o introduction O
T he modern, fast-paced, urbanized South has
moved so far from its agrarian past that large
parts of its heritage have been virtually forgotten.
Southerners delight in restoring old houses and urban
neighborhoods, and many city dwellers buy old farms
and restore the buildings for a weekend retreat. But
our unique southern heritage is more than Victorian
houses and heart-pine floors, mahogany furniture and
Coin silver; it is also Bloody Butcher corn, Red Ripper
peas, Ledmon watermelons, Greensboro peaches,
upland cotton, Gold Dollar tobacco, and James grapes.
These are living threads that lead directly back to three
hundred years of the southern agrarian past.
This book is about apples—southern apples—a fruit
cherished below the Mason-Dixon Line since soon
after Jamestown was settled in 1607. The importance
of apples in the South surprises many people—and why
not? In the supermarkets are apples from Washington,
Michigan, New York, New Zealand, and Chile, but
almost never any southern-grown apples. We have
forgotten that apples were grown on farms in every part
of the South for centuries and that the South devel-
oped hundreds of unique apple varieties.
To reclaim some knowledge about southern apples,
you need only to talk to elderly southerners who grew
up on a farm. Their eyes light up as they speak of
almost-forgotten apples: Red June, Buckingham,
Yates, Nickajack, Fallawater, Magnum Bonum,
Blacktwig, Horse Apple, Hunge, Smith’s Seedling,
Sally Gray, Summer Orange, Edwards’ Winter, and
on and on. They will tell you of apples fried for
breakfast in the drippings from sausage or side meat.
They remember storing boxes of apples through the
winter in unheated rooms of the farmhouse and how
those apples perfumed the whole house. They recall
drying apple slices on a tin roof, and they can tell you
how to make cider and vinegar. But most of all they
remember the incomparable taste of a freshly picked
southern apple, dense and high in soluble solids,
baked right on the tree by those long, hot southern
summers.
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OSA final pages.indd 13
A letter to me from a man in Arkansas clearly illus-
trates the many uses of apples in days gone by:
I can recall my grandmother telling me
often, when I was a child, about the
part apples played on her family’s small
Arkansas farm in the late 1800s. She spoke
of a room off their kitchen that had shelves
on which they stored apples for the winter.
On winter evenings, she said, the family
would sit around the fireplace cracking nuts
and eating apples, sometimes with popcorn
popped in the fireplace. My grandmother
used to lament the narrowing of varieties
of apples available in stores as she aged, and
would tell me the names of the many vari-
eties available when she was a child, and
how each apple was grown for a different
reason.
Apples continued to be a large part of
her family’s life into the twentieth century.
My great-uncle made cider and cider vine-
gar, and my mother and her sisters tell me
that their mother would slice them and
dry them under cheesecloth on the hot
roof in the summer. Dried apples would
be stored in cloth bags until used for fried
pies (called “tarts” in this area of the
state). Apples were also fried for breakfast
and were made into pies all year round.
My mother’s first cousin, who lived near
the old homeplace in Grant County, was
renowned for a green apple pie she made
each June for the family homecoming.
We are living in the last days of the southern apple.
When these elderly southerners are gone, so will be
the lore of southern apples. Indeed, most of the unique
southern apple varieties have already passed over into
history; perhaps 80 percent of them are extinct.
Thirty years ago, not long after I retired from the
11/15/10 10:01 AM
 int roduc t ion
Army, an elderly friend challenged me to find the
Magnum Bonum apple, a cherished memory from
his youth. My two-year search for that apple was an
education. I found that rural southerners remembered
the old apples, but no one grew them anymore. Finally
I found a few old Magnum Bonum trees in Virginia.
Shortly thereafter I discovered a tree of the Summer
Orange apple here in my own county and then an old
tree of Bevan’s Favorite in a neighboring county. These
discoveries were proof enough that at least a few of the
old southern apples were still out there, surviving as
gnarled old snags in remote places. The search goes
on, and I am no longer alone in the quest to save old
southern apple varieties. Friends have been recruited to
expand the search net, and we have joined with others
who also have long sought old southern apples.
