10 Kinds of Apples That Were Thought to Be Extinct Have Been Rediscovered (cnn.com) 48
"Ten apple varieties that were thought to be extinct have been recovered thanks to a non-profit group of apple hunters," reports CNN:
Founder of the Lost Apple Project, David Benscoter, told CNN that it all started when he helped a disabled neighbor with some chores. "She lives on her family's property, and they have lived here since the 1900s. She asked if I could pick some apples for her," Benscoter said. "I asked her what kind of apples they were... and started to look up what apples were popular around here back then...."
He ended up buying a book on finding extinct apples. A short time later, he found an old newspaper with the county fair results and compared the list of apples entered in the fair to the list of extinct apples from the book. To his surprise, he found some of the extinct apples matched the list... Benscoter then recruited his friend EJ Brandt when he realized that there wasn't a single apple hunter on the West Coast. They decided to take up the mission for themselves. "I thought it was important enough that I should do something about it," Benscoter said.
They founded the Lost Apple Project and have been hunting for apples for about seven years in Washington and Idaho. They rely on tips to rediscover apples that were planted in the US between the 1800s and early 1900s...
Overall, they have recovered 23 varieties of extinct apples, and the recent discovery of 10 apples is the most they have ever had in a single season.
He ended up buying a book on finding extinct apples. A short time later, he found an old newspaper with the county fair results and compared the list of apples entered in the fair to the list of extinct apples from the book. To his surprise, he found some of the extinct apples matched the list... Benscoter then recruited his friend EJ Brandt when he realized that there wasn't a single apple hunter on the West Coast. They decided to take up the mission for themselves. "I thought it was important enough that I should do something about it," Benscoter said.
They founded the Lost Apple Project and have been hunting for apples for about seven years in Washington and Idaho. They rely on tips to rediscover apples that were planted in the US between the 1800s and early 1900s...
Overall, they have recovered 23 varieties of extinct apples, and the recent discovery of 10 apples is the most they have ever had in a single season.
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Re: Apple III ??! (Score:1)
Of course after dropping it on your desk a few times: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
1900s? (Score:2)
Website is largely broken (Score:4, Informative)
This is a fun little story and all, but their website is incredibly broken and incomplete.
They even have placeholder text underneath each person's photo.
Re: Website is largely broken (Score:1)
Uuum, it is "incredibly broken and incomplete" because you found one bug?
I looked, and did not find any other problems at a glance. Please list all those massive problems you suggest you have found.
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Three of the six main navigation items throw the CMS equivalent of a 404 error; plus one of them (the "Blog") is marked as private and is inaccessible.
Not that I care all that much, but the website does need significant attention if they want people to actually use it.
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No, it is "incredibly broken and incomplete" because there are many bugs. I was there for less than a minute and found several.
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I tried viewing the website, my computer shut down and the magic blue smoke escaped. That's how broken that website is.
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Yes. I'd believe it a lot more if they had some documentation but with the web site so incredibly broken, the veracity of their claims is in doubt.
It doesn't work like the author thinks it does. (Score:2)
Granted, I only learned this a month ago too, but: With apple seeds, you never know what you get. Because they do not breed with their clones. They only breed with different treeswith different genes. So if you plant the resulting apple seeds, it's like the lottery, and you usually get something entirely unrelated.
For this reason, you can never just plant an apple tree of a special kind, like TFS suggests.
You always have to graft a branch of the kind you want onto a preferably hardy apple tree.
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It works exactly like the author thinks that it does.
It helps if you read the article to determine how the author thinks th
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So what you're saying is, apple seeds are like boxes of chocolate?
Shopping for fruit in Asia ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember the first time I went shopping for fruit in China.
There were more than a dozen types of pears: Shinseki pears, Ya pears, Nashi pears, etc. There were additional bins of pears sorted for size and quality.
Then I went to look at the apples. Two bins: "red apples", "green apples".
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You titled your comment "Shopping for fruit in Asia" but only mentioned one country.
I on the other hand have been to Almaty in Kazakhstan, where they've got pretty much every kind of apple grown since that's where apples come from.
