But I wondered if everyone had any thoughts/recommendations on an heirloom apple tree to use in my wedding? Given my obsession with my orchard, my fiancée and I thought fitting to plant a tree to signify the big day, which will also be used during the ceremony. Looking for something regal, heirloom, and with significance. Oh, it also should be zone 4 (or I can zone stretch up to some 5 and put it in a pot and bring it inside the garage).
I don’t have any variety recommendations (maybe Northern Spy or Winter Banana?) but I would suggest after planting you take a couple cuttings and graft them onto a few other trees as a backup. That way you never have to experience the disappointment of your highly sentimental tree slowly dying.
Another option is to take an apple that you like, for example a honeycrisp and propagate that from seed. It’s kind of a 6+ year roll of the dice if you get anything good, but it would make for a good story.
My original thought was ‘wealthy’…it can sound a little snobbish until you think of it in the context of people can find wealth in many forms (a loving partner a prime example). I do like blueberry’s suggestion of ‘keepsake’ as well…
Would be cool to do a tree with two varieties grafted to the same root to signify that you have been united into “one” tree, but still maintain the unique traits which brought you together. Either that or plant two trees in one hole which will essentially behave as a single multi-trunk tree to signify the same.
Wealthy is known to be very cold hardy, so that would be a good thing for the OP in Zone 4b, but my understanding is that it tends to be a smaller tree so might not fit the bill for something regal.
Bramley is one heirloom that makes a big, long-lived tree (the original Bramley lived over 200 years - may still be hanging on, actually).
Buzz up in Z4 in VT has a bunch of wild VT apples. For some reason his Cabot Russet came to mind. Cabot Russet- The best one i have ever found - fully russeted, occasional knobs, aromatic-pear-like, crisp clean white flesh and no sign of any disease. The 50-100 year old tree has fabulous natural form. It is naturally a spreading, low-rounded tree. It has never been pruned, but the branching is well organized and amazingly orderly. It has big spurs, stout branches and bears every year. The grafted offspring follow the parent form strongly, a hard plant to grow into a whip, it just wants to be branched. Vigorous. A really nice plant. The tree is growing on the roadside in Cabot VT. I have found more interesting apples in Cabot than anywhere else in VT. She bears later in the season, the tree holds fruit until the end of November. Stores well for a month or 6 weeks in the root cellar, then shrivels without going to rot.
I like the idea of planting a seed, but maybe consider buying seeds from Skillcult (or similar) so you are getting seeds of known crosses with more likelihood of being decent.
Otherwise, Sweet 16 or Keepsake have nice names…
There’s also Marriage Maker though I’ve never tried it:
