Wild
Apples
The History of the Apple Tree
by Henry D. Thoreau
It is remarkable how
closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.
The geologist tells us that the order of the Rosaceae, which
includes the apple, also the true grasses, and the Labiatae,
or mints, were introduced only a short time previous to the
appearance of man on the globe.
It appears that
apples made a part of the food of that unknown primitive people
whose traces have lately been found at the bottom of the Swiss
lakes, supposed to be older than the foundation of Rome, so old that
they had no metallic implements. An entire black and shriveled
crab-apple has been recovered from their stores.
Tacitus says of the
ancient Germans that they satisfied their hunger with wild apples (agrestia
poma), among other things.
Niebuhr observes
that "the words for a house, a field, a plough, plowing, wine,
oil, milk, sheep, apples, and others relating to agriculture and the
gentler way of life, agree in Latin and Greek, while the Latin words
for all objects pertaining to war or the chase are utterly alien
from the Greek." Thus the apple tree may be considered a symbol
of peace no less than the olive.
The apple was early
so important, and generally distributed, that its name traced to its
root in many languages signifies fruit in general. Mήλον,
in Greek, means an apple, also the fruit of other trees, also a
sheep and any cattle, and finally riches in general.
The apple tree has
been celebrated by the Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, and Scandinavians.
Some have thought that the first human pair were tempted by its
fruit. Goddesses are fabled to have contended for it, dragons were
set to watch it, and heroes were employed to pluck it.
The tree is
mentioned in at least three places in the Old Testament, and its
fruit in two or three more. Solomon sings, "As the apple tree
among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons."
And again, "Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples."
The noblest part of man’s noblest feature is named from this
fruit, the "apple of the eye."
The apple tree is
also mentioned by Homer and Herodotus. Ulysses saw in the glorious
garden of Alcinoüs "pears and pomegranates, and apple trees
bearing beautiful fruit" (καί
μηλέαι
άγλαόκαρπσι).
And according to Homer, apples were among the fruits which Tantalus
could not pluck, the wind ever blowing their boughs away from him.
Theophrastus knew and described the apple tree as a botanist.
According to the
Prose Edda, "Iduna keeps in a box the apples which the gods,
when they feel old age approaching, have only to taste of to become
young again. It is in this manner that they will be kept in
renovated youth until Ragnarök" (or the destruction of the
gods).
I learn from Loudon that
"the ancient Welsh bards were rewarded for excelling in song by
the token of the apple-spray;" and "in the Highlands of
Scotland the apple tree is the badge of the clan Lamont."
The apple tree (Pyrus
malus) belongs chiefly to the northern temperate zone. Loudon
says that it "grows spontaneously in every part of Europe
except the frigid zone, and throughout Western Asia, China, and
Japan." We have also two or three varieties of the apple
indigenous in North America. The cultivated apple tree was first
introduced into this country by the earliest settlers, and it is
thought to do as well or better here than anywhere else. Probably
some of the varieties which are now cultivated were first introduced
into Britain by the Romans.
Pliny, adopting the
distinction of Theophrastus, says, "Of trees there are some
which are altogether wild (sylvestres), some more civilized (urbaniores)."
Theophrastus includes the apple among the last; and, indeed, it is
in this sense the most civilized of all trees. It is as harmless as
a dove, as beautiful as a rose, and as valuable as flocks and herds.
It has been longer cultivated than any other, and so is more
humanized; and who knows but, like the dog, it will at length be no
longer traceable to its wild original? It migrates with man, like
the dog and horse and cow: first, perchance, from Greece to Italy,
thence to England, thence to America; and our Western emigrant is
still marching steadily toward the setting sun with the seeds of the
apple in his pocket, or perhaps a few young trees strapped to his
load. At least a million apple trees are thus set farther westward
this year than any cultivated ones grew last year. Consider how the
Blossom Week, like the Sabbath, is thus annually spreading over the
prairies; for when man migrates, he carries with him not only his
birds, quadrupeds, insects, vegetables, and his very sward, but his
orchard also.
The leaves and
tender twigs are an agreeable food to many domestic animals, as the
cow, horse, sheep, and goat; and the fruit is sought after by the
first, as well as by the hog. Thus there appears to have existed a
natural alliance between these animals and this tree from the first.
"The fruit of the crab in the forests of France" is said
to be "a great resource for the wild boar."
Not only the Indian,
but many indigenous insects, birds, and quadrupeds, welcomed the
apple tree to these shores. The tent caterpillar saddled her eggs on
the very first twig that was formed, and it has since shared her
affections with the wild cherry; and the canker-worm also in a
measure abandoned the elm to feed on it. As it grew apace, the
bluebird, robin, cherry-bird, kingbird, and many more, came with
haste and built their nests and warbled in its boughs, and so became
orchard-birds, and multiplied more than ever. It was an era in the
history of their race. The downy woodpecker found such a savory
morsel under its bark that he perforated it in a ring quite round
the tree, before he left it,—a thing which he had never done
before, to my knowledge. It did not take the partridge long to find
out how sweet its buds were, and every winter eve she flew, and
still flies, from the wood, to pluck them, much to the farmer’s
sorrow. The rabbit, too, was not slow to learn the taste of its
twigs and bark; and when the fruit was ripe, the squirrel half
rolled, half carried it to his hole; and even the musquash crept up
the bank from the brook at evening, and greedily devoured it, until
he had worn a path in the grass there; and when it was frozen and
thawed, the crow and the jay were glad to taste it occasionally. The
owl crept into the first apple tree that became hollow, and fairly
hooted with delight, finding it just the place for him; so, settling
down into it, he has remained there ever since.