My hunt for old apple varieties led to a concurrent
search for historical information about these apples.
Libraries and used bookstores yielded a number of nine-
teenth-century books describing American fruit, but,
with one minor exception, these books were written by
northerners who gave short shrift to southern apples.
Nowhere in the old pomological texts was there a good
compilation of information about southern apples. The
South had its great pomologists in the 1800s, but none
of them ever wrote a definitive text. Bits and pieces of
information were scattered everywhere: in old books
and horticultural magazines, in old nursery catalogs,
agricultural bulletins, and newspapers, in the minutes
of state horticultural societies, in letters buried in
almost forgotten USDA files, and in the memories of
elderly southerners still alive.
About 1988 I became determined to fill this void by
writing the history and description of every old south-
ern apple. My initial estimate was that perhaps 300 or
400 different apples had been grown in the South, but
research has proved this estimate to be absurdly low—
over 1,800 apple varieties are described in this book.
Let us consider for a moment just how and why so
many different apple varieties arose in the South. To
start at the beginning, there must be a little under-
standing of apple biology. In the South apple trees
bloom in April each year. Flowers on apple trees
contain both male and female sex parts, the male part
being the stamen with its pollen (the male sex cell) and
Y xiv y
OSA final pages.indd 14
the female part being the pistil with ovules (the female
sex cell) in a swelling at the base of the flower. Most
apple varieties are not receptive to their own pollen
(or pollen from other trees of the same variety) but
must be “cross-pollinated” with pollen from a different
apple variety. Apple pollen is too heavy to be carried
by wind, so cross-pollination is performed by bees and
other small flying insects, which carry pollen grains on
their bodies from tree to tree, depositing the pollen on
the pistils as they crawl over the flower.
When a pollen grain is deposited on a pistil, the
male chromosomes in the pollen grain unite with the
female chromosomes in an ovule at the base of the
pistil to form a fertilized egg with its full complement
of chromosomes. This fertilized egg develops into an
apple seed. (Each of the several seeds inside an apple
is pollinated separately, and each may, in fact, receive
pollen from different apple varieties.) The fleshy swell-
ing at the base of the flower that surrounds the ovules
develops into the flesh of the apple. This fleshy swelling
is tissue from the mother tree and is not involved in
the fertilization of the ovules inside. Thus, a Red June
apple tree will always bear Red June apples because
the skin and flesh of the apples come entirely from the
mother tree. Only the seeds inside the apple have been
cross-pollinated.
Apple seeds contain genetic material from both
the mother tree that carries the apple and the father
tree from which the pollen originated. This fact, plus
the random sorting of genetic material in the forma-
tion of pollen and ovules, means that each apple seed
is genetically different from all other apple seeds and
will, if planted, produce a tree and fruit different from
all other apple trees and fruit. In this respect apples
resemble humans because every human is genetically
unique and different from all others.
To follow this analogy further, consider the human
population as a whole. Most of us are born, live, and
die as ordinary people, with little to distinguish us
from the millions around us. Only very occasionally
does a human rise above the crowd by mental genius
or exceptional ability. No one can predict when a
random sorting of genetic material will produce an
Einstein, a Leonardo da Vinci, or an Alexander the
Great. This analogy holds true for apples; every apple
11/15/10 10:01 AM

The Southern Heritage Apple Orchard at Horne Creek Farm
The sudden death of Henry Morton
in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, in the
1990s was a double tragedy. His
family and friends suffered a loss, and
those of us who search for old apple
varieties lost much of his unique
collection of Appalachian mountain
apples, which Henry had found over
many years of searching mountain
coves and hollows. This loss made
obvious the temporary nature of the
several private collections of antique
southern apple varieties. What was
needed was a permanent site for
southern apples.
The state of North Carolina owns
and operates twenty-seven historic
sites including Horne Creek Living
Historical Farm twenty miles north of
Winston-Salem. The state purchased
the old Hauser farm and restored it
to demonstrate farm life in piedmont
North Carolina around 1900. The
centerpiece of Horne Creek Farm
is the modest 1875 farmhouse that
Thomas and Charlotte Hauser built
and where they raised their twelve
children. Over 35,000 people visit
oblique cordon belgian fence
double-u
OSA final pages.indd 15
Introduction
Horne Creek Farm each year to walk
through the house, gardens, and
outbuildings of the farm and to see
the farm animals.
