In the last century I top-grafted a number of good-quality apple scions onto volunteer trees that I found elsewhere on the property where the birds or squirrels had some years earlier deposited apple seeds after eating the fruits. The volunteers were young and most had not yet come into bearing, or if they had their wild apples were either too tart, too bland, or poor in another way. About 1987 I top-grafted what I then thought was a Shiawassee scion onto a small fruit-less volunteer in a small blueberry field across from the house. It took well, and as the years went by it came into bearing, true to the Shiawassee, with red stripes gradually overtaking a green background, the flesh sweet and pear-like with occasional red blush in the interior, while the skin was flavorful and somewhat tart until it was dead ripe in mid to late October.
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| Shiawassee, Dutchess, or Fameuse? |
It was a Maine pomologist named Herbert Wave who in the early 1980s identified the original tree as Shiawassee, when he walked the property back in the days when it was possible to contact the state agricultural station and arrange for an expert to come take a look at your fruit trees, free of charge. The original tree was at least fifty years old then, Wave said, and as the century came to a close it grew larger and bore annually a good crop that I made use of most years in a blend for cider wine along with other apples. I myself wondered if the variety wasn't Dutchess of Oldenberg. In October 2014, however, an early blizzard fell with wet snow and howling wind that toppled many trees and branches, and among those that were damaged were the original tree, which has not been the same since. Early in the current century I took a few of the Shiawassee/Dutchess apples to the Common Ground Country Fair, where John Bunker, the fruit explorer, rescuer of heirloom Maine apple varieties, and Fedco apple guru volunteered to identify old varieties that fair-growers brought for him to view and taste. He did not hesitate and named it Fameuse. This identification made more sense than the others, but I'm still harboring some doubt about its true name.
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| Fameuse, Dutchess, or Shiawassee? |
The top-grafted tree, in the meantime, remained in some ways like most of the volunteers in this area, not especially well favored but with a will to live. An interesting development was that it grew a strong branch below the graft, which I hadn't noticed at first. When I did, I decided to let it grow and see whether it would bear any wild apples on that side of the tree, while I hoped that the graft would work out well and bear Shiawassee, or Dutchess, or most likely, Fameuse. Sure enough, it did. And so the tree had in effect two main trunks. The wild apple was green and good-sized, and from its looks seemed to me to be an offspring of a Rhode Island Greening that was growing about 100 yards away, but because apple trees don't come true from seed it would have had to be part Rhode Island Greening and part something else. It came ripe at about the same time as the Greening, and was a decent cooking apple (whereas the Greening is an excellent cooker).
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| The grafted trunk is at the right |
This year the apple crop was unusual, partly on account of the weather and partly due to the plague of brown tail moth caterpillars, which in June decimated the leaves and newly budded apples on most trees in the main orchard, including the Fameuse and also the Liberty which usually supplies good apples for eating; but somehow left trees elsewhere mostly alone, including this double-tree. The weather was unusually wet, which helped size up the apples on those trees that were unaffected by the caterpillars. Today I went out to this double-tree and harvested a basket full of the wild green apples. I'll make applesauce with them. In a week or two I'll harvest a couple of baskets of the Fameuse, some for eating and some for a most delicious applesauce. There aren't enough apples on the property this year for cider wine, but plenty for eating, cooking, and sauce.
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| The double tree |
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