My theme being the
Wild Apple, I will merely glance at some of the seasons in the
annual growth of the cultivated apple, and pass on to my special
province.
The flowers of the
apple are perhaps the most beautiful of any tree’s, so copious and
so delicious to both sight and scent. The walker is frequently
tempted to turn and linger near some more than usually handsome one,
whose blossoms are two-thirds expanded. How superior it is in these
respects to the pear, whose blossoms are neither colored nor
fragrant!
By the middle of
July, green apples are so large as to remind us of coddling, and of
the autumn. The sward is commonly strewed with little ones which
fall still-born, as it were,—Nature thus thinning them for us. The
Roman writer Palladius said, "If apples are inclined to fall
before their time, a stone placed in a split root will retain
them." Some such notion, still surviving, may account for some
of the stones which we see placed, to be overgrown, in the forks of
trees. They have a saying in Suffolk, England,—
"At Michaelmas
time, or a little before,
Half an apple goes to the core."
Early
apples begin to be ripe about the first of August; but I think that
none of them are so good to eat as some to smell. One is worth more
to scent your handkerchief with than any perfume which they sell in
the shops. The fragrance of some fruits is not to be forgotten,
along with that of flowers. Some gnarly apple which I pick up in the
road reminds me by its fragrance of all the wealth of
Pomona,—carrying me forward to those days when they will be
collected in golden and ruddy heaps in the orchards and about the
cider-mills.
A week or two later,
as you are going by orchards or gardens, especially in the evenings,
you pass through a little region possessed by the fragrance of ripe
apples, and thus enjoy them without price, and without robbing
anybody.
There is thus about
all natural products a certain volatile and ethereal quality which
represents their highest value, and which cannot be vulgarized, or
bought and sold. No mortal has ever enjoyed the perfect flavor of
any fruit, and only the god-like among men begin to taste its
ambrosial qualities. For nectar and ambrosia are only those fine
flavors of every earthly fruit which our coarse palates fail to
perceive,—just as we occupy the heaven of the gods without knowing
it. When I see a particularly mean man carrying a load of fair and
fragrant early apples to market, I seem to see a contest going on
between him and his horse, on the one side, and the apples on the
other, and, to my mind, the apples always gain it. Pliny says that
apples are the heaviest of all things, and that the oxen begin to
sweat at the mere sight of a load of them. Our driver begins to lose
his load the moment he tries to transport them to where they do not
belong, that is, to any but the most beautiful. Though he gets out
from time to time, and feels of them, and thinks they are all there,
I see the stream of their evanescent and celestial qualities going
to heaven from his cart, while the pulp and skin and core only are
going to market. They are not apples, but pomace. Are not these
still Iduna’s apples, the taste of which keeps the gods forever
young? and think you that they will let Loki or Thjassi carry them
off to Jötunheim, while they grow wrinkled and gray? No, for Ragnarök,
or the destruction of the gods, is not yet.
There is another
thinning of the fruit, commonly near the end of August or in
September, when the ground is strewn with windfalls; and this
happens especially when high winds occur after rain. In some
orchards you may see fully three-quarters of the whole crop on the
ground, lying in a circular form beneath the trees, yet hard and
green,—or, if it is a hill-side, rolled far down the hill.
However, it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good. All the
country over, people are busy picking up the windfalls, and this
will make them cheap for early apple-pies.
In October, the
leaves falling, the apples are more distinct on the trees. I saw one
year in a neighboring town some trees fuller of fruit than I
remembered to have ever seen before, small yellow apples hanging
over the road. The branches were gracefully drooping with their
weight, like a barberry-bush, so that the whole tree acquired a new
character. Even the topmost branches, instead of standing erect,
spread and drooped in all directions; and there were so many poles
supporting the lower ones, that they looked like pictures of banian-trees.
As an old English manuscript says, "The mo appelen the tree
bereth, the more sche boweth to the folk."
Surely the apple is
the noblest of fruits. Let the most beautiful or the swiftest have
it. That should be the "going" price of apples.
Between the fifth
and twentieth of October I see the barrels lie under the trees. And
perhaps I talk with one who is selecting some choice barrels to
fulfill an order. He turns a specked one over many times before he
leaves it out. If I were to tell what is passing in my mind, I
should say that every one was specked which he had handled; for he
rubs off all the bloom, and those fugacious ethereal qualities leave
it. Cool evenings prompt the farmers to make haste, and at length I
see only the ladders here and there left leaning against the trees.
It would be well, if
we accepted these gifts with more joy and gratitude, and did not
think it enough simply to put a fresh load of compost about the
tree. Some old English customs are suggestive at least. I find them
described chiefly in Brand’s "Popular Antiquities." It
appears that "on Christmas eve the farmers and their men in
Devonshire take a large bowl of cider, with a toast in it, and
carrying it in state to the orchard, they salute the apple trees
with much ceremony, in order to make them bear well the next
season." This salutation consists in "throwing some of the
cider about the roots of the tree, placing bits of the toast on the
branches," and then, "encircling one of the best bearing
trees in the orchard, they drink the following toast three several
times:—
‘Here’s to
thee, old apple tree,
Whence thou mayst bud, and whence thou mayst blow,
And whence thou mayst bear apples enow!
Hats-full! caps-full!
Bushel, bushel, sacks-full!
And my pockets full, too! Hurra!"’
