THE HISTORY OF THE APPLE-TREE.
It is remarkable how closely the history of the Apple-tree is
connected with that of man. The geologist tells us that the order of
the Rosaceae, which includes the Apple, also the true Grasses, and
the Labiatae, or Mints, were introduced only a short time previous
It appears that apples made a part of the food of that unknown
primitive people whose traces have lately been found at the bottom
of the Swiss lakes, supposed to be older than the foundation of
Rome, so old that they had no metallic implements. An entire black
and shrivelled Crab-Apple has been recovered from their stores.
Tacitus says of the ancient Germans that they satisfied their hunger
with wild apples, among other things.
Niebuhr [Footnote: A German historical critic of ancient life.]
observes that "the words for a house, a field, a plough, ploughing,
wine, oil, milk, sheep, apples, and others relating to agriculture
and the gentler ways of life, agree in Latin and Greek, while the
Latin words for all objects pertaining to war or the chase are
utterly alien from the Greek." Thus the apple-tree may be considered
a symbol of peace no less than the olive.
The apple was early so important, and so generally distributed, that
its name traced to its root in many languages signifies fruit in
general. maelon (Melon), in Greek, means an apple, also the fruit of
other trees, also a sheep and any cattle, and finally riches in
general.
The apple-tree has been celebrated by the Hebrews, Greeks, Romans,
and Scandinavians. Some have thought that the first human pair were
tempted by its fruit. Goddesses are fabled to have contended for it,
dragons were set to watch it, and heroes were employed to pluck it.
[Footnote: The Greek myths especially referred to are The Choice of
Paris and The Apples of the Hesperides.]
The tree is mentioned in at least three places in the Old Testament,
and its fruit in two or three more. Solomon sings, "As the apple-
tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons."
And again, "Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples." The
noblest part of man's noblest feature is named from this fruit, "the
apple of the eye."
The apple-tree is also mentioned by Homer and Herodotus. Ulysses saw
in the glorious garden of Alcinous "pears and pomegranates and
apple-trees bearing beautiful fruit." And according to Homer, apples
were among the fruits which Tantalus could not pluck, the wind ever
blowing their boughs away from him. Theophrastus knew and described
the apple-tree as a botanist.
According to the prose Edda, [Footnote: The stories of the early
Scandinavians.] "Iduna keeps in a box the apples which the gods,
when they feel old age approaching, have only to taste of to become
young again. It is in this manner that they will be kept in
renovated youth until Ragnarok" (or the destruction of the Gods).
I learn from Loudon [Footnote: An English authority on the culture
of orchards and gardens.] that "the ancient Welsh bards were
rewarded for excelling in song by the token of the apple-spray;" and
"in the Highlands of Scotland the apple-tree is the badge of the
clan Lamont."
The apple-tree belongs chiefly to the northern temperate zone.
Loudon says, that "it grows spontaneously in every part of Europe
except the frigid zone, and throughout Western Asia, China and
Japan." We have also two or three varieties of the apple indigenous
in North America. The cultivated apple-tree was first introduced
into this country by the earliest settlers, and is thought to do as
well or better here than anywhere else. Probably some of the
varieties which are now cultivated were first introduced into
Britain by the Romans.
Pliny, adopting the distinction of Theophrastus, says, "Of trees
there are some which are altogether wild, some more civilized."
Theophrastus includes the apple among the last; and, indeed, it is
in this sense the most civilized of all trees. It is as harmless as
a dove, as beautiful as a rose, and as valuable as flocks and herds.
It has been longer cultivated than any other, and so is more
humanized; and who knows but, like the dog, it will at length be no
longer traceable to its wild original? It migrates with man, like
the dog and horse and cow; first, perchance, from Greece to Italy,
thence to England, thence to America; and our Western emigrant is
still marching steadily toward the setting sun with the seeds of the
apple in his pocket, or perhaps a few young trees strapped to his
load. At least a million apple-trees are thus set farther westward
this year than any cultivated ones grew last year. Consider how the
Blossom-Week, like the Sabbath, is thus annually spreading over the
prairies; for when man migrates he carries with him not only his
birds, quadrupeds, insects, vegetables, and his very sward, but his
orchard also.
The leaves and tender twigs are an agreeable food to many domestic
animals, as the cow, horse, sheep, and goat; and the fruit is sought
after by the first, as well as by the hog. Thus there appears to
have existed a natural alliance between these animals and this tree
from the first. "The fruit of the Crab in the forests of France" is
said to be "a great resource for the wild boar."
Not only the Indian, but many indigenous insects, birds, and
quadrupeds, welcomed the apple-tree to these shores. The tent-
caterpillar saddled her eggs on the very first twig that was formed,
and it has since shared her affections with the wild cherry; and the
canker-worm also in a measure abandoned the elm to feed on it. As it
grew apace, the bluebird, robin, cherry-bird, king-bird, and many
more, came with haste and built their nests and warbled in its
boughs, and so became orchard-birds, and multiplied more than ever.
It was an era in the history of their race. The downy woodpecker
found such a savory morsel under its bark, that he perforated it in
a ring quite round the tree before be left it,--a thing which he had
never done before, to my knowledge. It did not take the partridge
long to find out how sweet its buds were, and every winter eve she
flew, and still flies, from the wood, to pluck them, much to the
farmer's sorrow. The rabbit, too, was not slow to learn the taste of
its twigs and bark; and when the fruit was ripe, the squirrel half-
rolled, half-carried it to his hole; and even the musquash crept up
the bank from the brook at evening, and greedily devoured it, until
he had worn a path in the grass there; and when it was frozen and
thawed, the crow and the jay were glad to taste it occasionally. The
owl crept into the first apple-tree that became hollow, and fairly
hooted with delight, finding it just the place for him; so, settling
down into it, he has remained there ever since.