There's a reason there's no apple hunters (Score:1)
Re:There's a reason there's no apple hunters (Score:4, Insightful)
Not extinct... "Thought to be extinct".. Obviously they weren't ;)
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EditorDavid misunderstood "do an Apple story" (Score:1)
Me thinks Editor David was a little confused / stoned when the boss said to run another positive Apple story. He did this one instead of talking about the rumor of Apple couragesly removing the charge port on their next devices.
I was going to say removing the screen (Score:1)
I was going to say "couragesly removing the screen from their next iPhone", but Apple already did that and called it the Home Pod.
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Looking for one kind in particular (Score:3)
Did they find an Apple II? I haven't seen one in years.
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Apple IIs are extinct... they were built to time out.
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You’ve forgotten the most extinct Apple - the Apple ///.
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Not the ][ (Score:2)
No, there ][ is well known to still be in common use.
They did, though, find s /// and a Newton . . .
hawk
Way Back When (Score:1)
Way back in the 1900s we had amazing things like computers, televisions, and phones that you could just carry around with you outside. Those phones had batteries that could last a week with normal usage.
Yeah, Yah, Yo so what great-grandpa?
We also had something called Windows ME or Millennial Edition....
Aaarggghh why do you tell us kids horror stories like this? Monsters!
This demonstrates something I strongly suspect. (Score:5, Funny)
That not matter what topic, there are nerds for it.
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You should see the metadata system I have in place for my pr0n files.
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That not matter what topic, there are nerds for it.
Ah, the lesser known rule 34b. But yeah, 7.8 billion people is a mindbogglingly big number which means that almost no matter the topic there's a few that take a particular interest in it. The nice thing is to have a medium to match, can you imagine trying to get a book printed about it? Or a library to stock it? With the Internet all it takes is someone willing to do the leg work and you can get into the really, really long tail of obscure topics.
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I know, isn't it great? But this was true actually long before [amazon.com] people had access to the Internet.
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In fact, the most famous apple nerd ever lived five centuries ago, although in fairness he's more famous for his wives. Henry VIII founded what is today the UK's National Fruit Collection, which has over 2000 apple varieties and smaller numbers for other fruits.
There are over 14,000 lost apple varieties (Score:2)
There are over 14,000 lost apple varieties in North America.
With Cosmic Crisp and the rediscovery of old orchards in the Western US we really are in a new golden age of apple cultivation.
Re:There are over 14,000 lost apple varieties (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to work in a produce market, and twice a week a fellow would pick up all our spoiled produce. I asked him what he did with it, and he said that he had inherited his great uncle's farm, which was totally overrun with blackberry bushes. Himalayan blackberries are almost impossible to exterminate once they've taken hold, but he was gradually clearing them out. He would mow an area, dump the bin of spoiled veggies, and let the pigs out. Once the porkers had finished with the veggies they would start rooting, and completely exterminate the blackberry roots. That fall he brought us six different kinds of organic antique apples, and he said that there were at least half a dozen other varieties that he hadn't reached yet.
Doing the opposite (Score:2)
I've always been a bit of a forager and in late August/September cannot pass an apple tree that's growing wild in a hedge without tasting the fruit. A lot of times it's inedible but sometimes I find some really nice apples that I wouldn't mind having in my garden.
In 2016 I ordered some apple root stocks from an eBay seller and planted them in my garden. Today one of the first scions I grafted has its first blossom so maybe in Autumn I can taste my first fruit.
New apple varieties only happen by cross pollina
Good red Washington Delicious apples (Score:2)
Here's something that's extinct for me: a good red Washington Delicious apple. Red Washington Delicious apples used to be bright red, crisp, and sweet. But now they're dark red, soft, and not so sweet. What happened?
They always seem a couple of weeks past their prime. I guess something changed, so that where I live, we get the old apples now.
Next up (Score:2)
Someone should do this but with old porn.
Tragic Apple (Score:2)
There was a time when Apples eaten were actually nutritious.
An interesting article on the effect of developing cultivars for commercial reasons and not nutrition is
https://archive.nytimes.com/ww... [nytimes.com]
The article's infographic "Nutritional Weaklings in the Supermarket" is illuminating.
https://archive.nytimes.com/ww... [nytimes.com]