In 1997 the site manager of Horne
Creek Farm agreed to make available
a seven-acre parcel for an orchard to
preserve antique southern apple vari-
eties. With a $50,000 grant from the
state, the Southern Heritage Apple
Orchard was born.
The Heritage Orchard is fronted
on the north side by a paved road.
The site is a long ridgeline sloping
from north to south with excellent
air drainage. The soil is fertile clay
loam.
The orchard site has been enclosed
in an eight-foot-high, all-steel anti-
deer fence and laid out to contain
four hundred antique southern apple
varieties, two trees of each. One tree
of each variety is freestanding on
semidwarf rootstock. These trees are
spaced twelve feet apart in rows eigh-
teen feet apart. The second tree is on
dwarf rootstock, espaliered on wires,
and spaced two to eight feet apart in
vertical cordon
horizontal cordon
Y xv y
rows twelve feet apart. Having two
trees of each variety gives a source of
scions for grafting a replacement for a
dead tree. Most of the trees are bear-
ing fruit now.
The four hundred small trees are
espaliered on wires using five classic
espalier shapes. Three hundred small
trees are in the oblique cordon shape.
The remaining hundred dwarf trees
are espaliered in the Belgian Fence,
vertical cordon, horizontal cordon, or
double-U palmate shapes to demon-
strate the beautiful possibilities of
espalier and its suitability for urban
lots.
The Heritage Orchard is visitor-
friendly and open to the public
(closed Sundays and Mondays). It is
kept mowed, and a gravel road bisects
the orchard to a gravel parking lot.
Shade trees have been planted and,
when they are larger, picnic tables
will be placed under them. A full-
time, state-employed horticulturist
takes care of the orchard. If you plan
to visit the Heritage Orchard, call
ahead, (336) 325-2298.
11/15/10 10:01 AM
 int roduc t ion
seed will grow into a unique tree, but almost always
this new tree and its fruit will be quite ordinary. Only
once in a long while, and unpredictably, will a seed-
ling apple tree rise above the rest, distinguished by
the health and vigor of the tree or the outstanding
quality of the fruit. It has been estimated that modern
plant breeders get only one in ten thousand apple
seeds to grow into a tree with fruit worthy of further
consideration.
When a seedling tree bearing good apples is discov-
ered, it cannot be reproduced by the seeds of its apples
that, of course, have been cross-pollinated. In the old
days good seedling trees could be duplicated by digging
up root sprouts that sometimes grow up around apple
trees, a very slow method of propagation. A faster way
of duplicating trees is by grafting, a process whereby
a twig is cut from a good apple tree and inserted into
the pencil-diameter, severed trunk of a young apple
tree. The twig and trunk fuse together and grow into
a tree identical to the tree from which the twig was
taken. By grafting, hundreds of apple trees can be
propagated each year by cutting twigs from a single
tree, and each new tree will bear fruit identical to the
original tree.
Every one of the 1,800 apple varieties described in
this book originated when an apple seed grew into a
tree bearing exceptional fruit. Some of these seedling
trees were “chance seedlings.” Fallen apples might
roll downhill or be carried away by heavy rains, and
perhaps a seed would grow into a seedling tree in a
fencerow or ditch. Seeds of apples squeezed for cider
were discarded in fields and along woodlines, and some
of the seeds would take root. Apples were fed to hogs
and other farm animals, and chance seedlings grew in
the corners of feedlots and pastures.
Although chance seedlings were the original source
of many unique southern apples, most old apple vari-
eties originated when rural southerners deliberately
planted apple seeds in order to have an orchard.
