The apple is arguably the most culturally significant fruit in human history. It appears in the founding myths of multiple civilizations, shaped the settlement of a continent, and remains the most widely grown fruit in temperate climates.
From Kazakhstan to everywhere
The ancestor of every apple you’ve eaten is Malus sieversii, a wild apple that still grows in the Tian Shan mountains of Kazakhstan. The city of Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest, takes its name from the word for apple. From there, apples traveled the Silk Road, cross-pollinating with crabapples along the way, picking up genes for smaller size, greater tartness, and cold hardiness.
The Romans spread cultivated apples across Europe. Spanish colonists brought them to the Americas. By the 1800s, apple orchards covered the American frontier, though mostly for cider, not eating.
Seeds, grafting, and the apple paradox
Plant an apple seed and you’ll get a tree, but not the apple you expected. Apples are “extreme heterozygotes,” meaning each seed produces a genetically unique tree. A seed from a Honeycrisp might produce a tree with tiny, sour, inedible fruit. This is why every named apple variety is a clone, propagated by grafting a cutting onto rootstock.
Johnny Appleseed (John Chapman) planted seeds, not grafts. He was growing cider apples, not snacking apples. Most of his trees produced fruit fit only for fermenting.
The apple in myth and culture
The Bible never names the fruit in the Garden of Eden. The “apple” association likely comes from a Latin pun: malum means both “apple” and “evil.” In Greek myth, the golden apples of the Hesperides granted immortality. Norse mythology has Idun’s apples keeping the gods young.
“Apple of my eye” is one of the oldest English idioms, appearing in the King James Bible. Isaac Newton probably did observe a falling apple, though the story about it hitting his head was embellished later.
The Apple Records lawsuit between the Beatles and Apple Computer ran from 1978 to 2007.
7,500 varieties and counting
There are over 7,500 named apple cultivars worldwide, though only about 100 are grown commercially. The differences come down to sugar-acid balance, cell structure (which affects crunch), skin thickness, and aromatic compounds.
A Honeycrisp has larger cells that burst with juice when bitten. A Granny Smith has more malic acid, giving it tartness. A Red Delicious was bred for looks over flavor, which is why it dominates supermarket shelves but disappoints in taste tests.
New varieties take decades to develop. The Cosmic Crisp, released in 2019, was 20 years in the making at Washington State University.