When most Americans think of apples, they think “Washington state.” Although Washington is the biggest producer of apples in the country (followed by New York and California), few people know that apples did not originate in Washington—or even in the United States.
Apples (Malus domestica) are believed to have originated over nine million years ago in Central Asia, specifically in what are now Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. The trees originally bore small fruits, like today’s crabapple. Historians believe the tiny fruits were eaten by birds and other small mammals who would then disperse the seeds, thereby allowing propagation. Over millennia, the fruits became bigger in order to appeal to a classification of animals called megafauna, which includes prehistoric horses, deer, and bears.
It is believed that, like many other ancient foods, the apple eventually spread to China and western Asia—and also to Europe—over the Silk Road. The Silk Road was a network of Eurasian trade routes that existed between the second century BCE and the mid-fifteenth century. Some historians prefer to use the term “Silk Routes” because it better describes the intricate web of both land and sea routes connecting Europe and Asia to the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, eastern Africa, and northern Africa. Spanning some four thousand miles (6,400 kilometers), these trade routes played a major role in facilitating economic, cultural, philosophical, and religious exchanges between East and West, and all points in between.
The apple arrived in Europe in early Greek and Roman times. The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder (23/24–79 CE) wrote extensively about apples, including their propagation through seeding and grafting. Among early Christians, the apple became a symbol of knowledge, immortality, temptation, and sin. Yet, according to the Bible, there is nothing to show that the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge was necessarily an apple, it was more likely a pomegranate, a fruit whose growth originated in the Holy Land. Apples also played a role in Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology, which regarded apples as providing eternal youth to those who ate them. Apples are said to have existed in what is now Britain before the Romans arrived, and apple trees were grown extensively by the sixteenth century, from both planting seeds and grafting. In his Herball: Or, Generall Historie of Plantes, published in 1597, English herbalist John Gerard urged the British gentry to propagate only the best grafted apple trees on their estates.
Apples were first brought to the Jamestown Colony in Virginia in 1607, and the plants thrived. The first apple orchard in the American colonies was planted around 1625 by a clergyman who had a farm on Boston’s Beacon Hill.
From there and other places in what are now the northeastern United States and southern Canada, wide varieties of apples were propagated thanks in part to John Chapman (1774–1845), better known as Johnny Appleseed. He was an American nurseryman and conservationist who became a folk legend by introducing apple growing to farmers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, West Virginia, and Ontario. He also planted apple seeds at random as he wandered through the countryside.
Thomas Jefferson was an enthusiastic apple grower, and wrote, “They have no apples here to compare with our Newtown Pippin.” Henry David Thoreau wrote about his preference for apples that were “sour enough to set a squirrel’s teeth on edge and make a [blue] jay scream.” The 1872 edition of A. J. Downing’s The Fruits and Fruit Trees of America listed more than a thousand apple varieties.
In the 1920s, inexpensive railway shipping and the advent of refrigeration led to orchards distributing apples year-round. This in turn led to marketing decisions that reduced commercial apple varieties to fewer than ten, including the ubiquitous Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, and Granny Smith, the three most popular varieties of apple grown in the United States today.
However, a resurgence of interest in heirloom apples has taken root in North America and seeks to expand the market for both vintage and lesser-known apple varieties such as Baldwin, Cortland, Empire, Gala, Golden Russet, Honeycrisp, Jonathan, McIntosh, Mutsu, Fuji, Rome, and Macoun—a personal favorite of mine that was introduced by the New York Agricultural Experiment Station (now Cornell AgriTech) in 1923. Many heirloom apple seeds have been preserved at Cornell University’s germplasm repository in Geneva, New York. New apple varieties are constantly being developed at Cornell’s AgriTech campus in Geneva, including the Cordera, Pink Luster, and Firecracker varieties, introduced in 2020.
The apple is among the most beloved and popular fruits in the world, and can be enjoyed as fruit (either whole or cut up), juice, cider, apple cider vinegar, applesauce, apple butter, roasted apples, dried apples, apple smoothies, and as a major ingredient in pies, cakes, and breads. Apples can also be included in main dishes such as meat and vegetable pies, stuffing, egg dishes, and fritters.
Apples are highly nutritious. In addition to dietary fiber, apples provide a range of vitamins and minerals, including vitamin A and potassium. Research shows that the antioxidants in apples can reduce inflammation caused by oxidative stress, a cause of accelerated aging, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and type 2 diabetes. In addition to the apple’s antioxidant activity, the pectin found in apples has been linked to stimulating the growth of “friendly bacteria” in the colon, which prevents inflammation, aids digestion, and strengthens the immune system. Apples also contain a variety of micronutrients. A recent article in the Journal of Food Science (Oyenihi 2022, 2291–2309) stated that: “Apples are rich sources of selected micronutrients (e.g., iron, zinc, vitamins C and E) and polyphenols (e.g., procyanidins, phloridzin, 5-O‐caffeoylquinic acid) that can help in mitigating micronutrient deficiencies (MNDs) and chronic diseases (Oyenihi 2022, 2291–2309).” While it may not be literally true that “An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” the apple is one of the healthiest foods one can eat.
China is presently the world’s largest grower of apples, followed by the United States, Poland, Italy, and France. The top five apple-producing states in the U.S. are Washington, New York, California, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. More than eleven billion pounds of apples are grown in the United States during a typical year.
by Nathaniel Altman
Resources
Browning, Frank. Apples. New York: North Point Press, 1998. “Exploring the origins of the apple.” Science Daily. May 27, 2019.
Hanson, Beth, ed. The Best Apples to Grow and Buy. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 2005.
Iowa State University. “Apples.” Agricultural Marketing Research Center website. April 2024.
Khoury, C. K., H. Achicanoy, and A. Bjorkman et al. “Origins of food crops connect countries worldwide.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 283 (2016): 20160792.
Oyenihi, A. B., Z. A. Belay, A. Mditshwa, and O. J. Caleb. “‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away’: The potentials of apple bioactive constituents for chronic disease prevention.” Journal of Food Science 87, 6 (2022): 2291–2309.
Rodger, Erin. “Crunchy, complex: Cornell releases three new apples.”
Cornell Chronicle. September 2, 2020.
Roth, Claire. “The curious early history of apples.” Science. Deutsche Welle. Accessed October 4, 2023.
Sawe, Benjamin Elisha. “Where do Apples Come from Originally?”
WorldAtlas. Accessed October 4, 2023.
Wynne, Peter. Apples: History, Folklore, Horticulture, and Gastronomy. New York: Hawthorne Books, 1974.
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