THE WILD ROADSIDE APPLES OF BAYFIELD

BEAUTIFUL, SMALLER RED FRUIT...

...MULTI-COLORED LARGER FRUIT...

...SMALL YELLOW FRUIT AND INTERESTING TREE SHAPE... 

...FRUIT EARLY, PROBABLY AKIN TO  A YELLOW TRANSPARENT 

Saturday, 9:00 AM.  Wind NW, very gusty.  The sky is cloudy with some overcast, and the humidity is 63%.   The barometer, now at 29.92", is beginning to fall again after .24" of rain fell last night.
   One of the very interesting aspects of the Bayfield regional landscape is the amount and variety of wild roadside apple trees, which bear a great variety of fruit in almost every size and color imaginable.  Bayfield is famous for its apple orchards, and there are many old abandoned orchards with ancient trees as well.  And of course every farmstead and many town lots originally grew apple trees.  So there has been and still is an almost unlimited seed source for wild apple trees, and plenty of uncultivated vacant land for them to spring up on.
   Apple trees have been cultivated at least for the last 6,000 years.  The domestic apple, Malus domestica, in the rose family, originated in what is now Kazakstan in western Asia, and forests of the original trees still exist there. Many years ago I had the good fortune of working with a Soviet botanist from the Kazak city of Alma Atta, which translates as "Mother of Apples."
   The genus name of the apple is derived from the Latin word for fruit, and the species from the fact that it is domesticated.  There are many species of apples, all of which are native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere.  The parent species of the domestic apple is M. sieversii, commemorating the Russian botanist who discovered it in Kazakstan two hundred years ago.  Apples other than the domestic apples are usually called wild apples, and the smaller fruited wild apples are categorized as crabapples.  Most wild apples are inedible, but some are soft and sweet enough to be palatable.
   Apples of all kinds do not self-pollinate, and require pollination by other trees in the genus Malus to bear fruit.  It follows that the only way to propagate edible apples is asexually, by cutting or graft; all Red Delicious apple trees, for instance, are propagated from the first tree to bear that name.  It also follows that every apple seed is a mystery as to what its fruit will be like when it grows into a tree.  Thus all the diversity of the wild apples around Bayfield.
   I have often thought that it would be fascinating and perhaps profitable to taste all the different roadside apples of Bayfield, and find one or more that would be a new and superior edible apple variety. Not only the edible characteristics of the wild apples are interesting to contemplate, but also fruit size and color, flowers, and tree size and shape, as there may also be a good landscape crabapple awaiting discovery on the Bayfield backroads.  Years ago, when I was landscaping the first house we built, I found a wonderful wild crabapple in a hedgerow and carefully, with very great effort, dug it up and planted it in our new backyard, where it became a fine focal point; I often wonder if it is still there.
    At this point in time I will leave all those exciting opportunities to a younger horticulturist, but the field is ripe for the endeavor, if you will excuse the pun.