My theme being the Wild Apple, I will merely glance at some of the
seasons in the annual growth of the cultivated apple, and pass on to
my special province.
The flowers of the apple are perhaps the most beautiful of any tree,
so copious and so delicious to both sight and scent. The walker is
frequently tempted to turn and linger near some more than usually
handsome one, whose blossoms are two thirds expanded. How superior
it is in these respects to the pear, whose blossoms are neither
colored nor fragrant!
By the middle of July, green apples are so large as to remind us of
coddling, and of the autumn. The sward is commonly strewed with
little ones which fall still-born, as it were,--Nature thus thinning
them for us. The Roman writer Palladius said: "If apples are
inclined to fall before their time, a stone placed in a split root
will retain them." Some such notion, still surviving, may account
for some of the stones which we see placed to be overgrown in the
forks of trees. They have a saying in Suffolk, England,--
"At Michaelmas time, or a little before,
Half an apple goes to the core."
Early apples begin to be ripe about the first of August; but I think
that none of them are so good to eat as some to smell. One is worth
more to scent your handkerchief with than any perfume which they
sell in the shops. The fragrance of some fruits is not to be
forgotten, along with that of flowers. Some gnarly apple which I
pick up in the road reminds me by its fragrance of all the wealth of
Pomona, [Footnote: The Roman goddess of fruit and fruit-trees.]--
carrying me forward to those days when they will be collected in
golden and ruddy heaps in the orchards and about the cider-mills.
A week or two later, as you are going by orchards or gardens,
especially in the evenings, you pass through a little region
possessed by the fragrance of ripe apples, and thus enjoy them
without price, and without robbing anybody.
There is thus about all natural products a certain volatile and
ethereal quality which represents their highest value, and which
cannot be vulgarized, or bought and sold. No mortal has ever enjoyed
the perfect flavor of any fruit, and only the godlike among men
begin to taste its ambrosial qualities. For nectar and ambrosia are
only those fine flavors of every earthly fruit which our coarse
palates fail to perceive,--just as we occupy the heaven of the gods
without knowing it. When I see a particularly mean man carrying a
load of fair and fragrant early apples to market, I seem to see a
contest going on between him and his horse, on the one side, and the
apples on the other, and, to my mind, the apples always gain it.
Pliny says that apples are the heaviest of all things, and that the
oxen begin to sweat at the mere sight of a load of them. Our driver
begins to lose his load the moment he tries to transport them to
where they do not belong, that is, to any but the most beautiful.
Though he gets out from time to time, and feels of them, and thinks
they are all there, I see the stream of their evanescent and
celestial qualities going to heaven from his cart, while the pulp
and skin and core only are going to market. They are not apples, but
pomace. Are not these still Iduna's apples, the taste of which keeps
the gods forever young? and think you that they will let Loki or
Thjassi carry them off to Jotunheim, [Footnote: Jotunheim (Ye(r)t'-
un-hime) in Scandinavian mythology was the home of the Jotun or
Giants. Loki was a descendant of the gods, and a companion of the
Giants. Thjassi (Tee-assy) was a giant.] while they grow wrinkled
and gray? No, for Ragnarok, or the destruction of the gods, is not
yet.
There is another thinning of the fruit, commonly near the end of
August or in September, when the ground is strewn with windfalls;
and this happens especially when high winds occur after rain. In
some orchards you may see fully three quarters of the whole crop on
the ground, lying in a circular form beneath the trees, yet hard and
green,--or, if it is a hillside, rolled far down the hill. However,
it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good. All the country over,
people are busy picking up the windfalls, and this will make them
cheap for early apple-pies.
In October, the leaves falling, the apples are more distinct on the
trees. I saw one year in a neighboring town some trees fuller of
fruit than I remember to have ever seen before, small yellow apples
hanging over the road. The branches were gracefully drooping with
their weight, like a barberry-bush, so that the whole tree acquired
a new character. Even the topmost branches, instead of standing
erect, spread and drooped in all directions; and there were so many
poles supporting the lower ones, that they looked like pictures of
banian-trees. As an old English manuscript says, "The mo appelen the
tree bereth the more sche boweth to the folk."
Surely the apple is the noblest of fruits. Let the most beautiful or
the swiftest have it. That should be the "going" price of apples.
Between the fifth and twentieth of October I see the barrels lie
under the trees. And perhaps I talk with one who is selecting some
choice barrels to fulfil an order. He turns a specked one over many
times before he leaves it out. If I were to tell what is passing in
my mind, I should say that every one was specked which he had
handled; for he rubs off all the bloom, and those fugacious ethereal
qualities leave it. Cool evenings prompt the farmers to make haste,
and at length I see only the ladders here and there left leaning
against the trees.
It would be well if we accepted these gifts with more joy and
gratitude, and did not think it enough simply to put a fresh load of
compost about the tree. Some old English customs are suggestive at
least. I find them described chiefly in Brand's "Popular
Antiquities." It appears that "on Christmas eve the farmers and
their men in Devonshire take a large bowl of cider, with a toast in
it, and carrying it in state to the orchard, they salute the apple-
trees with much ceremony, in order to make them bear well the next
season." This salutation consists in "throwing some of the cider
about the roots of the tree, placing bits of the toast on the
branches," and then, "encircling one of the best bearing trees in
the orchard, they drink the following toast three several times:--
"'Here's to thee, old apple-tree,
Whence thou mayst bud, and whence thou mayst blow,
And whence thou mayst bear apples enow!