Also
what was called "apple-howling" used to be practised in
various counties of England on New-Year’s eve. A troop of boys
visited the different orchards, and, encircling the apple trees,
repeated the following words:—
"Stand fast,
root! bear well, top!
Pray God send us a good howling crop:
Every twig, apples big;
Every bough, apples enow!"
"They then shout in chorus, one of the boys accompanying them
on a cow’s horn. During this ceremony they rap the trees with
their sticks." This is called "wassailing" the trees,
and is thought by some to be "a relic of the heathen sacrifice
to Pomona."
Herrick
sings,—
"Wassaile the
trees that they may beare
You many a plum and many a peare;
For more or less fruits they will bring
As you so give them wassailing."
Our poets have as yet a
better right to sing of cider than of wine; but it behooves them to
sing better than English Phillips did, else they will do no credit
to their Muse.
THE WILD APPLE
So
much for the more civilized apple trees (urbaniores, as Pliny
calls them). I love better to go through the old orchards of
ungrafted apple trees, at whatever season of the year,—so
irregularly planted: sometimes two trees standing close together;
and the rows so devious that you would think that they not only had
grown while the owner was sleeping, but had been set out by him in a
somnambulic state. The rows of grafted fruit will never tempt me to
wander amid them like these. But I now, alas, speak rather from
memory than from any recent experience, such ravages have been made!
Some soils, like a
rocky tract called the Easterbrooks Country in my neighborhood, are
so suited to the apple, that it will grow faster in them without any
care, or if only the ground is broken up once a year, than it will
in many places with any amount of care. The owners of this tract
allow that the soil is excellent for fruit, but they say that it is
so rocky that they have not patience to plough it, and that,
together with the distance, is the reason why it is not cultivated.
There are, or were recently, extensive orchards there standing
without order. Nay, they spring up wild and bear well there in the
midst of pines, birches, maples, and oaks. I am often surprised to
see rising amid these trees the rounded tops of apple trees glowing
with red or yellow fruit, in harmony with the autumnal tints of the
forest.
Going up the side of
a cliff about the first of November, I saw a vigorous young apple
tree, which, planted by birds or cows, had shot up amid the rocks
and open woods there, and had now much fruit on it, uninjured by the
frosts, when all cultivated apples were gathered. It was a rank wild
growth, with many green leaves on it still, and made an impression
of thorniness. The fruit was hard and green, but looked as if it
would be palatable in the winter. Some was dangling on the twigs,
but more half-buried in the wet leaves under the tree, or rolled far
down the hill amid the rocks. The owner knows nothing of it. The day
was not observed when it first blossomed, nor when it first bore
fruit, unless by the chickadee. There was no dancing on the green
beneath it in its honor, and now there is no hand to pluck its
fruit,—which is only gnawed by squirrels, as I perceive. It has
done double duty,—not only borne this crop, but each twig has
grown a foot into the air. And this is such fruit! bigger than many
berries, we must admit, and carried home will be sound and palatable
next spring. What care I for Iduna’s apples so long as I can get
these?
When I go by this shrub
thus late and hardy, and see its dangling fruit, I respect the tree,
and I am grateful for Nature’s bounty, even though I cannot eat
it. Here on this rugged and woody hill-side has grown an apple tree,
not planted by man, no relic of a former orchard, but a natural
growth, like the pines and oaks. Most fruits which we prize and use
depend entirely on our care. Corn and grain, potatoes, peaches,
melons, etc., depend altogether on our planting; but the apple
emulates man’s independence and enterprise. It is not simply
carried, as I have said, but, like him, to some extent, it has
migrated to this New World, and is even, here and there, making its
way amid the aboriginal trees; just as the ox and dog and horse
sometimes run wild and maintain themselves.
Even the sourest and
crabbedest apple, growing in the most unfavorable position, suggests
such thoughts as these, it is so noble a fruit.
THE CRAB
Nevertheless,
our wild apple is wild only like myself, perchance, who
belong not to the aboriginal race here, but have strayed into the
woods from the cultivated stock. Wilder still, as I have said, there
grows elsewhere in this country a native and aboriginal crab-apple, Malus
coronaria, "whose nature has not yet been modified by
cultivation." It is found from western New York to Minnesota,
and southward. Michaux says that its ordinary height "is
fifteen or eighteen feet, but it is sometimes found twenty-five or
thirty feet high," and that the large ones "exactly
resemble the common apple tree." "The flowers are white
mingled with rose-color, and are collected in corymbs." They
are remarkable for their delicious odor. The fruit, according to
him, is about an inch and a half in diameter, and is intensely acid.
Yet they make fine sweetmeats, and also cider of them. He concludes,
that, "if, on being cultivated, it does not yield new and
palatable varieties, it will at least be celebrated for the beauty
of its flowers, and for the sweetness of its perfume."
I never saw the crab-apple
till May, 1861. I had heard of it through Michaux, but more modern
botanists, so far as I know, have not treated it as of any peculiar
importance. Thus it was a half-fabulous tree to me. I contemplated a
pilgrimage to the "Glades," a portion of Pennsylvania
where it was said to grow to perfection. I thought of sending to a
nursery for it, but doubted if they had it, or would distinguish it
from European varieties. At last I had occasion to go to Minnesota,
and on entering Michigan I began to notice from the cars a tree with
handsome rose-colored flowers. At first I thought it some variety of
thorn; but it was not long before the truth flashed on me, that this
was my long-sought Crab-Apple. It was the prevailing flowering shrub
or tree to be seen from the cars at that season of the year,—about
the middle of May. But the cars never stopped before one, and so I
was launched on the bosom of the Mississippi without having touched
one, experiencing the fate of Tantalus. On arriving at St.
