I went out and picked what apples were available to taste this past week. There were a few good'ns in there. More exciting is a couple of my seedlings that are looking rather nice. You can tell some things about an apple by just feeling it and looking at it. A couple just look like they are going to be hard dry fleshed and bitter. The one I taste in this video obviously looks more like something you'd expect to be eating. The most exciting though is a very red and beautiful apple which colored up amazingly even in nearly complete shade covered with stocking material to protect it from birds. Typically fruit colors up better with light. It is a cross between Grenadine and Lady Williams. Both are late apples and this may be a very late apple, though I'm inclined to think it is approaching ripeness fairly soon.
You can't judge an apple by it's cover. We certainly learned that from the red delicious era when strains of it were selected for better and better looking apples with worse and worse flavor and texture. But I'm hopeful for something tasty out of this with red flesh. The odds are against it of course. Most of my apple seedlings will be between mediocre, such as the one I taste in this video, and just plain bad. But even with the primitive, unrefined apples carrying undesirable characteristics that I'm using in many of my crosses, more will be edible than not and I'm expecting at least a smattering of apples worthy of further propagation by someone. This apple bears so much resemblance to Grenadine, that I'm hoping it has inherited it's beautiful and flavorful red flesh. Check it out.
There is more than a passing resemblance between this seedling and it's seed parent grenadine.
The thing is that the red skin of grenadine is actually from the color of the flesh showing through the translucent skin. My hope beyond hope is that this is the case with the seedling. It seems unlikely though. We'll find out soon enough.
In the video I taste wickson, amberoso, crabby lady, king wickson, muscat de venus, something that may be katherine, something that may be ashmead's kernel, bedford pippin,high cross pippin, claygate pearmain, one of my seedlings, pink parfait, gold rush and others.
