Hacker News Reader

Comment by jefftk | Hacker News Reader

Since apples are propagated by grafting (cloning), has anyone kept original ("heirloom"?) Red Delicious stock from before it was optimized for looks? I'd be very curious to try one!

View on HN

I lived in Iowa for a time not too far from where they were originally from, and the red delicious apples there in local orchards on old trees are probably pretty close to what they were originally like. They're smaller than the prototypical ones you find in the grocery, with a thinner skin, more mottled or striped and round in appearance, and have flavor sort of like mcintosh.

If you know what they are, you'll probably be able to identify the red delicious flavor, mostly in the skin I think. However, my guess is if you gave one to a bunch of people they probably wouldn't recognize them as red delicious apples. They might identify them as mcintosh or something like that.

If you go around local orchards, you'll see them from time to time — I've seen them in CT, MD, NY, PA, and VA. If they don't look like supermarket apples, they're worth eating.

I recently watched a youtube video about why avocados cannot be grown by seed and learned about grafting. Interesting stuff. Didn't know apples also were grown through grafting.

There's an interesting discussion in Gun, Germs, and Steel where Jared Diamond claims that wild apples were inedible (IIRC due to cyanide in the seeds) and could only be domesticated after the invention of grafting technology.

also give a read about those green apples. (Granny Smith?). IIRC, all of these are grafts from one single tree. cmiw pls .

Reply on news.ycombinator.com