Anthony’s Falls, I was sorry to be told that I was too far north
for the Crab-Apple. Nevertheless I succeeded in finding it about
eight miles west of the Falls; touched it and smelled it, and
secured a lingering corymb of flowers for my herbarium. This must
have been near its northern limit.
HOW THE WILD APPLE GROWS
But
though these are indigenous, like the Indians, I doubt whether they
are any hardier than those backwoodsmen among the apple trees,
which, though descended from cultivated stocks, plant themselves in
distant fields and forests, where the soil is favorable to them. I
know of no trees which have more difficulties to contend with, and
which more sturdily resist their foes. These are the ones whose
story we have to tell. It oftentimes reads thus:—
Near the beginning of
May, we notice little thickets of apple trees just springing up in
the pastures where cattle have been,—as the rocky ones of our
Easterbrooks Country, or the top of Nobscot Hill, in Sudbury. One or
two of these perhaps survive the drought and other
accidents,—their very birthplace defending them against the
encroaching grass and some other dangers, at first.
In two years’ time ’t had thus
Reached the level of the rocks,
Admired the stretching world,
Nor feared the wandering flocks.
But at this tender age
Its sufferings began:
There came a browsing ox
And cut it down a span.
This time, perhaps, the ox
does not notice it amid the grass; but the next year, when it has
grown more stout, he recognizes it for a fellow-emigrant from the
old country, the flavor of whose leaves and twigs he well knows; and
though at first he pauses to welcome it, and express his surprise,
and gets for answer, "The same cause that brought you here
brought me," he nevertheless browses it again, reflecting, it
may be, that he has some title to it.
Thus cut down
annually, it does not despair; but, putting forth two short twigs
for every one cut off, it spreads out low along the ground in the
hollows or between the rocks, growing more stout and scrubby, until
it forms, not a tree as yet, but a little pyramidal, stiff, twiggy
mass, almost as solid and impenetrable as a rock. Some of the
densest and most impenetrable clumps of bushes that I have ever
seen, as well on account of the closeness and stubbornness of their
branches as of their thorns, have been these wild-apple scrubs. They
are more like the scrubby fir and black spruce on which you stand,
and sometimes walk, on the tops of mountains, where cold is the
demon they contend with, than anything else. No wonder they are
prompted to grow thorns at last, to defend themselves against such
foes. In their thorniness, however, there is no malice, only some
malic acid.
The rocky pastures
of the tract I have referred to—for they maintain their ground
best in a rocky field—are thickly sprinkled with these little
tufts, reminding you often of some rigid gray mosses or lichens, and
you see thousands of little trees just springing up between them,
with the seed still attached to them.
Being regularly
clipped all around each year by the cows, as a hedge with shears,
they are often of a perfect conical or pyramidal form, from one to
four feet high, and more or less sharp, as if trimmed by the
gardener’s art. In the pastures on Nobscot Hill and its spurs,
they make fine dark shadows when the sun is low. They are also an
excellent covert from hawks for many small birds that roost and
build in them. Whole flocks perch in them at night, and I have seen
three robins’ nests in one which was six feet in diameter.
No doubt many of
these are already old trees, if you reckon from the day they were
planted, but infants still when you consider their development and
the long life before them. I counted the annual rings of some which
were just one foot high, and as wide as high, and found that they
were about twelve years old, but quite sound and thrifty! They were
so low that they were unnoticed by the walker, while many of their
contemporaries from the nurseries were already bearing considerable
crops. But what you gain in time is perhaps in this case, too, lost
in power,—that is, in the vigor of the tree. This is their
pyramidal state.
The cows continue to
browse them thus for twenty years or more, keeping them down and
compelling them to spread, until at last they are so broad that they
become their own fence, when some interior shoot, which their foes
cannot reach, darts upward with joy: for it has not forgotten its
high calling, and bears its own peculiar fruit in triumph.
Such are the tactics
by which it finally defeats its bovine foes. Now, if you have
watched the progress of a particular shrub, you will see that it is
no longer a simple pyramid or cone, but that out of its apex there
rises a sprig or two, growing more lustily perchance than an
orchard-tree, since the plant now devotes the whole of its repressed
energy to these upright parts. In a short time these become a small
tree, an inverted pyramid resting on the apex of the other, so that
the whole has now the form of a vast hour-glass. The spreading
bottom, having served its purpose, finally disappears, and the
generous tree permits the now harmless cows to come in and stand in
its shade, and rub against and redden its trunk, which has grown in
spite of them, and even to taste of part of its fruit, and so
disperse the seed.
Thus the cows create
their own shade and food; and the tree, its hour-glass being
inverted, lives a second life, as it were.
It is an important
question with some nowadays, whether you should trim young apple
trees as high as your nose or as high as your eyes. The ox trims
them up as high as he can reach, and that is about the right height,
I think.
In spite of
wandering kine, and other adverse circumstances, that despised
shrub, valued only by small birds as a covert and shelter from
hawks, has its blossom-week at last, and in course of time its
harvest, sincere, though small.
By the end of some
October, when its leaves have fallen, I frequently see such a
central sprig, whose progress I have watched, when I thought it had
forgotten its destiny, as I had, bearing its first crop of small
green or yellow or rosy fruit, which the cows cannot get at over the
bushy and thorny hedge which surrounds it, and I make haste to taste
the new and undescribed variety. We have all heard of the numerous
varieties of fruit invented by Van Mons and Knight. This is the
system of Van Cow, and she has invented far more and more memorable
varieties than both of them.
