Apple Facts
Apples come in all shades of reds, greens, yellows.
Two pounds of apples make one 9-inch pie.
Apple blossom is the state flower of Michigan.
2500 varieties of apples are grown in the United States.
7500 varieties of apples are grown throughout the world.
100 varieties of apples are grown commercially in the United States.
Apples are grown commercially in 36 states.
Apples are grown in all 50 states.
In 2002 United States consumers ate an average of 42.2 pounds of fresh apples
and processed apple products. That's a lot of applesauce!
Sixty-two percent of the 2002 U.S. apple crop was eaten as fresh fruit.
39 percent of apples are processed into apple products; 21 percent of this is
for juice and cider.
The top apple producing states are Washington, New York, Michigan, California,
Pennsylvania and Virginia, which produced over 83 percent of the nation’s
2001-crop apple supply.
Apples are fat, sodium, and cholesterol free.
A medium apples is about 80 calories.
Apples are a great source of the fiber pectin. One apple has five grams of
fiber.
In 2001 there were 8,000 apple growers with orchards covering 430,200 acres.
The pilgrims planted the first United States apple trees in the Massachusetts
Bay Colony.
The science of apple growing is called pomology.
Apple trees take four to five years to produce their first fruit.
Most apples are still picked by hand in the fall.
Apple varieties range in size from a little larger than a cherry to as large as
a grapefruit.
Apples are propagated by two methods: grafting or budding.
The apple variety ‘Delicious' is the most widely grown in the United States.
In Europe, France, Italy and Germany are the leading apple producing countries.
The apple tree originated in an area between the Caspin and the Black Sea.
Apples were the favorite fruit of ancient Greeks and Romans.
Apples are a member of the rose family.
Apples harvested from an average tree can fill 20 boxes that weigh 42 pounds
each.
Americans eat 19.6 pounds or about 65 fresh apples every year.
25 percent of an apple's volume is air. That is why they float.
The largest apple picked weighed three pounds.
Europeans eat about 46 pounds of apples annually.
The average size of a United States orchard is 50 acres.
Many growers use dwarf apple trees.
Charred apples have been found in prehistoric dwellings in Switzerland.
Most apple blossoms are pink when they open but gradually fade to white.
Some apple trees will grown over forty feet high and live over a hundred years.
Most apples can be grown farther north than most other fruits because they
blossom late in spring, minimizing frost damage.
It takes the energy from 50 leaves to produce one apple.
Apples are the second most valuable fruit grown in the United States. Oranges
are first.
In colonial time apples were called winter banana or melt-in-the-mouth.
United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) forecasts the 2000 apple crop to
be at 254.2 million 42 pound cartons.
Total apple production in 2001 was 229 million cartons valued at $1.5 billion.
The largest U. S. apple crop was 277.3 million cartons in 1998.
In 1999 the People's Republic of China led the world in apple production
followed by the United States.
Apples have five seed pockets or carpels. Each pocket contains seeds. The number
of seeds per carpel is determined by the vigor and health of the plant.
Different varieties of apples will have different number of seeds.
China is the leading producer of apples with over 1.2 billion bushels grown in
2001.
World's top apple producers are China, United States, Turkey, Poland and Italy.
The Lady or Api apple is one of the oldest varieties in existence.
Newton Pippin apples were the first apples exported from America in 1768, some
were sent to Benjamin Franklin in London.
In 1730 the first apple nursery was opened in Flushing, New York.
One of George Washington's hobbies was pruning his apple trees.
America's longest-lived apple tree was reportedly planted in 1647 by Peter
Stuyvesant in his Manhattan orchard and was still bearing fruit when a derailed
train struck it in 1866.
Apples ripen six to ten times faster at room temperature than if they were
refrigerated.
A peck of apples weight 10.5 pounds.
A bushel of apples weights about 42 pounds and will yield 20-24 quarts of
applesauce.
Archeologists have found evidence that humans have been enjoying apples since
lat least 6500 B.C.
The world's larges apple peel was created by Kathy Wafler Madison on October 16,
1976, in Rochester, NY. It was 172 feet, 4 inches long. (She was 16 years old at
the time and grew up to be a sales manager for an apple tree nursery.)
It takes about 36 apples to create one gallon of apple cider.
Apples account for 50% of the world's deciduous fruit tree production
The old saying, “ an apple a day, keeps the doctor away ”. This saying comes
from am old English adage, “ To eat an apple before going to bed, will make the
doctor beg his bread.”
Don’t peel your apple. Two–thirds of the fiber and lots of antioxidants are
found in the peel Antioxidants help to reduce damage to cells, which can trigger
some diseases.
The five most popular apples in the United States are Red Delicious, Golden
Delicious, Gala, Fuji and Granny Smith.
The estimated apple crop for 2005 is about 234 million bushels of apples. That
is about 79 apples per person.
