The Story of the Apple

Three of the apples we bought at Beetham garden centre on Saturday, each of them a different variety. Two no longer exist - we had them for lunch.

The backdrop is a book called Orchard, which J has just finished reading for the second time. She loves it, and might read it again.

And the apples sit on a book I bought last year, “The Extraordinary Story of the Apple”. It’s quite a technical read, and a real mix of science, history and horticulture. A few surprising facts about the Apple, Malus Domestica:
* it is now thought to originate from a single wild species growing in the ancient fruit forests of inner and Central Asia, centred on present day Kazakhstan
* bears and wild horses were key to the propagation of the domestic apple’s ancestor
* it spread west on the trade routes from China, the invention of grafting by the babylonians helped
* the references to apples in the bible are a mis-translation of a Hebrew word, although no-one seems to know what the word actually refers to. But it’s not an apple Eve bit into