Through what
hardships it may attain to bear a sweet fruit! Though somewhat
small, it may prove equal, if not superior, in flavor to that which
has grown in a garden,—will perchance be all the sweeter and more
palatable for the very difficulties it has had to contend with. Who
knows but this chance wild fruit, planted by a cow or a bird on some
remote and rocky hill-side, where it is as yet unobserved by man,
may be the choicest of all its kind, and foreign potentates shall
hear of it, and royal societies seek to propagate it, though the
virtues of the perhaps truly crabbed owner of the soil may never be
heard of,—at least, beyond the limits of his village? It was thus
the Porter and the Baldwin grew.
Every wild apple
shrub excites our expectation thus, somewhat as every wild child. It
is, perhaps, a prince in disguise. What a lesson to man! So are
human beings, referred to the highest standard, the celestial fruit
which they suggest and aspire to bear, browsed on by fate; and only
the most persistent and strongest genius defends itself and
prevails, sends a tender scion upward at last, and drops its perfect
fruit on the ungrateful earth. Poets and philosophers and statesmen
thus spring up in the country pastures, and outlast the hosts of
unoriginal men.
Such is always the
pursuit of knowledge. The celestial fruits, the golden apples of the
Hesperides, are ever guarded by a hundred-headed dragon which never
sleeps, so that it is an Herculean labor to pluck them.
This is one, and the
most remarkable way, in which the wild apple is propagated; but
commonly it springs up at wide intervals in woods and swamps, and by
the sides of roads, as the soil may suit it, and grows with
comparative rapidity. Those which grow in dense woods are very tall
and slender. I frequently pluck from these trees a perfectly mild
and tamed fruit. As Palladius says, "Et injussu consternitur
ubere mali:" And the ground is strewn with the fruit of an
unbidden apple tree.
It is an old notion,
that, if these wild trees do not bear a valuable fruit of their own,
they are the best stocks by which to transmit to posterity the most
highly prized qualities of others. However, I am not in search of
stocks, but the wild fruit itself, whose fierce gust has suffered no
"inteneration." It is not my
"highest plot
To plant the Bergamot."
THE FRUIT, AND ITS FLAVOR
The
time for wild apples is the last of October and the first of
November. They then get to be palatable, for they ripen late, and
they are still perhaps as beautiful as ever. I make a great account
of these fruits, which the farmers do not think it worth the while
to gather,—wild flavors of the Muse, vivacious and inspiriting.
The farmer thinks that he has better in his barrels, but he is
mistaken, unless he has a walker’s appetite and imagination,
neither of which can he have.
Such as grow quite
wild, and are left out till the first of November, I presume that
the owner does not mean to gather. They belong to children as wild
as themselves,—to certain active boys that I know,—to the
wild-eyed woman of the fields, to whom nothing comes amiss, who
gleans after all the world,—and, moreover, to us walkers. We have
met with them, and they are ours. These rights, long enough insisted
upon, have come to be an institution in some old countries, where
they have learned how to live. I hear that "the custom of
grippling, which may be called apple-gleaning, is, or was formerly,
practised in Herefordshire. It consists in leaving a few apples,
which are called the gripples, on every tree, after the general
gathering, for the boys, who go with climbing-poles and bags to
collect them."
As for those I speak
of, I pluck them as a wild fruit, native to this quarter of the
earth,—fruit of old trees that have been dying ever since I was a
boy and are not yet dead, frequented only by the woodpecker and the
squirrel, deserted now by the owner, who has not faith enough to
look under their boughs. From the appearance of the tree-top, at a
little distance, you would expect nothing but lichens to drop from
it, but your faith is rewarded by finding the ground strewn with
spirited fruit,—some of it, perhaps, collected at squirrel-holes,
with the marks of their teeth by which they carried them,—some
containing a cricket or two silently feeding within, and some,
especially in damp days, a shelless snail. The very sticks and
stones lodged in the tree-top might have convinced you of the
savoriness of the fruit which has been so eagerly sought after in
past years.
I have seen no
account of these among the "Fruits and Fruit-Trees of
America," though they are more memorable to my taste than the
grafted kinds; more racy and wild American flavors do they possess,
when October and November, when December and January, and perhaps
February and March even, have assuaged them somewhat. An old farmer
in my neighborhood, who always selects the right word, says that
"they have a kind of bow-arrow tang."
Apples for grafting
appear to have been selected commonly, not so much for their
spirited flavor, as for their mildness, their size, and bearing
qualities,—not so much for their beauty, as for their fairness and
soundness. Indeed, I have no faith in the selected lists of
pomological gentlemen. Their "Favorites" and "None-suches"
and "Seek-no-farthers," when I have fruited them, commonly
turn out very tame and forgetable. They are eaten with comparatively
little zest, and have no real tang nor smack to them.
What if some of
these wildings are acrid and puckery, genuine verjuice, do they not
still belong to the Pomaceæ, which are uniformly innocent and kind
to our race? I still begrudge them to the cider-mill. Perhaps they
are not fairly ripe yet.
No wonder that these
small and high-colored apples are thought to make the best cider.
Loudon quotes from the "Herefordshire Report," that
"apples of a small size are always, if equal in quality, to be
preferred to those of a larger size, in order that the rind and
kernel may bear the greatest proportion to the pulp, which affords
the weakest and most watery juice." And he says, that, "to
prove this, Dr. Symonds, of Hereford, about the year 1800, made one
hogshead of cider entirely from the rinds and cores of apples, and
another from the pulp only, when the first was found of
extraordinary strength and flavor, while the latter was sweet and
insipid."