History
The Apple is a fruit of the temperate zones and only reaches perfection in their
cooler regions. It is a fruit of long descent and in the Swiss lake-dwellings
small apples have been found, completely charred but still showing the
seed-valves and the grain of the flesh. It exists in its wild state in most
countries of Europe and also in the region of the Caucasus: in Norway, it is
found in the lowlands as far north as Drontheim.
The Crab-tree or Wild Apple (Pyrus malus), is native to Britain and is the wild
ancestor of all the cultivated varieties of apple trees. It was the stock on
which were grafted choice varieties when brought from Europe, mostly from
France. Apples of some sort were abundant before the Norman Conquest and were
probably introduced into Britain by the Romans. Twenty-two varieties were
mentioned by Pliny: there are now about 2,000 kinds cultivated. In the Old Saxon
manuscripts there are numerous mentions of apples and cider. Bartholomeus
Anglicus, whose Encyclopedia was one of the earliest printed books containing
botanical information (being printed at Cologne about 1470), gives a chapter on
the Apple. He says:
'Malus the Appyll tree is a tree yt bereth apples and is a grete tree in itself.
. . it is more short than other trees of the wood wyth knottes and rinelyd
Rynde. And makyth shadowe wythe thicke bowes and branches: and fayr with dyurs
blossomes, and floures of swetnesse and Iykynge: with goode fruyte and noble.
And is gracious in syght and in taste and vertuous in medecyne . . . some beryth
sourysh fruyte and harde, and some ryght soure and some ryght swete, with a good
savoure and mery.'
Description
The Crab-tree is a small tree of general distribution in Britain south of
Perthshire. In most respects it closely resembles the cultivated Apple of the
orchard differing chiefly only in the size and flavour of the fruit. Well-grown
specimens are not often met with, as in woods and copses it is cramped by other
trees and seldom attains any considerable height, 30-foot specimens being rare
and many being mere bushes. Those found in hedgerows have often sprung from the
seeds of orchard apples that have reverted to ancestral type. The branches of
the Crab-tree become pendant, with long shoots which bear the leaves and
flowers. The leaves are dark green and glossy and the flowers, in small clusters
on dwarf shoots are produced in April and May. The buds are deeply tinged with
pink on the outside the expanded flowers an inch and a half across, and when the
trees are in full bloom, they are a beautiful sight.
The blossoms, by their delightful fragrance and store of nectar, attract myriads
of bees, and as a result of the fertilization effected by these visitors in
their search for the buried nectar, the fruit develops and becomes in autumn the
beautiful little Crab Apple, which when ripe is yellow or red in colour and
measures about an inch across. It has a very austere and acid juice, in
consequence of which it cannot be eaten in the raw condition, but a delicious
jelly is made from it, which is always welcome on the table, and the fruit can
also be used for jammaking, with blackberries, pears or quinces. In Ireland, it
is sometimes added to cider, to impart a roughness. The fruit in some varieties
is less acid than in others: in the variety in which the fruit hangs down from
the shoots, the little apples are exceedingly acid, but in another kind, they
stand more or less erect on their stalks and these are so much less acid as to
give almost a suggestion of sweetness. The fruit of the Siberian Crab, or
Cherry-apple, grown as an ornamental tree, makes also a fine preserve.
Cider Apples may be considered as a step in development from the Wild Apple to
the Dessert Apple. Formerly every farmhouse made its cider. The apples every
autumn were tipped in heaps on the straw-strewn floor of the pound house, a
building of cob, covered with thatch, in which stood the pounder and the press
and vats and all hands were busy for days preparing the golden beverage. This
was the yearly process - still carried out on many farms of the west of England,
though cider-making is becoming more and more a product of the factories. One of
the men turned the handle of the pounder, while a boy tipped in the apples at
the top. A pounder is a machine which crushes the apples between two rollers
with teeth in them. The pulp and juice are then taken to the press in large
shovels which have high sides and are scored bright by the acid. The press is a
huge square tray with a lip in the centre of the front side and its floor slopes
towards this opening. On either side are huge oaken supports on which rests a
square baulk of the same wood. Through this works a large screw. Under the
timber is the presser Directly the pulp is ready, the farmer starts to prepare
the 'cheese.' First of all goes a layer of straw, then a layer of apples, and so
on until the 'cheese' is a yard high, and sometimes more. Then the ends of straw
which project are turned up to the top of the heap. Now the presser is wound
down and compresses the mound until the clear juice runs freely. Under the lip
in the front of the cider press is put a vat. The juice is dipped from this into
casks. In four months' time the cider will be ready to drink.
