Go look around the supermarket fruit isle. How many of the apples on offer are locally grown? Not many. And how many are actually local varieties rather than the sweet, bland, hard-as-potatoes, dont taste of anything but look pretty variety? Even fewer!
In fact, most people are familiar with no more than half a dozen different varieties of apple, and apart from Cox and the ubiquitous Bramley (the only cooker most people have ever heard of), just about all of them are foreign.
This is a crying shame. There are literally a thousand or more British varieties, almost all of which have much more to offer than bland Braeburn or ghastly Granny Smith.
Last year I bought an apple variety called "Painted Summer Pippin" from Bernwode Fruit Trees in bucks.
The name was actually given by Derek at Bernwode to a tree that was growing at Wotton Underwood, the historical home of the Dukes of Buckinghamshire. The tree was old and the variety could not be identified but its very likely to be a very old variety that had fallen out of cultivation.
Subsequently a certain Mr Tony Blair bought the old walled garden and some time later the original tree was cut down.
This just underlines how important it is that these old varieties are preserved. Were it not for Bernwode, this variety would have been lost for good. Gone. Extinct. Never coming back. The genetic material erased from the face of the earth.
Now consider how important these apples are to out national heritage. I would argue that they are more important than all the Turners in all the Tates. They are more important that all the guns and suits of armour in all the museums. These trees were passed from family to family over the course of generations. They were the very stuff on which our ancestors depended for their survival. To feed them and keep them healthy. And sometimes drunk.
Folks, Tesco will never sell these apples so they will never be grown commercially. Which means that unless you take it upon yourself to plant some of them, you, your children, and the nation at large will never ever have the pleasure of tasting Ashmead's Kernel or D'arcy Spice.
The only way to preserve these unique, living, beautiful, and tasty bits of our heritage is if you plant them in your gardens and plant them in your allotments.
Dont buy some nasty grown in china Golden Delisyuck for £5 from Poundland. Spend that little bit extra to get something you will be proud of. Something you can boast about to friends and neighbours.
Its up to you!
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November 20, 2019, 18:11