Hats-full! caps-full!
Bushel, bushel, sacks-full!
And my pockets full, too! Hurra!'"
Also what was called "apple-howling" used to be practised in various
counties of England on New-Year's eve. A troop of boys visited the
different orchards, and, encircling the apple-trees, repeated the
following words:--
"Stand fast, root! bear well, top!
Pray God send us a good howling crop:
Every twig, apples big;
Every bow, apples enow!"
"They then shout in chorus, one of the boys accompanying them on a
cow's horn. During this ceremony they rap the trees with their
sticks." This is called "wassailing" the trees, and is thought by
some to be "a relic of the heathen sacrifice to Pomona."
Herrick sings,--
"Wassaile the trees that they may beare
You many a plum and many a peare;
For more or less fruits they will bring
As you so give them wassailing."
Our poets have as yet a better right to sing of cider than of wine;
but it behooves them to sing better than English Phillips did, else
they will do no credit to their Muse.
THE WILD APPLE.
So much for the more civilized apple-trees (urbaniores, as Pliny
calls them). I love better to go through the old orchards of
ungrafted apple-trees, at whatever season of the year,--so
irregularly planted: sometimes two trees standing close together;
and the rows so devious that you would think that they not only had
grown while the owner was sleeping, but had been set out by him in a
somnambulic state. The rows of grafted fruit will never tempt me to
wander amid them like these. But I now, alas, speak rather from
memory than from any recent experience, such ravages have been made!
Some soils, like a rocky tract called the Easterbrooks Country in my
neighborhood, are so suited to the apple, that it will grow faster
in them without any care, or if only the ground is broken up once a
year, than it will in many places with any amount of care. The
owners of this tract allow that the soil is excellent for fruit, but
they say that it is so rocky that they have not patience to plough
it, and that, together with the distance, is the reason why it is
not cultivated. There are, or were recently, extensive orchards
there standing without order. Nay, they spring up wild and bear well
there in the midst of pines, birches, maples, and oaks. I am often
surprised to see rising amid these trees the rounded tops of apple-
trees glowing with red or yellow fruit, in harmony with the autumnal
tints of the forest.
Going up the side of a cliff about the first of November, I saw a
vigorous young apple-tree, which, planted by birds or cows, had shot
up amid the rocks and open woods there, and had now much fruit on
it, uninjured by the frosts, when all cultivated apples were
gathered. It was a rank wild growth, with many green leaves on it
still, and made an impression of thorniness. The fruit was hard and
green, but looked as if it would be palatable in the winter. Some
was dangling on the twigs, but more half-buried in the wet leaves
under the tree, or rolled far down the hill amid the rocks. The
owner knows nothing of it. The day was not observed when it first
blossomed, nor when it first bore fruit, unless by the chickadee.
There was no dancing on the green beneath it in its honor, and now
there is no hand to pluck its fruit,--which is only gnawed by
squirrels, as I perceive. It has done double duty,--not only borne
this crop, but each twig has grown a foot into the air. And this is
such fruit! bigger than many berries, we must admit, and carried
home will be sound and palatable next spring. What care I for
Iduna's apples so long as I can get these?
When I go by this shrub thus late and hardy, and see its dangling
fruit, I respect the tree, and I am grateful for Nature's bounty,
even though I cannot eat it. Here on this rugged and woody hillside
has grown an apple-tree, not planted by man, no relic of a former
orchard, but a natural growth, like the pines and oaks. Most fruits
which we prize and use depend entirely on our care. Corn and grain,
potatoes, peaches, melons, etc., depend altogether on our planting;
but the apple emulates man's independence and enterprise. It is not
simply carried, as I have said, but, like him, to some extent, it
has migrated to this New World, and is even, here and there, making
its way amid the aboriginal trees; just as the ox and dog and horse
sometimes run wild and maintain themselves.
Even the sourest and crabbedest apple, growing in the most
unfavorable position, suggests such thoughts as these, it is so
noble a fruit.
THE CRAB.
Nevertheless, our wild apple is wild only like myself, perchance,
who belong not to the aboriginal race here, but have strayed into
the woods from the cultivated stock. Wilder still, as I have said,
there grows elsewhere in this country a native and aboriginal Crab-
Apple, "whose nature has not yet been modified by cultivation." It
is found from Western New York to Minnesota and southward. Michaux
[Footnote: Pronounced mee-sho; a French botanist and traveller.]
says that its ordinary height "is fifteen or eighteen feet, but it
is sometimes found twenty-five or thirty feet high," and that the
large ones "exactly resemble the common apple-tree." "The flowers
are white mingled with rose-color, and are collected in corymbs."
They are remarkable for their delicious odor. The fruit, according
to him, is about an inch and a half in diameter, and is intensely
acid. Yet they make fine sweet-meats, and also cider of them. He
concludes, that "if, on being cultivated, it does not yield new and
palatable varieties, it will at least be celebrated for the beauty
of its flowers, and for the sweetness of its perfume."