Evelyn says that the
"Red-strake" was the favorite cider-apple in his day; and
he quotes one Dr. Newburg as saying, "In Jersey ’t is a
general observation, as I hear, that the more of red any apple has
in its rind, the more proper it is for this use. Pale-faced apples
they exclude as much as may be from their cider-vat." This
opinion still prevails.
All apples are good
in November. Those which the farmer leaves out as unsalable, and
unpalatable to those who frequent the markets, are choicest fruit to
the walker. But it is remarkable that the wild apple, which I praise
as so spirited and racy when eaten in the fields or woods, being
brought into the house, has frequently a harsh and crabbed taste.
The Saunterer’s Apple not even the saunterer can eat in the house.
The palate rejects it there, as it does haws and acorns, and demands
a tamed one; for there you miss the November air, which is the sauce
it is to be eaten with. Accordingly, when Tityrus, seeing the
lengthening shadows, invites Melibœus to go home and pass the night
with him, he promises him mild apples and soft chestnuts,—mitia
poma, castaneæ molles. I frequently pluck wild apples of so
rich and spicy a flavor that I wonder all orchardists do not get a
scion from that tree, and I fail not to bring home my pockets full.
But perchance, when I take one out of my desk and taste it in my
chamber, I find it unexpectedly crude,—sour enough to set a
squirrel’s teeth on edge and make a jay scream.
These apples have
hung in the wind and frost and rain till they have absorbed the
qualities of the weather or season, and thus are highly seasoned,
and they pierce and sting and permeate us with
their spirit. They must be eaten in season, accordingly,—
that is, out-of-doors.
To appreciate the
wild and sharp flavors of these October fruits, it is necessary that
you be breathing the sharp October or November air. The out-door air
and exercise which the walker gets give a different tone to his
palate, and he craves a fruit which the sedentary would call harsh
and crabbed. They must be eaten in the fields, when your system is
all aglow with exercise, when the frosty weather nips your fingers,
the wind rattles the bare boughs or rustles the few remaining
leaves, and the jay is heard screaming around. What is sour in the
house a bracing walk makes sweet. Some of these apples might be
labelled, "To be eaten in the wind."
Of course no flavors
are thrown away; they are intended for the taste that is up to them.
Some apples have two distinct flavors, and perhaps one-half of them
must be eaten in the house, the other out-doors. One Peter Whitney
wrote from Northborough in 1782, for the Proceedings of the Boston
Academy, describing an apple tree in that town "producing fruit
of opposite qualities, part of the same apple being frequently sour
and the other sweet"; also some all sour, and others all sweet,
and this diversity on all parts of the tree.
There is a wild
apple on Nawshawtuct Hill in my town which has to me a peculiarly
pleasant bitter tang, not perceived till it is three-quarters
tasted. It remains on the tongue. As you eat it, it smells exactly
like a squash-bug. It is a sort of triumph to eat and relish it.
I hear that the
fruit of a kind of plum-tree in Provence is "called Prunes
sibarelles, because it is impossible to whistle after having
eaten them, from their sourness." But perhaps they were only
eaten in the house and in summer, and if tried out-of- doors in a
stinging atmosphere, who knows but you could whistle an octave
higher and clearer?
In the fields only
are the sours and bitters of Nature appreciated; just as the
wood-chopper eats his meal in a sunny glade, in the middle of a
winter day, with content, basks in a sunny ray there and dreams of
summer in a degree of cold which, experienced in a chamber, would
make a student miserable. They who are at work abroad are not cold,
but rather it is they who sit shivering in houses. As with
temperatures, so with flavors; as with cold and heat, so with sour
and sweet. This natural raciness, the sours and bitters which the
diseased palate refuses, are the true condiments.
Let your condiments be in
the condition of your senses. To appreciate the flavor of these wild
apples requires vigorous and healthy senses, papillæ firm and erect
on the tongue and palate, not easily flattened and tamed.
From my experience
with wild apples, I can understand that there may be reason for a
savage’s preferring many kinds of food which the civilized man
rejects. The former has the palate of an out-door man. It takes a
savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit.
What a healthy
out-of-door appetite it takes to relish the apple of life, the apple
of the world, then!
"Nor is it every
apple I desire,
Nor that which pleases every palate best;
’T is not the lasting Deuxan I require,
Nor yet the red-cheeked Greening I request,
Nor that which first beshrewed the name of
wife,
Nor that whose beauty caused the golden
strife:
No, no! bring me an apple from the tree of
life!"
So
there is one thought for the field, another for the house. I
would have my thoughts, like wild apples, to be food for walkers,
and will not warrant them to be palatable, if tasted in the house.
THEIR BEAUTY
Almost
all wild apples are handsome. They cannot be too gnarly and crabbed
and rusty to look at. The gnarliest will have some redeeming traits
even to the eye. You will discover some evening redness dashed or
sprinkled on some protuberance or in some cavity. It is rare that
the summer lets an apple go without streaking or spotting it on some
part of its sphere. It will have some red stains, commemorating the
mornings and evenings it has witnessed; some dark and rusty
blotches, in memory of the clouds and foggy, mildewy days that have
passed over it; and a spacious field of green reflecting the general
face of Nature,—green even as the fields; or a yellow ground,
which implies a milder flavor,—yellow as the harvest, or russet as
the hills.
