Our supermarkets are stocked with stacked displays of shiny, waxed apples, piles of toughened plums that will not bruise, and apricots lacking the fragrance that becomes them.
These varieties have been engineered to suit process, to the efficiency of mass production, of indefinite storage and global distribution. These modern fruits we are offered have been long stored, are tough and bruise resistant, and along the way these modern fruits have lost their soul.
Heirloom varieties, these trees of antiquity, are a gardener's inheritance. The plethora of varieties raised when fruit was grown and sold locally, offer limitless qualities. Nursery catalogues one hundred years ago listed pages of varieties, now scarce.
There have been thousands of varieties of apples, pears, peaches and plums. The backyard heirloom orchard secures genetic diversity against pests and disease, provides amazing fruit of varied and particular use and gives an extended harvest. These trees are our living history, and anyone who is a custodian of an heirloom tree should treasure it.
Yes, the heirloom experience can be messy. Ripe fruits harvested from your own backyard, and scoffed under the tree, in a chin dribbling juicy experience that is guaranteed to evoke childhood memories of your first juicy peach, crunchy apple and cherry earrings. Yes, these heirlooms remind us how good fruit really can be.
Apples and pears were initially grouped together by botanists under the one genus, Pyrus. The differences between the two are slight, in fact there are pear-shaped apples and round pears. Presently, there are 30 or so wild apple species listed separately under the genus Malus. Domestic apples were cultivated during Greek classical times. Earlier still, in his 9th century BC Odyssey, Homer describes ‘apple trees with shining fruit’ at the orchards of Phaecia. These early fruits still resembled the crab apples we know today, however from early selection types like the Pearmains and Costard apples were developed.
Eventually these domestic apples spread through France and Flanders to England. Apples have become the primary fruit crop of cool, temperate areas.
During the 1920s Yates listed more than forty apple varieties in their nursery catalogue, declaring it the “King of Fruits”. It is a crime that today we are offered at best half a dozen shiny varieties, stored for months so that they become powdery and flavourless. Heirloom apples give us a range in harvest times, so a backyard orchard can provide a harvest of fresh fruit from the first Gravenstein of summer, through until the last long storing Lady Williams of early winter. There are varieties bred for every purpose, cider, cooking and dessert apples to enjoy straight from the tree. Every heirloom comes with a story, and here are but a few:
Cox's Orange Pippin – Raised in 1830, a seedling from a famous English tree, the Ribston Pippin, this English dessert variety has become the poster variety for the heritage apple revival. Stunning orange red skin, with aromatic white flesh, both crisp and juicy.
Bramley's Seedling — England's most adored apple was introduced in the 1850s, after a nurseryman Henry Merryweather admired the tree in the backyard of the local butcher's cottage. The butcher was Mr Bramley, hence the name. Good storing qualities coupled with a strong acidity and flavour made it an ideal cooker for pies in the long winter months.
Granny Smith — Australia's own heirloom apple, being a chance seedling in Mrs Thomas Smith's garden in Ryde, NSW in 1860. Bake, bottle, or wait until it turns dull yellow for maximum sweetness.
Jonathan — First described in the US in 1826 this is an intensely flavoured dessert apple with crisp yellowish flesh and a spicy fragrance. Crucial in every orchard, this variety is a universal pollinator, and will pollinate all other varieties in our range.
After splitting apples from the genus Pyrus, there remain around twenty true species of pear. From three of these species, over 3000 recognised varieties have been recorded. The European Pear descends from Pyrus communis, which itself is quite inedible.
Natural hybridising with other wild species Pyrus pyraster and P. caucasica, have in time developed more edible fruit. These hybrids have been cultivated and continually improved throughout the Mediterranean. French and English breeding have given rise to myriad varieties now heirlooms.
Williams' Bon Chrétien — The world's most popular fresh eating pear originated as a seedling in the garden of an English schoolmaster, and has been enjoyed since 1770. Grafts were sent to a nearby nurseryman, Williams, for whom it was named. Sumptuous, sweet, smooth textured flesh is delicious to eat fresh or to bottle. Shortly after its introduction the Williams pear was sent to America and, under the name Bartlett, became a crucial variety in Californian agriculture.
Doyenne du Comice — The 'elder' of the tribe, whose name roughly translates as "The Dean of the Show", or the "Best in Town". Raised in 1829 in the Loire Valley in central France, this variety melts in your mouth like no other pear. A greenish, yellow-skinned pear, with exquisitely creamy flesh.
Conference — With elegant tapered fruit, this self-fertile pear was named for the National Pear Conference of England in 1885, the year it was first introduced. The elongated golden fruit yields sweet melting flesh, soft and juicy.
Referred as the Persian apple, the peach, Prunus persica, evolved in China, where they have been cultivated for the past four thousand years. From Persia, the peach travelled west, and was soon cultivated throughout Greece from 400BC. Heirlooms include:
Anzac — Bred in Australia in 1915, this juicy red-maroon skinned and white fleshed peach is drippingly delicious. The fruit tastes best when fully soft so growing on your own tree you can pick fruit when it is properly ripe. Freestone peach that crops very heavily.
Like many fruits, the wild apricots, Prunus armeniaca of northern China have much smaller, bitter apricots. These ancestors are worlds apart from the divine experience of home grown apricots. Unfortunately modern varieties are bred tough, and although brightly coloured, their fragrance, crucial to the experience, is lost!
Moorpark — Famously approved, Jane Austin celebrates the Moorpark in Mansfield Park, “It was only the spring twelvemonth before Mr. Norris's death that we put in the apricot against the stable wall, which is now grown such a noble tree, and getting to such perfection, sir. Sir, it is a Moor Park, we bought it as a Moor Park, and it cost us--that is, it was a present from Sir Thomas, but I saw the bill--and I know it cost seven shillings, and was charged as a Moor Park." Huge fruit to 7cm wide that is sweet rich and juicy.
We are each the custodians of these magnificent heirlooms. But it’s not enough to grow them, we have to eat them too. We need these heirlooms, so we can enjoy them hand picked from our own backyards, and experience every year the chin dribbling juicy mess of gorging on ripe and fragrant fruit at its very best.
When you’re in that moment, savouring every drop: memories awaken as you release your inner child. To the memory of how fruit used to be! Let’s embrace these varieties of yesteryear, because they are too soft, too juicy, too sweet!
