The apple detectives hunting for lost varieties

Getty Images Apples growing on a tree (Credit: Getty Images)

The UK is home to many varieties of apples. But this ancestor of modern apples was lost – until some determined "apple detectives" set out to find it.

In the family tree of British apples, there have long been some prominent holes. It's the equivalent of a great-grandfather whose name has been forgotten. He's there in all the old photographs, staring out at you. But who is he?

The DNA of some apple varieties, for instance, shows that they are descended from a lost tree, one that must have existed, but whose identity is unknown. Scientists called this "ghost apple", a parent of varieties like Royal Jubilee and Hormead's Pearmain, Unknown Founder 8.

DNA is no longer the domain solely of researchers, however. Apple fanatics across the UK are now taking samples from very old apple trees in hopes of learning more about antique varieties, and perhaps making some surprising discoveries.

Most apples are grafts, or clones, of trees that grew long ago, so these old trees may be varieties you can't buy anymore, as traditional favourites have lost out to modern industrial crops. For anyone interested, in the spring, you can pick a few bright green new leaves from an ancient tree in your back garden, and send them off to a laboratory. If someone's sent in a sample before that's been confidently identified as a particular variety, you'll get a match.

Some apples that were well-documented in 19th-Century books have now become forgotten (Credit: Cornell University Library)

Cornell University Library Some apples that were well-documented in 19th-Century books have now become forgotten (Credit: Cornell University Library) — Some apples that were well-documented in 19th-Century books have now become forgotten (Credit: Cornell University Library)

When John Teiser, a Hereford-based apple maven, lays this all out for me, leaning on a paddock gate in an orchard, I can tell he's tickled to bits. Just last week, Teiser got an email from his friend Ainsleigh Rice, part of the Marcher Apple Network in the Welsh Marches. He had some big news: Unknown Founder 8 is unknown no more. They got a match for its DNA from a tree in Gloucestershire.

The identification of Unknown Founder 8 is just one of the discoveries people are making as they bring British apples into the DNA age, making it easier to identify and preserve what's left. It's a heady time for apple enthusiasts like Teiser. I can hear the excitement in his voice.

Right in front of us, in fact, is a potential source for more surprises. In this paddock and the next one, surrounded by busily munching sheep, there are more than 150 different types of cider apple tree. They were all made by taking grafts from a now-decrepit orchard planted nearly a century ago by Bulmer's, the cider maker. Teiser manages this collection under an agreement with the charitable trust that runs the Museum of Cider, a short drive away through tiny country lanes on the outskirts of Hereford, close to the border between England and Wales.

It's his pomological White Whale, the apple that haunts his thoughts

Though these trees have had a basic genetic identification, Teiser hopes to have a more in-depth sequence run at some point, one that could give more details about how these trees fit into the family tree.

Teiser is also waiting to hear back about the DNA results from another old collection nearby. He is very curious about what that might show.

That's because there are apples, documented in 19th-Century books like Robert Hogg and Henry Graves Bull's The Herefordshire Pomona, that have slipped through people's fingers. There's the Forest Styre, a cider apple that was once incredibly common, 400 years ago, in the Forest of Dean: the last known confirmed example was destroyed in the mid 20th Century. There's the Oaken Pin, a cider variety Teiser encountered once as a young man. Although there are other apples with that name out there, none of them match the one he knew, which was lost when the tree that produced the fruit was uprooted for a driveway.

It's his pomological White Whale, the apple that haunts his thoughts.

More discoveries are being made as British apple growers use DNA to identify their crop (Credit: Getty Images)

Getty Images More discoveries are being made as British apple growers use DNA to identify their crop (Credit: Getty Images) — More discoveries are being made as British apple growers use DNA to identify their crop (Credit: Getty Images)

With more detailed information from DNA analysis, Teiser and others on the hunt for lost varieties can rule candidate apples out. There was one apple in another Bulmer's orchard, for instance, that had been labeled "Upright Medaille d'Or" in an old plan. The fruit seemed a close match for Hogg's descriptions of the Forest Styre. Teiser was intrigued. "I thought well, could this be the lost Forest Styre?" he said. Genetic testing revealed, however, that the apple was in fact a close match for a French variety. The case of the missing Forest Styre remains open.

Undaunted, Teiser is always on the lookout for apples that may be an ancient variety in disguise. In fact, he and Rice think they have uncovered just such an apple, documented by Robert Hogg in 1884. It's been going by the name Freetown Yellow, but Teiser and Rice have put together a detailed argument that is actually the Eggleton Styre, a greenish-yellow cider apple.

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Putting the right names to old things matters: British apples are part of a heritage that goes back centuries, and though apple orchards have dwindled in the country, there are people willing to put in the time and effort to keep alive these varieties, which are often adapted to the particular conditions here. Charles Martell, a Gloucester cheese maker and apple expert, for instance, has made a career of finding and reviving lost apples. It was an apple he found in 1993 that turned out to match Unknown Founder 8.

Unknown Founder 8 was revealed to be a tree called the Lemon Roy. It has lime green fruit, with a pale pink flush, Martell wrote in a description in his book Native Apples of Gloucestershire. It's a cooking apple, best stewed or in a tart. And some time, way back when, it was a parent to many far better-known varieties.

Back in the Museum of Cider in Hereford, Teiser examines apple portraits made by a watercolorist long ago to accompany Robert Hogg's descriptions of fruit. The Golden Winter Permain, the Kentish Pippin, the Golden Spire – they seem to leap off the paper, round and ready to be picked.

For now, Teiser eagerly awaits his next batch of DNA results. There's one particular orchard, with a few very old trees, for which he is greatly looking forward to getting back the results. "It was in a similar orchard that we discovered the lost Kempley Red (aka Carrion Apple!) last year," he writes to me in an email. I looked up the Kempley Red in Hogg's book: the watercolour shows it red with striations of crimson and yellow. It's a winsome thing and worth looking for.

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