Quest for lost apples?

By COBY LaRUE
Staff

Tom Brown of Clemmons has a bit of an unusual hobby by most people's standards.

He spends a good deal of his time searching for "lost" apple varieties.

Brown became interested in old southern apples when he met Maurice Marshall of Pinnacle at the Winston-Salem Farmers Market. Marshall owns a heritage southern apple orchard and sells grafted trees of old apple varieties. Through meeting Marshall, Brown learned of a book called Old Southern Apples by Creighton Lee Calhoun, Jr.

Calhoun wrote the book about old varieties of apples that were rapidly disappearing across the south.

Calhoun listed about 1,600 old southern apples in his book, which is thought to be the most comprehensive listing of old southern apples ever collected.

As for Brown, he became interested in locating the Harper apple, an old apple variety that was once grown around Clemmons and Winston-Salem. From there, Brown discovered that many varieties of old heritage apple trees were dying out without ever being recorded and kept for future use.

The reason the trees are dying out has something to do with the way they reproduce. An apple tree's blossoms must be pollinated by another tree to bear fruit. The seeds of the fruit are not identical in genetic makeup to the tree they come from.

Tom Brown (left) tries to find a Snow apple in a reference book as Walton Joines,
who owns the orchard, looks on.

Therefore, the apple trees that grow from the seeds of a tree's fruit do not reproduce the original tree. This can only be done through grafting the branches to another tree.

In that regard, apples are like people. The children are not exact duplicates of either parent, but instead a random mix of both sets of genes. It has been estimated that only one of 10,000 seedlings occurring naturally will bear fruit worthy of reproduction. In other words, most of the offspring are not as desirous as the parent trees. And many varieties of the old original trees have already died out, Brown said.

"Natural disasters like Hugo, the clearing of land to plant Christmas trees and other factors have led to the demise of many trees in the mountains," Brown noted. Another way that the trees die out is from old age.

With so many varieties of apple already identified, Brown said that it is often difficult, or even impossible, to identify an apple by sight. He relies on Calhoun's expertise in that regard. When the old trees are located, he tries to get pieces grafted so that the trees can live on. Another method of identifying apples is through the memories of older southerners.

Some types of tree that may have been grown in a region or county could be exclusive to only that area. Therefore, if the people who know the name of the apple pass on, the knowledge of that apple dies with them.

"If these people die or get unable to transfer their knowledge to others, then that knowledge is lost," Brown noted. "In that way, there is some urgency in finding and identifying these old apples."

Last Friday, Brown was here talking to some local residents about varieties of apples that they may remember or still have growing. Brown said that the people who usually have the most knowledge of old apples are older farmers.

"I always hope that I might reach someone who can identify an old variety that they could be growing right out in their yard," Brown said with a smile.

Walton Joines of Pine Swamp was one of the people that Brown has made contact with here in the county. Joines had three rare varieties of apples growing at an old family homeplace turned rental property which is located near his home on Pine Swamp Road. Among the varieties that

Joines had were the White June, Baldwin and Snow Apple. "Those are extremely rare," Brown noted.

Joines did not have any apple varieties that have not already been catalogued, but the rare trees can be grafted and preserved for posterity's sake. Brown collected samples of the apples to send to Calhoun to positively identify. Many identical apples were called by different names in different areas, Brown noted.

Joines also took Brown to visit with Hoke Andrews at the home of Steve Roten. Andrews had another unusual apple, called a Grindstone. Later, Brown talked by telephone to John Irwin, a grafter of apples who told him about three old varieties that used to be in the county.

They are the White Sweet, John Hill and the Water apple. Brown has yet to locate any living trees growing these particular apples.

Other lost varieties that were once grown here include the Cain, Perkins (also called Perkins Red, Forney or Fleming) and the Hall (also called Hall's Red, Jenny Seedling, Small Hall and Thomas Late). Brown plans to continue pursuing old varieties of apple as a hobby and also plans to return to this county and find some varieties.

If you have information about old apple trees, contact Brown at apples@netunlimited.net, call (336) 766-5842 or write him at 7335 Bullard Rd., Clemmons, N.C. 27012.

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