The demand for cider has increased rapidly of late years, chiefly on account of
the dry varieties being so popular with sufferers from rheumatism and gout. As
very good prices have been paid in recent seasons for the best cider apples, and
as eight tons per acre is quite an average crop from a properly-managed orchard
in full bearing, it is obvious to all progressive and up-to-date farmers and
apple-growers that this branch of agriculture is well worthy of attention. In
the last few years, with the object of encouraging this special Applegrowing
industry, silver cups have been awarded to the owners of cider-apple orchards in
Devon who make the greatest improvement in the cultivation of their orchards
during the year, and it is hoped this will still further stimulate the planting
of new orchards and the renovation of the old ones.
The peculiar winy odour is stimulating to many. Pliny, and later, Sir John
Mandeville, tell of a race of little men in 'Farther India' who 'eat naught and
live by the smell of apples.' Burton wrote that apples are good against
melancholy and Dr. John Caius, physician to Queen Elizabeth, in his Boke of
Counseille against the Sweatynge Sicknesse advises the patient to 'smele to an
old swete apple to recover his strengthe.' An apple stuck full of cloves was the
prototype of the pomander, and pomatum (now used only in a general sense) took
its name from being first made of the pulp of apples, lard and rosewater.
In Shakespeare's time, apples when served at dessert were usually accompanied by
caraway, as we may read in Henry IV, where Shallow invites Falstaff to 'a pippin
and a dish of caraway,' In a still earlier Booke of Nurture, it is directed
'After mete pepyns, caraway in comfyts.' The custom of serving roast apples with
a little saucerful of Carraways is still kept up at Trinity College, Cambridge,
and at some of the old-fashioned London Livery dinners, just as in Shakespeare's
days.
The taste for apples is one of the earliest and most natural of inclinations;
all children love apples, cooked or uncooked. Apple pies, apple puddings, apple
dumplings are fare acceptable in all ages and all conditions.
Apple cookery is very early English: Piers Ploughman mentions 'all the povere
peple' who 'baken apples broghte in his lappes' and the ever popular apple pie
was no less esteemed in Tudor times than it is to-day, only our ancestors had
some predilections in the matter of seasonings that might not now appeal to all
of us, for they put cinnamon and ginger in their pies and gave them a lavish
colouring of saffron.
Apple Moyse is an old English confection, no two recipes for which seem to
agree. One Black Letter volume tells us to take a dozen apples, roast or boil
them, pass them through a sieve with the yolks of three or four eggs, and as
they are strained temper them with three or four spoonfuls of damask (rose)
water; season them with sugar and half a dish of sweet butter, and boil them in
a chafing dish and cast biscuits or cinnamon and ginger upon them.
Halliwell says, upon one authority, that apple moyse was made from apples after
they had been pressed for cider, and seasoned with spices.
Probably the American confection, Apple Butter, is an evolution of the old
English dish? Apple butter is a kind of jam made of tart apples, boiled in cider
until reduced to a very thick smooth paste, to which is added a flavouring of
allspice, while cooking. It is then placed in jars and covered tightly.
The once-popular custom of wassailing the orchard-trees' on Christmas Eve, or
the Eve of the Epiphany, is not quite extinct even yet in a few remote places in
Devonshire. More than three centuries ago Herrick mentioned it among his
'Ceremonies of Christmas Eve': 'Wassaile the trees, that they may beare You many
a Plum and many a Peare: For more or lesse fruits they will bring, As you do
give them Wassailing.' The ceremony consisted in the farmer, with his family and
labourers, going out into the orchard after supper, bearing with them a jug of
cider and hot cakes. The latter were placed in the boughs of the oldest or best
bearing trees in the orchard, while the cider was flung over the trees after the
farmer had drunk their health in some such fashion as the following: 'Here's to
thee, old apple-tree! Whence thou may'st bud, and whence thou may'st blow, Hats
full! Caps full! Bushel - bushel-bags full! And my pockets full too! Huzza!' The
toast was repeated thrice, the men and boys often firing off guns and pistols,
and the women and children shouting loudly.
Roasted apples were usually placed in the pitcher of cider, and were thrown at
the trees with the liquid. Trees that were bad bearers were not honoured with
wassailing but it was thought that the more productive ones would cease to bear
if the rite were omitted. It is said to have been a relic of the heathen
sacrifices to Pomona. The custom also prevailed in Somersetshire and
Dorsetshire.
Roast apples, or crabs, formed an indispensable part of the old-fashioned
'wassailbowl,' or 'good brown bowl," of our ancestors. 'And sometime lurk I in a
gossip's bowl In very likeness of a roasted Crab' Puck relates in Midsummer's
Night's Dream.
The mixture of hot spiced ale, wine or cider, with apples and bits of toast
floating in it was often called 'Lamb's wool,' some say from its softness, but
the word is really derived from the Irish 'la mas nbhal,' 'the feast of the
apple-gathering' (All Hallow Eve), which being pronounced somewhat like
'Lammas-ool,' was corrupted into 'lamb's wool.' It was usual for each person who
partook of the spicy beverage to take out an apple and eat it, wishing good luck
to the company.
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