I never saw the Crab-Apple till May, 1861. I had heard of it through
Michaux, but more modern botanists, so far as I know, have not
treated it as of any peculiar importance. Thus it was a half-
fabulous tree to me. I contemplated a pilgrimage to the "Glades," a
portion of Pennsylvania, where it was said to grow to perfection. I
thought of sending to a nursery for it, but doubted if they had it,
or would distinguish it from European varieties. At last I had
occasion to go to Minnesota, and on entering Michigan I began to
notice from the cars a tree with handsome rose-colored flowers. At
first I thought it some variety of thorn; but it was not long before
the truth flashed on me, that this was my long-sought Crab-Apple. It
was the prevailing flowering shrub or tree to be seen from the cars
at that season of the year,--about the middle of May. But the cars
never stopped before one, and so I was launched on the bosom of the
Mississippi without having touched one, experiencing the fate of
Tantalus. On arriving at St. Anthony's Falls, I was sorry to be told
that I was too far north for the Crab-Apple. Nevertheless I
succeeded in finding it about eight miles west of the Falls; touched
it and smelled it, and secured a lingering corymb of flowers for my
herbarium. This must have been near its northern limit.
HOW THE WILD APPLE GROWS.
But though these are indigenous, like the Indians, I doubt whether
they are any hardier than those back-woodsmen among the apple-trees,
which, though descended from cultivated stocks, plant themselves in
distant fields and forests, where the soil is favorable to them. I
know of no trees which have more difficulties to contend with, and
which more sturdily resist their foes. These are the ones whose
story we have to tell. It oftentimes reads thus :--
Near the beginning of May, we notice little thickets of apple-trees
just springing up in the pastures where cattle have been,--as the
rocky ones of our Easter-brooks Country, or the top of Nobscot Hill
in Sudbury. One or two of these perhaps survive the drought and
other accidents,--their very birthplace defending them against the
encroaching grass and some other dangers, at first.
In two years' time 't had thus
Reached the level of the rocks,
Admired the stretching world,
Nor feared the wandering flocks.
But at this tender age
Its sufferings began:
There came a browsing ox
And cut it down a span.
This time, perhaps, the ox does not notice it amid the grass; but
the next year, when it has grown more stout, he recognizes it for a
fellow-emigrant from the old country, the flavor of whose leaves and
twigs he well knows; and though at first he pauses to welcome it,
and express his surprise, and gets for answer, "The same cause that
brought you here brought me," he nevertheless browses it again,
reflecting, it may be, that he has some title to it.
Thus cut down annually, it does not despair; but, putting forth two
short twigs for every one cut off, it spreads out low along the
ground in the hollows or between the rocks, growing more stout and
scrubby, until it forms, not a tree as yet, but a little pyramidal,
stiff, twiggy mass, almost as solid and impenetrable as a rock. Some
of the densest and most impenetrable clumps of bushes that I have
ever seen, as well, on account of the closeness and stubbornness of
their branches as of their thorns, have been these wild-apple
scrubs. They are more like the scrubby fir and black spruce on which
you stand, and sometimes walk, on the tops of mountains, where cold
is the demon they contend with, than anything else. No wonder they
are prompted to grow thorns at last, to defend themselves against
such foes. In their thorniness, however, there is no malice, only
some malic acid.
The rocky pastures of the tract I have referred to--for they
maintain their ground best in a rocky field--are thickly sprinkled
with these little tufts, reminding you often of some rigid gray
mosses or lichens, and you see thousands of little trees just
springing up between them, with the seed still attached to them.
Being regularly clipped all around each year by the cows, as a hedge
with shears, they are often of a perfect conical or pyramidal form,
from one to four feet high, and more or less sharp, as if trimmed by
the gardener's art. In the pastures on Nobscot Hill and its spurs
they make fine dark shadows when the sun is low. They are also an
excellent covert from hawks for many small birds that roost and
build in them. Whole flocks perch in them at night, and I have seen
three robins' nests in one which was six feet in diameter.
No doubt many of these are already old trees, if you reckon from the
day they were planted, but infants still when you consider their
development and the long life before them. I counted the annual
rings of some which were just one foot high, and as wide as high,
and found that they were about twelve years old, but quite sound and
thrifty! They were so low that they were unnoticed by the walker,
while many of their contemporaries from the nurseries were already
bearing considerable crops. But what you gain in time is perhaps in
this case, too, lost in power,--that is, in the vigor of the tree.
This is their pyramidal state.
The cows continue to browse them thus for twenty years or more,
keeping them down and compelling them to spread, until at last they
are so broad that they become their own fence, when some interior
shoot, which their foes cannot reach, darts upward with joy: for it
has not forgotten its high calling, and bears its own peculiar fruit
in triumph.
Such are the tactics by which it finally defeats its bovine foes.
Now, if you have watched the progress of a particular shrub, you
will see that it is no longer a simple pyramid or cone, but out of
its apex there rises a sprig or two, growing more lustily perchance
than an orchard-tree, since the plant now devotes the whole of its
repressed energy to these upright parts. In a short time these
become a small tree, an inverted pyramid resting on the apex of the
other, so that the whole has now the form of a vast hour-glass. The
spreading bottom, having served its purpose, finally disappears, and
the generous tree permits the now harmless cows to come in and stand
in its shade, and rub against and redden its trunk, which has grown
in spite of them, and even to taste a part of its fruit, and so
disperse the seed.
Thus the cows create their own shade and food; and the tree, its
hour-glass being inverted, lives a second life, as it were.
It is an important question with some nowadays, whether you should
trim young apple-trees as high as your nose or as high as your eyes.