Apples, these I
mean, unspeakably fair,—apples not of Discord, but of Concord! Yet
not so rare but that the homeliest may have a share. Painted by the
frosts, some a uniform clear bright yellow, or red, or crimson, as
if their spheres had regularly revolved, and enjoyed the influence
of the sun on all sides alike,—some with the faintest pink blush
imaginable,—some brindled with deep red streaks like a cow, or
with hundreds of fine blood-red rays running regularly from the
stem-dimple to the blossom-end, like meridional lines, on a
straw-colored ground,—some touched with a greenish rust, like a
fine lichen, here and there, with crimson blotches or eyes more or
less confluent and fiery when wet,—and others gnarly, and freckled
or peppered all over on the stem side with fine crimson spots on a
white ground, as if accidentally sprinkled from the brush of Him who
paints the autumn leaves. Others, again, are sometimes red inside,
perfused with a beautiful blush, fairy food, too beautiful to
eat,—apple of the Hesperides, apple of the evening sky! But like
shells and pebbles on the sea-shore, they must be seen as they
sparkle amid the withering leaves in some dell in the woods, in the
autumnal air, or as they lie in the wet grass, and not when they
have wilted and faded in the house.
THE NAMING OF THEM
It
would be a pleasant pastime to find suitable names for the hundred
varieties which go to a single heap at the cider-mill. Would it not
tax a man’s invention,—no one to be named after a man, and all
in the lingua vernacula? Who shall stand godfather at the
christening of the wild apples? It would exhaust the Latin and Greek
languages, if they were used, and make the lingua vernacula
flag. We should have to call in the sunrise and the sunset, the
rainbow and the autumn woods and the wild flowers, and the
woodpecker and the purple finch and the squirrel and the jay and the
butterfly, the November traveller and the truant boy, to our aid.
In 1836 there were
in the garden of the London Horticultural Society more than fourteen
hundred distinct sorts. But here are species which they have not in
their catalogue, not to mention the varieties which our Crab might
yield to cultivation.
Let us enumerate a
few of these. I find myself compelled, after all, to give the Latin
names of some for the benefit of those who live where English is not
spoken,—for they are likely to have a world-wide reputation.
There is, first of
all, the Wood-Apple (Malus sylvatica); the Blue-Jay Apple;
the Apple which grows in Dells in the Woods, (sylvestrivallis,)
also in Hollows in Pastures (campestrivallis); the Apple that
grows in an old Cellar-Hole (Malus cellaris); the
Meadow-Apple; the Partridge-Apple; the Truant’s Apple, (Cessatoris),
which no boy will ever go by without knocking off some, however late
it may be; the Saunterer’s Apple,—you must lose yourself before
you can find the way to that; the Beauty of the Air (decus aëris);
December-Eating; the Frozen-Thawed, (gelato-soluta,) good
only in that state; the Concord Apple, possibly the same with the
Musketaquidensis; the Assabet Apple; the Brindled Apple; Wine of New
England; the Chickaree Apple; the Green Apple (Malus viridis);—this
has many synonymes; in an imperfect state, it is the choleramorbifera
aut dysenterifera, puerulis dilectissima;—the Apple which
Atalanta stopped to pick up; the Hedge-Apple (Malus sepium);
the Slug-Apple (limacea); the Railroad-Apple, which perhaps
came from a core thrown out of the cars; the Apple whose Fruit we
tasted in our Youth; our Particular Apple, not to be found in any
catalogue,—pedestrium solatium; also the Apple where hangs
the Forgotten Scythe; Iduna’s Apples, and the Apples which Loki
found in the Wood; and a great many more I have on my list, too
numerous to mention,—all of them good. As Bodæus exclaims,
referring to the cultivated kinds, and adapting Virgil to his case,
so I, adapting Bodæus,—
"Not if I had a
hundred tongues, a hundred mouths,
An iron voice, could I describe all the forms
And reckon up all the names of these wild apples."
THE LAST GLEANING
By
the middle of November the wild apples have lost some of their
brilliancy, and have chiefly fallen. A great part are decayed on the
ground, and the sound ones are more palatable than before. The note
of the chickadee sounds now more distinct, as you wander amid the
old trees, and the autumnal dandelion is half-closed and tearful.
But still, if you are a skilful gleaner, you may get many a
pocket-full even of grafted fruit, long after apples are supposed to
be gone out-of-doors. I know a Blue Pearmain tree, growing within
the edge of a swamp, almost as good as wild. You would not suppose
that there was any fruit left there, on the first survey, but you
must look according to system. Those which lie exposed are quite
brown and rotten now, or perchance a few still show one blooming
cheek here and there amid the wet leaves. Nevertheless, with
experienced eyes, I explore amid the bare alders and the
huckleberry-bushes and the withered sedge, and in the crevices of
the rocks, which are full of leaves, and pry under the fallen and
decaying ferns, which, with apple and alder leaves, thickly strew
the ground. For I know that they lie concealed, fallen into hollows
long since and covered up by the leaves of the tree itself,—a
proper kind of packing. From these lurking-places, anywhere within
the circumference of the tree, I draw forth the fruit, all wet and
glossy, maybe nibbled by rabbits and hollowed out by crickets and
perhaps with a leaf or two cemented to it, (as Curzon an old
manuscript from a monastery’s mouldy cellar,) but still with a
rich bloom on it, and at least as ripe and well kept, if not better
than those in barrels, more crisp and lively than they. If these
resources fail to yield anything, I have learned to look between the
bases of the suckers which spring thickly from some horizontal limb,
for now and then one lodges there, or in the very midst of an
alder-clump, where they are covered by leaves, safe from cows which
may have smelled them out. If I am sharp-set, for I do not refuse
the Blue Pearmain, I fill my pockets on each side; and as I retrace
my steps in the frosty eve, being perhaps four or five miles from
home, I eat one first from this side, and then from that, to keep my
balance.
