Brooklyn Botanical Garden:
In the 19th century, apples came in all shapes and guises, some with rough, sandpapery skin, others as misshapen as potatoes, and ranging from the size of a cherry to bigger than a grapefruit. Colors ran the entire spectrum with a wonderful impressionistic array of patterning—flushes, stripes, splashes, and dots. There was an apple for every community, taste, purpose, and season, with winter varieties especially prized. Apples were used for making cider, baking, drying, eating out of hand—even as livestock feed.
Compare all of this to the 90 or so varieties grown commercially in North America today, or to the handful of shiny cultivars on display at the local supermarket, and you are immediately faced with a pomological conundrum: How could Americans grow 14,000 different apples in the 19th century, and a hundred years later be conversant with only a few varieties, most notably, ‘Red Delicious’, ‘Golden Delicious’, and ‘Granny Smith’?
Really interesting article on how we got to where we are, apple-wise.
I agree about cloned trees will lead to weak trees to tree diseases.
Yup, basically humans have been playing with Evolution
and have yet to pay the price for it.
Not only Apple but Banana is hand pollinate and is basically asexual plant today and is nothing like the wild version just like corn, wheat, potato, etc.
In China, the have pollinate because they used so much pesticide that killed the local bees but of course in US the farmers ship bees in large trucks in order to pollinate.
Not to talk about Beef and other animal rearing is also messed up
and of course Nitrogen Cycle basically nothing like it was just 100 years ago.
Every food we eat has fertilizer (potassium) and Pesticide in it.
In fact our urine can be used as fertilized because of it.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/09/28/human-urine-fertilizer.aspx
“Although the use of urine as fertilizer is rare (though not unheard of) today, it has actually been used as fertilizer since ancient times, and new research suggests it may be wise to bring this ancient tradition back.”
You’re not a real doctor, are you?
I just returned from my summer vacation in northern Wisconsin where I came across a commercial orchard with about 40 different heritage varietals for sale. Fantastic.
That would be cool! Did you try them? How did they taste?