The ox trims them up as high as he can reach, and that is about the
right height, I think.
In spite of wandering kine and other adverse circumstance, that
despised shrub, valued only by small birds as a covert and shelter
from hawks, has its blossom-week at last, and in course of time its
harvest, sincere, though small.
By the end of some October, when its leaves have fallen, I
frequently see such a central sprig, whose progress I have watched,
when I thought it had forgotten its destiny, as I had, bearing its
first crop of small green or yellow or rosy fruit, which the cows
cannot get at over the bushy and thorny hedge which surrounds it;
and I make haste to taste the new and undescribed variety. We have
all heard of the numerous varieties of fruit invented by Van Mons
[Footnote: A Belgian chemist and horticulturist.] and Knight.
[Footnote: An English vegetable physiologist.] This is the system of
Van Cow, and she has invented far more and more memorable varieties
than both of them.
Through what hardships it may attain to bear a sweet fruit! Though
somewhat small, it may prove equal, if not superior, in flavor to
that which has grown in a garden,--will perchance be all the sweeter
and more palatable for the very difficulties it has had to contend
with. Who knows but this chance wild fruit, planted by a cow or a
bird on some remote and rocky hillside, where it is as yet
unobserved by man, may be the choicest of all its kind, and foreign
potentates shall hear of it, and royal societies seek to propagate
it, though the virtues of the perhaps truly crabbed owner of the
soil may never be heard of,--at least, beyond the limits of his
village? It was thus the Porter and the Baldwin grew.
Every wild-apple shrub excites our expectation thus, somewhat as
every wild child. It is, perhaps, a prince in disguise. What a
lesson to man! So are human beings, referred to the highest
standard, the celestial fruit which they suggest and aspire to bear,
browsed on by fate; and only the most persistent and strongest
genius defends itself and prevails, sends a tender scion upward at
last, and drops its perfect fruit on the ungrateful earth. Poets and
philosophers and statesmen thus spring up in the country pastures,
and outlast the hosts of unoriginal men.
Such is always the pursuit of knowledge. The celestial fruits, the
golden apples of the Hesperides, are ever guarded by a hundred-
headed dragon which never sleeps, so that it is an herculean labor
to pluck them.
This is one and the most remarkable way in which the wild apple is
propagated; but commonly it springs up at wide intervals in woods
and swamps, and by the sides of roads, as the soil may suit it, and
grows with comparative rapidity. Those which grow in dense woods are
very tall and slender. I frequently pluck from these trees a
perfectly mild and tamed fruit. As Palladius says, "And the ground
is strewn with the fruit of an unbidden apple-tree."
It is an old notion, that, if these wild trees do not bear a
valuable fruit of their own, they are the best stocks by which to
transmit to posterity the most highly prized qualities of others.
However, I am not in search of stocks, but the wild fruit itself,
whose fierce gust has suffered no "inteneration." It is not my
"highest plot
To plant the Bergamot."
THE FRUIT, AND ITS FLAVOR.
The time for wild apples is the last of October and the first of
November. They then get to be palatable, for they ripen late, and
they are still, perhaps, as beautiful as ever. I make a great
account of these fruits, which the farmers do not think it worth the
while to gather,--wild flavors of the Muse, vivacious and
inspiriting. The farmer thinks that he has better in his barrels;
but he is mistaken, unless he has a walker's appetite and
imagination, neither of which can he have.
Such as grow quite wild, and are left out till the first of
November, I presume that the owner does not mean to gather. They
belong to children as wild as themselves,--to certain active boys
that I know,--to the wild-eyed woman of the fields, to whom nothing
comes amiss, who gleans after all the world,--and, moreover, to us
walkers. We have met with them, and they are ours. These rights,
long enough insisted upon, have come to be an institution in some
old countries, where they have learned how to live. I hear that "the
custom of grippling, which may be called apple-gleaning, is, or was
formerly, practised in Herefordshire. It consists in leaving a few
apples, which are called the gripples, on every tree, after the
general gathering, for the boys, who go with climbing-poles and bags
to collect them."
As for those I speak of, I pluck them as a wild fruit, native to
this quarter of the earth,--fruit of old trees that have been dying
ever since I was a boy and are not yet dead, frequented only by the
wood-pecker and the squirrel, deserted now by the owner, who has not
faith enough to look under their boughs. From the appearance of the
tree-top, at a little distance, you would expect nothing but lichens
to drop from it, but your faith is rewarded by finding the ground
strewn with spirited fruit,--some of it, perhaps, collected at
squirrel-holes, with the marks of their teeth by which they carried
them,--some containing a cricket or two silently feeding within, and
some, especially in damp days, a shelless snail. The very sticks and
stones lodged in the tree-top might have convinced you of the
savoriness of the fruit which has been so eagerly sought after in
past years.
I have seen no account of these among the "Fruits and Fruit-Trees of
America," though they are more memorable to my taste than the
grafted kinds; more racy and wild American flavors do they possess,
when October and November, when December and January, and perhaps
February and March even, have assuaged them somewhat. An old farmer
in my neighborhood, who always selects the right word, says that
"they have a kind of bow-arrow tang."
Apples for grafting appear to have been selected commonly, not so
much for their spirited flavor, as for their mildness, their size,
and bearing qualities,--not so much for their beauty, as for their
fairness and soundness. Indeed, I have no faith in the selected
lists of pomological gentlemen. Their "Favorites" and "Non-suches"
and "Seek-no-farthers," when I have fruited them, commonly turn out
very tame and forgetable. They are eaten with comparatively little
zest, and have no real tang nor smack to them.