Seedling orchards were common in the South from
the early 1600s until the mid-1800s. This was a time of
great movement of people and the opening of enormous
new lands. Apple seeds were durable and portable, and
they cost nothing in a time when money was scarce
and grafting was a rare skill. The men and women who
Y xvi y
OSA final pages.indd 16
planted apple seeds had no illusions about what they
would get from seedling trees. They knew some trees
would bear poor fruit that could be fed to the hogs, and
other trees would have apples best used for cider and
vinegar. But these rural southerners expected a number
of their seedling trees would bear apples good enough
for cooking and fresh eating and for keeping through
the winter.
Millions of apple seeds were planted in the South
between the early 1600s and the mid-1800s to grow
seedling orchards. Out of this great number of seedling
trees, some were found to be exceptional. It was these
exceptional apple varieties that southerners cherished,
shared root sprouts with neighbors, and which were
eventually grafted and sold by southern nurseries.
The yardstick that past generations of rural south-
erners used to measure the quality of apples is different
from ours today. Certainly over 80 percent of apples
sold in today’s supermarkets and farmers’ markets
are eaten fresh. Just the reverse was true on southern
farms for hundreds of years; most apples were used for
cooking, drying, cider and vinegar, and only a small
percentage was eaten fresh. After all, even large rural
families could hardly snack their way through all the
apples from a farm orchard that might have forty large
trees. Apples good for cooking or drying or cider have
different qualities from those used for fresh eating. It
is a waste of time to bite into an old apple variety and
then disparage its taste or texture. Likely this particu-
lar apple was prized in bygone days because it quickly
cooked to pieces when stewed or because it stayed
white when dried or perhaps it would keep through the
winter without refrigeration.
For sixteen years my wife and I sold trees of old
southern apples through our small nursery, mostly to
rural southerners who wanted the kinds of apples that
their parents or grandparents once grew on the farm.
We also sold to an increasing number of people who
wanted to grow some of their food and who were willing
to make the effort to have a garden and small orchard.
We always urged purchasers to extend the use of apples
beyond fresh eating. It is somehow satisfying to stew
apples for supper and fry them for breakfast, to make a
batch of applesauce or apple butter, and to store some
apples in plastic bags in the bottom of the refrigerator
11/15/10 10:01 AM
 Introduction
for winter eating. The only way to appreciate the full
palate of old apples is to make the effort to use them in
the varied ways they were intended originally.
Growing old southern apples is not just an exercise
in nostalgia; a look at the latest USDA Plant Hardiness
Zone Map shows why this is true. Virtually all of the
great commercial apple-growing regions in the United
States are in zones 5 and 6, with average minimum
winter temperatures of 0°F to minus 20°F. (Roughly,
zones 5 and 6 fall north of a line stretching from
northern Virginia westward through Kentucky and on
through northern Arkansas, plus a long finger running
down the spine of the Appalachian Mountains.) Most
of the apple-breeding work being done in the United
States today is to develop apples for commercial
production in zones 5 and 6. But the great majority of
southerners live in warmer areas, zones 7, 8, and 9, and
no one in the United States—not agricultural colleges,
agricultural experiment stations, or the USDA—is
targeting apple-breeding work for these zones. Rarely
do new apple varieties bred for cooler regions do well
in zones 7, 8, and 9; usually they do not and exhibit
heat intolerance by the fruit dropping before ripen-
ing, rotting on the tree, or developing a soft texture.
Y xvii y
OSA final pages.indd 17
Southerners can look to the old southern apples and
find many that were originally selected because the
trees grew well and produced good apples in warmer
areas. In the old varieties, too, will be found apples
especially suitable for cider, drying, cooking, and winter
storage for those southerners who wish to expand their
apple horizons.
You Are Enlisted in the Search
Of the roughly 1,800 apple varieties that were once
grown in the South, some 500 are known to still exist.
There are others out there, undiscovered, and you are
asked to help in locating them. Ask your elderly neigh-
bors or grandparents if they know of any old apple
trees that can still be identified with a name. If you
find anything even remotely resembling in name or
synonym an apple listed in this book as extinct, please
write or telephone us giving as much information as
possible. By doing so, you may be instrumental in saving
a small part of the southern heritage. We are: Lee and
Edith Calhoun, 295 Blacktwig Road, Pittsboro, North
Carolina 27312; (919) 542-4480.
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