Apple Tree Day

What the day is

Apple Tree Day is observed on January 6, in the dormant season when orchards are pruned and, in the cider counties of England, sung to.

Origin and background

The central fact about apples is that they do not breed true. Plant a pip from an apple you enjoyed and the tree that grows will bear fruit unlike its parent, usually small and sour. Apples carry extreme genetic variability, and every seed is a genuinely new combination.

This has a startling consequence. Every Bramley, every Granny Smith, every Cox is a cutting of one original tree, grafted onto rootstock and grafted again, over and over. A named variety is not a breed that reproduces itself. It is a single individual kept alive by cloning, in some cases for centuries. The rootstock it is grafted onto is a separate plant chosen for its own reasons, principally to control the final size of the tree, which is how dwarf orchards are possible.

It also corrects a familiar story. John Chapman, remembered as Johnny Appleseed, planted from seed and disapproved of grafting, which means he was not distributing eating apples. Seedling orchards produce fruit fit mainly for cider, which is what those trees were for, in a period when cider was the safe everyday drink.

The species came from Central Asia. The wild ancestor grows in the mountain forests of Kazakhstan, where fruit close to the domestic apple still grows untended, and the country's largest city takes its name from the apple.

Apples also need a second variety flowering nearby to set fruit, so a lone tree in a garden frequently disappoints.

How to take part

• Prune while the tree is dormant, which is now rather than in spring.
• Plant one, checking that a compatible pollinator flowers nearby.
• Choose a local heritage variety, since most have no commercial future otherwise.
• Try grafting. It is far easier than it looks and is how every orchard exists.
• Grow a tree from a pip as an experiment, knowing the fruit will be its own thing entirely.