What if some of these wildings are acrid and puckery, genuine
verjuice, do they not still belong to the Pomaceae, which are
uniformly innocent and kind to our race? I still begrudge them to
the cider-mill. Perhaps they are not fairly ripe yet.
No wonder that these small and high-colored apples are thought to
make the best cider. Loudon quotes from the Herefordshire Report
that "apples of a small size are always, if equal in quality, to be
preferred to those of a larger size, in order that the rind and
kernel may bear the greatest proportion to the pulp, which affords
the weakest and most watery juice." And he says, that, "to prove
this, Dr. Symonds of Hereford, about the year 1800, made one
hogshead of cider entirely from the rinds and cores of apples, and
another from the pulp only, when the first was found of
extraordinary strength and flavor, while the latter was sweet and
insipid."
Evelyn [Footnote: An English writer of the seventeenth century.]
says that the "Red-strake" was the favorite cider-apple in his day;
and he quotes one Dr. Newburg as saying, "In Jersey 't is a general
observation, as I hear, that the more of red any apple has in its
rind, the more proper it is for this use. Pale-faced apples they
exclude as much as may be from their cider-vat." This opinion still
prevails.
All apples are good in November. Those which the farmer leaves out
as unsalable, and unpalatable to those who frequent the markets, are
choicest fruit to the walker. But it is remarkable that the wild
apple, which I praise as so spirited and racy when eaten in the
fields or woods, being brought into the house, has frequently a
harsh and crabbed taste. The Saunter-er's Apple not even the
saunterer can eat in the house. The palate rejects it there, as it
does haws and acorns, and demands a tamed one; for there you miss
the November air, which is the sauce it is to be eaten with.
Accordingly, when Tityrus, seeing the lengthening shadows, invites
Meliboeus to go home and pass the night with him, he promises him
mild apples and soft chestnuts. I frequently pluck wild apples of so
rich and spicy a flavor that I wonder all orchardists do not get a
scion from that tree, and I fail not to bring home my pockets full.
But perchance, when I take one out of my desk and taste it in my
chamber I find it unexpectedly crude,--sour enough to set a
squirrel's teeth on edge and make a jay scream.
These apples have hung in the wind and frost and rain till they have
absorbed the qualities of the weather or season, and thus are highly
seasoned, and they pierce and sting and permeate us with their
spirit. They must be eaten in season, accordingly,--that is, out-of-
doors.
To appreciate the wild and sharp flavors of these October fruits, it
is necessary that you be breathing the sharp October or November
air. The out-door air and exercise which the walker gets give a
different tone to his palate, and he craves a fruit which the
sedentary would call harsh and crabbed. They must be eaten in the
fields, when your system is all aglow with exercise, when the frosty
weather nips your fingers, the wind rattles the bare boughs or
rustles the few remaining leaves, and the jay is heard screaming
around. What is sour in the house a bracing walk makes sweet. Some
of these apples might be labelled, "To be eaten in the wind."
Of course no flavors are thrown away; they are intended for the
taste that is up to them. Some apples have two distinct flavors, and
perhaps one-half of them must be eaten in the house, the other out-
doors. One Peter Whitney wrote from Northborough in 1782, for the
Proceedings of the Boston Academy, describing an apple-tree in that
town "producing fruit of opposite qualities, part of the same apple
being frequently sour and the other sweet;" also some all sour, and
others all sweet, and this diversity on all parts of the tree.
There is a wild apple on Nawshawtuck Hill in my town which has to me
a peculiarly pleasant bitter tang, not perceived till it is three-
quarters tasted. It remains on the tongue. As you eat it, it smells
exactly like a squash-bug. It is a sort of triumph to eat and relish
it.
I hear that the fruit of a kind of plum-tree in Provence is "called
Prunes sibarelles, because it is impossible to whistle after having
eaten them, from their sourness." But perhaps they were only eaten
in the house and in summer, and if tried out-of-doors in a stinging
atmosphere, who knows but you could whistle an octave higher and
clearer?
In the fields only are the sours and bitters of Nature appreciated;
just as the wood-chopper eats his meal in a sunny glade, in the
middle of a winter day, with content, basks in a sunny ray there,
and dreams of summer in a degree of cold which, experienced in a
chamber, would make a student miserable. They who are at work abroad
are not cold, but rather it is they who sit shivering in houses. As
with temperatures, so with flavors; as with cold and heat, so with
sour and sweet. This natural raciness, the sours and bitters which
the diseased palate refuses, are the true condiments.
Let your condiments be in the condition of your senses. To
appreciate the flavor of these wild apples requires vigorous and
healthy senses, papillae [Footnote: A Latin word, accent on the
second syllable, meaning here the rough surface of the tongue and
palate.] firm and erect on the tongue and palate, not easily
flattened and tamed.
From my experience with wild apples, I can understand that there may
be reason for a savage's preferring many kinds of food which the
civilized man rejects. The former has the palate of an outdoor man.
It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit.
What a healthy out-of-door appetite it takes to relish the apple of
life, the apple of the world, then!
"Nor is it every apple I desire,
Nor that which pleases every palate best;
'T is not the lasting Deuxan I require,
Nor yet the red-cheeked Greening I request,
Nor that which first beshrewed the name of wife,
Nor that whose beauty caused the golden strife:
No, no! bring me an apple from the tree of life."
