic apples and probably just knocked off during a rainstorm. Pristine fruit.
And this one has roots in something of a swamp and was still very starchy but very promissing taste.
My guess is Gustavs Dauerapfell and I’m guessing it will really keep well until May.
All fruit on the tree looked healthy, just partly eaten by hornets which took offense at my sampling from their larder.
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Lots of good foragers here!
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I used to do lots of fruit foraging back around '08 -'09. I had just got into planting fruit trees and was anxious to get some fruit until the trees produced. So I would drive around looking for abandoned fruit trees. I’d find some apples, pears and even an apricot tree that had some apricots on it. But the apricot tree was eventually cut down on the lot.
I remember on one forum I was on they said you won’t get any peaches unless you spray them. So was hesitant about planting them as I didn’t want to spray trees. But I took a chance anyway and glad I did.
I still do a little foraging, mainly for early apples. All my apple trees are mid to late harvest. They got an abandoned tree that has apple late July here. But it is getting old and don’t know how many seasons it has left. That was what happened to another early tree we had at the park.
Picked these for fun a couple weeks ago at the park. But they are Granny Smith style and not that interested in them. A good way to find fruit trees is to drive around in bloom season and look for them.
When I first got in tree growing, I planted a couple of trees guerilla garden style, but the deer shredded them all. I also tried planting raspberries and blackberries a la guerilla, but none took.
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Dear Tana,
I am sorry to say that I am not personally familiar with these two varieties. By that I mean that I have of course heard of them, but I have newer had an opportunity to taste them. Whatever your two mystery trees are, they look like desirable varieties!
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This is not as much of a find as it is coming upon the tree in the right time to spot the elusive fruit, narrow down the variety and grab one… Reinette Grise du Canada.
I have 3 pears and 1 (different) apple grafted from this location and I thought after only ever seing the fruit too early or being too late, that it was another smaller yellow reinette, which I already have.
I will also be adding this small pear
And here’s fruit on the original pear I grafted onto two quince rootstocks and pút a branch into an established quince. Thinking back, maybe I should give one away. They are the size of a Conference and some:
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I have been following this persimmon find… guy in TN found it growing by the roadside. May interest some.
Info is from social medias and he has an etsy page for seeds now/ scion later.
my wife and I scour the areas around us looking for exceptional fruit and nut trees and this year we had incredibly good luck with pawpaw, but were striking out finding persimmon since we moved. I mean we checked every place I could think of and came up empty handed.
That was until my son and I went on an adventure to find a new pet stick (he’s 4, cut him some slack) and found some MASSIVE, full grown persimmon trees behind our new house. There was one lone female among 7 trees and she had these absolutely beautiful persimmons on her. As we were getting closer to the tree we could hear them falling. I gave my wife a call and we started collecting the persimmons in this post. Large, delicious fruit that has no astringency when it drops from the tree and was ready to eat well before the first frost. September 17th.
I’ll do my best to collect scionwood from the tree this winter but in the meantime I’m listing these persimmon seeds for sale.
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Maybe not. Apples have six seeds and the resulting trees can be quite variable in just about every respect due to the seriously mixed up apple genome.
I have discovered about 25 long keeping “foundlings” which is my name for whats is called “roadside apples” here. I see this quite frequently. A core hits the ground the seeds sprout and you have about 4 or 5 main trunks. They look like one tree that has just gone bushy but in fact they actually are individual trees. Usually only one of the trunks has apples worth bothering with. The annoying thing is that, if you are looking to cut scions for grafting, the other trees are usually so much easier to collect from and have better graftwood. You have to be very careful to only cut your scions from the tree you actually want.
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I know the form you’re talking about, and I’m highly confident that is not what these trees are. On each tree there’s very clearly one older, dominant trunk that has the “good” apples, and younger trunks with tiny yellow apples.
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There are lots of apple trees next to the highways in my area. This one grabbed my attention because it was loaded with dark red apples. They’re OK… a little spongy, decent sweetness, slightly bitter skin. But man, they sure are beautiful.
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I like spongy apples. They kind of melt in your mouth.
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I’m really interested in learning how to better identify some of the old apple trees I come across. Trying to get an idea of approximate age and whether it’s a seedling or a grafted tree. I came across this graphic and I’m curios what others think. Everything is relative of course, but does this overview of tree form seem correct for the roadside trees or any other very old apple trees you’ve encountered?
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i picked up a half peck of Williams pride 2 weeks ago that looked exactly like those and was spot on in the description you gave. tasted like a mac. even had the red splotches in the flesh like yours.
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