In the food world, there are many items that dramatically divide groups of eaters into those who can’t wait to dig in and those who never will. Persimmons, mushrooms, shrimp, and (my beloved favorites) olives and raw oysters certainly fit this bill. And then there are those non-polarizing foods that we can generally guess that most people, most of the time, will eat and enjoy. Think freshly-baked bread, brownies, mild cheeses, and, in the produce aisle, grapes, oranges, and bananas. It is in this latter category that you will find one of our most common supermarket and cafeteria foods, the apple.
Bite into supermarket apples, labeled with evocative and familiar names such as Honeycrisp, Pink Lady, Gala, Fuji, and Granny Smith, and you will generally know what you are getting, and that if you bring home a few, your friends and family will almost certainly eat and enjoy them.
The fact that the cultivated apple is such a reliable and predictable part of our diets makes it all the more interesting than the wild version – which can be found all around North America and is common around the Northeast – so often upends expectations of what this fruit is and can be.
Originating in Central Asia and brought to North America in the 1600s, apples – both cultivated and wild – are the fruit of the Malus genus of plants, and are members of the large Roseacea family, which also includes roses, blackberries, raspberries, pears, peaches, cherries, and many more of the plants we eat and interact with daily. Apple trees are quite distinct in appearance, and to my mind look like the illustrations from tales of haunted woods. They have scaly, almost ragged gray bark and often gnarled limbs that stretch out from their trunks. The trees can grow to be 30 or so feet tall, and branches bear alternate leaves that are 2-3 inches long, ovate, and have small teeth around the edges.
Apple blossoms are truly something to behold, and the weeks when apple trees are flowering are one of my absolute favorite times of year. The fragrant, whitish-pink flowers bear five velvety petals, and those petals flutter delicately to the ground like a scene from a movie when they are spent. The apple fruit develops throughout the summer and is ready to pick from the midsummer until late fall. Though wild apples are often half the size of the large apples in the store, they are not to be confused with the small, cherry-like in appearance, and very tart crab apples, which are a different type of tree altogether. Apple trees can further be identified by their five seeds which present in a pentagram formation within the fruit, and it is because of those seeds that this tree changes how we often think about growing food.
The apple, unlike so many crops we cultivate, is a plant that does not come true from seed. This means that, if planted, an apple seed will grow a tree with fruit different from the seed-bearing apple itself, though that fruit will likely have some of the characteristics that were carried over from the parent trees. This ever-expanding genetic diversity, with no two trees exactly like the other, is similar to the way human reproduction lends itself to an infinite combination of characteristics, making each of us our own unique individual.
Since our global food system prioritizes stability and predictability, the apples we purchase in stores come from grafted trees, which use parts of existing trees that bear the varieties we want to grow. Over and over again we are able to rely on the fact that the apples we buy, as long as they are in season and ripe, will be the apples we expect: replicable and consistent and familiar.
But, as it is so brilliantly stated in Jurassic Park, “life finds a way.” Wherever apples have been cultivated, such as our northeastern home, the woods, fields, and old roads will be dotted with both wild apple trees that have grown from errant seeds and, equally interesting, unclaimed cultivated trees of unknown varieties from long-since abandoned gardens and orchards. These wild or abandoned trees are ready and waiting for an animal or person to sample their fruit and distribute their seeds, making a brand new variety of apple tree once more.
Thoreau, who wrote of his encountering all sorts of apple trees during his time on Cape Cod, also wrote specifically about the nature of wild apples in his 1862 essay in The Atlantic, appropriately titled “Wild Apples.” In that essay he compared the nature of the unpredictable wild apple to humanity itself. He wrote that, “Every wild-apple shrub excites our expectation thus, somewhat as every wild child.” And indeed, wild apples are both exciting and a truly mixed bag. Some are quite small and bumpy, some are very tart or bitter or high in tannins, some are softer or mealier than you’d expect. Some are very sweet and crisp and fulfill the best possible version of what you’d hope for an apple to be, and some are different from that expectation in wonderful ways you couldn’t have predicted.
If you encounter wild apples that are delicious to eat raw (and do not have insect damage, which is far more common in wild apples since they are generally free from pesticides), then by all means enjoy them that way just as you would apples from the store. If you come upon apples that you bite into and decide are not to your liking, the nice thing is that no matter what they taste like on their own, they will almost certainly make an excellent pie. Simply adjust your sugar, spices, and lemon juice to enhance or counteract the flavor of the specific apples you are including in your recipe. Since the pie bakes for such a long time, the texture of the fruit when raw becomes a nonissue. And luckily apple pie – much like those more familiar apples you can find in the supermarket – is one of those beloved and comforting foods that nearly everyone is happy to be served. In my house, we pick as many wild apples as we can in the late summer and fall, cut them up, and freeze them in chunks or slices. We then defrost them for use in pies throughout the rest of the year.
So go explore the woods, walk along old roads, venture out to overgrown and abandoned orchards, and keep an eye out for the spreading branches and flash of red fruit that you think you know so well. Leave your expectations at the door, give it a taste, and remember that sometimes familiar favorites can still surprise you.
*NOTE: Always consult with trusted experts and refer to foraging books and field guides for 100% positive plant identification before consuming any wild plant, and make sure you are familiar with every potentially dangerous plant that grows in your region. As with harvesting any wild plant, and particularly ones that grow in commonly-sprayed areas, take particular care to collect from spaces you know to be chemical-free. Never pick any wild plant from protected spaces. Integrate new foods into your diet in small quantities to gauge any dietary and allergy sensitivities, and consult with a doctor if you have any questions or concerns about specific health issues or medication interactions.
Becca Miller lives in the Adirondack Mountains and works as a professional farm-to-classroom educator, ceramics teacher, writer, and photographer. A former Cape Codder in residence but always a Cape Codder at heart, Becca spent her time living on the Cape running a CSA program where she taught members how to use harvest items in new and creative ways. Becca is a Certified Master Food Preserver and a Leave No Trace Trainer, and her writing has been featured in Edible Capital District, Edible Vermont, and Adirondac magazines, along with Alice Waters’ Edible Schoolyard blog and Mother Earth Living’s Food Matters blog. Find Becca’s writing at beccamillerwriting.weebly.com.