So there is one thought for the field, another for the house. I
would have my thoughts, like wild apples, to be food for walkers,
and will not warrant them to be palatable, if tasted in the house.
THEIR BEAUTY.
Almost all wild apples are handsome. They cannot be too gnarly and
crabbed and rusty to look at. The gnarliest will have some redeeming
traits even to the eye. You will discover some evening redness
dashed or sprinkled on some protuberance or in some cavity. It is
rare that the summer lets an apple go without streaking or spotting
it on some part of its sphere. It will have some red stains,
commemorating the mornings and evenings it has witnessed; some dark
and rusty blotches, in memory of the clouds and foggy, mildewy days
that have passed over it; and a spacious field of green reflecting
the general face of Nature,--green even as the fields; or a yellow
ground, which implies a milder flavor,--yellow as the harvest, or
russet as the hills.
Apples, these I mean, unspeakably fair,--apples not of Discord, but
Concord! Yet not so rare but that the homeliest may have a share.
Painted by the frosts, some a uniform clear bright yellow, or red,
or crimson, as if their spheres had regularly revolved, and enjoyed
the influence of the sun on all sides alike,--some with the faintest
pink blush imaginable,--some brindled with deep red streaks like a
cow, or with hundreds of fine blood-red rays running regularly from
the stem-dimple to the blossom-end, like meridional lines, on a
straw-colored ground,--some touched with a greenish rust, like a
fine lichen, here and there, with crimson blotches or eyes more or
less confluent and fiery when wet,--and others gnarly, and freckled
or peppered all over on the stem side with fine crimson spots on a
white ground, as if accidentally sprinkled from the brush of Him who
paints the autumn leaves. Others, again, are sometimes red inside,
perfused with a beautiful blush, fairy food, too beautiful to eat,--
apple of the Hesperides, apple of the evening sky! But like shells
and pebbles on the sea-shore, they must be seen as they sparkle amid
the withering leaves in some dell in the woods, in the autumnal air,
or as they lie in the wet grass, and not when they have wilted and
faded in the house.
THE NAMING OF THEM.
It would be a pleasant pastime to find suitable names for the
hundred varieties which go to a single heap at the cider-mill. Would
it not tax a man's invention,--no one to be named after a man, and
all in the lingua vernacula?[Footnote: Lingua vernac'ula, common
speech.] Who shall stand god-father at the christening of the wild
apples? It would exhaust the Latin and Greek languages, if they were
used, and make the lingua vernacula flag. We should have to call in
the sunrise and the sunset, the rainbow and the autumn woods and the
wild flowers, and the woodpecker and the purple finch, and the
squirrel and the jay and the butterfly, the November traveller and
the truant boy, to our aid.
In 1836 there were in the garden of the London Horticultural Society
more than fourteen hundred distinct sorts. But here are species
which they have not in their catalogue, not to mention the varieties
which our Crab might yield to cultivation. Let us enumerate a few of
these. I find myself compelled, after all, to give the Latin names
of some for the benefit of those who live where English is not
spoken,--for they are likely to have a world-wide reputation.
There is, first of all, the Wood-Apple (Malus sylvatica); the Blue-
Jay Apple; the Apple which grows in Dells in the Woods
(sylvestrivallis), also in Hollows in Pastures (campestrivallis);
the Apple that grows in an old Cellar-Hole (Malus cellaris); the
Meadow-Apple; the Partridge-Apple; the Truant's Apple (Cessatoris),
which no boy will ever go by without knocking off some, however late
it may be; the Saunterer's Apple,--you must lose yourself before you
can find the way to that; the Beauty of the Air (Decks Aeris);
December-Eating; the Frozen-Thawed (gelato-soluta), good only in
that state; the Concord Apple, possibly the same with the Musketa-
quidensis; the Assabet Apple; the Brindled Apple; Wine of New
England; the Chickaree Apple; the Green Apple (Malus viridis);--this
has many synonyms; in an imperfect state, it is the Cholera
morbifera aut dysenterifera, puerulis dilectissima; [Footnote:The
apple that brings the disease of cholera and of dysen-tery, the
fruit that small boys like best.]--the Apple which Atalanta stopped
to pick up; the Hedge-Apple (Malus Sepium); the Slug-Apple
(limacea); the Railroad-Apple, which perhaps came from a core thrown
out of the cars; the Apple whose Fruit we tasted in our Youth; our
Particular Apple, not to be found in any catalogue,--Pedestrium
Solatium; [Footnote: The tramp's comfort.] also the Apple where
hangs the Forgotten Scythe; Iduna's Apples, and the Apples which
Loki found in the Wood; [Footnote See p. 172 (Proof readers note:
paragraph 25)] and a great many more I have on my list, too numerous
to mention,--all of them good. As Bodaeus exclaims, referring to the
culti-vated kinds, and adapting Virgil to his case, so I, adapting
Bodaeus,--
"Not if I had a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths,
An iron voice, could I describe all the forms
And reckon up all the names of these wild apples."
THE LAST GLEANING.
By the middle of November the wild apples have lost some of their
brilliancy, and have chiefly fallen. A great part are decayed on the
ground, and the sound ones are more palatable than before. The note
of the chickadee sounds now more distinct, as you wander amid the
old trees, and the autumnal dandelion is half-closed and tearful.
But still, if you are a skilful gleaner, you may get many a pocket-
full even of grafted fruit, long after apples are supposed to be
gone out-of-doors. I know a Blue-Pearmain tree, growing within the
edge of a swamp, almost as good as wild. You would not suppose that
there was any fruit left there, on the first survey, but you must
look according to system. Those which lie exposed are quite brown
and rotten now, or perchance a few still show one blooming cheek
here and there amid the wet leaves. Nevertheless, with experienced
eyes, I explore amid the bare alders and the huckleberry-bushes and
the withered sedge, and in the crevices of the rocks, which are full
of leaves, and pry under the fallen and decaying ferns, which, with
apple and alder leaves, thickly strew the ground. For I know that
they lie concealed, fallen into hollows long since and covered up by
the leaves of the tree itself,--a proper kind of packing. From these
lurking-places, anywhere within the circumference of the tree, I
draw forth the fruit, all wet and glossy, maybe nibbled by rabbits
and hollowed out by crickets and perhaps with a leaf or two cemented
to it (as Curzon [Footnote: Robert Curzon was a traveller who
searched for old manuscripts in the monasteries of the Levant. See
his book, Ancient Monasteries of the East.] an old manuscript from a
monastery's mouldy cellar), but still with a rich bloom on it, and
at least as ripe and well kept, if not better than those in barrels,
more crisp and lively than they. If these resources fail to yield
anything, I have learned to look between the bases of the suckers
which spring thickly from some horizontal limb, for now and then one
lodges there, or in the very midst of an alder-clump, where they are
covered by leaves, safe from cows which may have smelled them out.
If I am sharp-set, for I do not refuse the Blue-Pearmain, I fill my
pockets on each side; and as I retrace my steps in the frosty eve,
being perhaps four or five miles from home, I eat one first from
this side, and then from that, to keep my balance.
I learn from Topsell's Gesner, whose authority appears to be
Albertus, that the following is the way in which the hedgehog
collects and carries home his apples. He says: "His meat is apples,
worms, or grapes: when he findeth apples or grapes on the earth, he
rolleth himself upon them, until he have filled all his prickles,
and then carrieth them home to his den, never bearing above one in
his mouth; and if it fortune that one of them fall off by the way,
he likewise shaketh off all the residue, and walloweth upon them
afresh, until they be all settled upon his back again. So, forth he
goeth, making a noise like a cart-wheel; and if he have any young
ones in his nest, they pull off his load wherewithal he is loaded,
eating thereof what they please, and laying up the residue for the
time to come."
THE "FROZEN-THAWED" APPLE.
Toward the end of November, though some of the sound ones are yet
more mellow and perhaps more edible, they have generally, like the
leaves, lost their beauty, and are beginning to freeze. It is
finger-cold, and prudent farmers get in their barrelled apples, and
bring you the apples and cider which they have engaged; for it is
time to put them into the cellar. Perhaps a few on the ground show
their red cheeks above the early snow, and occasionally some even
preserve their color and soundness under the snow throughout the
winter. But generally at the beginning of the winter they freeze
hard, and soon, though undecayed, acquire the color of a baked
apple.
Before the end of December, generally, they experience their first
thawing. Those which a month ago were sour, crabbed, and quite
unpalatable to the civilized taste, such at least as were frozen
while sound, let a warmer sun come to thaw them, for they are
extremely sensitive to its rays, are found to be filled with a rich,
sweet cider, better than any bottled cider that I know of, and with
which I am better acquainted than with wine. All apples are good in
this state, and your jaws are the cider-press. Others, which have
more substance, are a sweet and luscious food,--in my opinion of
more worth than the pine-apples which are imported from the West
Indies. Those which lately even I tasted only to repent of it,--for
I am semi-civilized,--which the farmer willingly left on the tree, I
am now glad to find have the property of hanging on like the leaves
of the young oaks. It is a way to keep cider sweet without boiling.
Let the frost come to freeze them first, solid as stones, and then
the rain or a warm winter day to thaw them, and they will seem to
have borrowed a flavor from heaven through the medium of the air in
which they hang. Or perchance you find, when you get home, that
those which rattled in your pocket have thawed, and the ice is
turned to cider. But after the third or fourth freezing and thawing
they will not be found so good.
What are the imported half-ripe fruits of the torrid South to this
fruit matured by the cold of the frigid North? These are those
crabbed apples with which I cheated my companion, and kept a smooth
face that I might tempt him to eat. Now we both greedily fill our
pockets with them,--bending to drink the cup and save our lappets
from the overflowing juice,--and grow more social with their wine.
Was there one that hung so high and sheltered by the tangled
branches that our sticks could not dislodge it?
It is a fruit never carried to market, that I am aware of,--quite
distinct from the apple of the markets, as from dried apple and
cider,--and it is not every winter that produces it in perfection.
"Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye in-habitants of the
land! Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your
fathers? . . .
"That which the palmer-worm hath left hath the locust eaten; and
that which the locust hath left hath the canker-worm eaten; and that
which the canker-worm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten.
"Awake, ye drunkards, and weep! and howl, all ye drinkers of wine,
because of the new wine! for it is cut off from your mouth.
"For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number,
whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek-teeth of
a great lion.
"He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig-tree; he hath made
it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made
white. . . .
"Be ye ashamed, O ye husbandmen! howl, O ye vine-dressers! . . .
"The vine is dried up, and the fig-tree languisheth; the
pomegranate-tree, the palm tree also, and the apple-tree, even all
the trees of the field, are withered: because joy is withered away
from the sons of men." [Footnote: Joel, chapter i., verses 1-12.]