I learn from
Topsell’s Gesner, whose authority appears to be Albertus, that the
following is the way in which the hedge-hog collects and carries
home his apples. He says,—"His meat is apples, worms, or
grapes: when he findeth apples or grapes on the earth, he rolleth
himself upon them, until he have filled all his prickles, and then
carrieth them home to his den, never bearing above one in his mouth;
and if it fortune that one of them fall off by the way, he likewise
shaketh off all the residue, and walloweth upon them afresh, until
they be all settled upon his back again. So, forth he goeth, making
a noise like a cart-wheel; and if he have any young ones in his
nest, they pull off his load wherewithal he is loaded, eating
thereof what they please, and laying up the residue for the time to
come."
THE
"FROZEN-THAWED" APPLE
Toward
the end of November, though some of the sound ones are yet more
mellow and perhaps more edible, they have generally, like the
leaves, lost their beauty, and are beginning to freeze. It is
finger-cold, and prudent farmers get in their barrelled apples, and
bring you the apples and cider which they have engaged; for it is
time to put them into the cellar. Perhaps a few on the ground show
their red cheeks above the early snow, and occasionally some even
preserve their color and soundness under the snow throughout the
winter. But generally at the beginning of the winter they freeze
hard, and soon, though undecayed, acquire the color of a baked
apple.
Before the end of
December, generally, they experience their first thawing. Those
which a month ago were sour, crabbed, and quite unpalatable to the
civilized taste, such at least as were frozen while sound, let a
warmer sun come to thaw them, for they are extremely sensitive to
its rays, are found to be filled with a rich sweet cider, better
than any bottled cider that I know of, and with which I am better
acquainted than with wine. All apples are good in this state, and
your jaws are the cider-press. Others, which have more substance,
are a sweet and luscious food,—in my opinion of more worth than
the pine-apples which are imported from the West Indies. Those which
lately even I tasted only to repent of it,—for I am
semi-civilized,—which the farmer willingly left on the tree, I am
now glad to find have the property of hanging on like the leaves of
the young oaks. It is a way to keep cider sweet without boiling. Let
the frost come to freeze them first, solid as stones, and then the
rain or a warm winter day to thaw them, and they will seem to have
borrowed a flavor from heaven through the medium of the air in which
they hang. Or perchance you find, when you get home, that those
which rattled in your pocket have thawed, and the ice is turned to
cider. But after the third or fourth freezing and thawing they will
not be found so good.
What are the
imported half-ripe fruits of the torrid South, to this fruit matured
by the cold of the frigid North? These are those crabbed apples with
which I cheated my companion, and kept a smooth face that I might
tempt him to eat. Now we both greedily fill our pockets with
them,—bending to drink the cup and save our lappets from the
overflowing juice,—and grow more social with their wine. Was there
one that hung so high and sheltered by the tangled branches that our
sticks could not dislodge it?
It is a fruit never
carried to market, that I am aware of,—quite distinct from the
apple of the markets, as from dried apple and cider,—and it is not
every winter that produces it in perfection.
The era of the Wild
Apple will soon be past. It is a fruit which will probably become
extinct in New England. You may still wander through old orchards of
native fruit of great extent, which for the most part went to the
cider-mill, now all gone to decay. I have heard of an orchard in a
distant town, on the side of a hill, where the apples rolled down
and lay four feet deep against a wall on the lower side, and this
the owner cut down for fear they should be made into cider. Since
the temperance reform and the general introduction of grafted fruit,
no native apple trees, such as I see everywhere in deserted
pastures, and where the woods have grown up around them, are set
out. I fear that he who walks over these fields a century hence will
not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor man,
there are many pleasures which he will not know. Notwithstanding the
prevalence of the Baldwin and the Porter, I doubt if so extensive
orchards are set out to-day in my town as there were a century ago,
when those vast straggling cider-orchards were planted, when men
both ate and drank apples, when the pomace-heap was the only
nursery, and trees cost nothing but the trouble of setting them out.
Men could afford then to stick a tree by every wall-side and let it
take its chance. I see nobody planting trees to-day in such
out-of-the-way places, along the lonely roads and lanes, and at the
bottom of dells in the wood. Now that they have grafted trees, and
pay a price for them, they collect them into a plat by their houses,
and fence them in,—and the end of it all will be that we shall be
compelled to look for our apples in a barrel.
This
is "The word of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.
"Hear this, ye old
men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land! Hath this been in
your days, or even in the days of your fathers?.…
"That which the
palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the
locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the
cankerworm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten.
"Awake, ye
drunkards, and weep; and howl, all ye drinkers of wine, because of
the new wine; for it is cut off from your mouth.
"For a nation is
come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are
the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion.
"He hath laid my
vine waste, and barked my fig tree; he hath made it clean bare, and
cast it away; the branches thereof are made white.….
"Be ye ashamed, O ye
husbandmen; howl, O ye vinedressers.…
"The vine is dried
up, and the fig-tree languisheth; the pomegranate tree, the palm
tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are
withered: because joy is withered away from the sons of men."
Return
to Henry D. Thoreau: Works: Essays
Return to Henry D. Thoreau: Life
& Writings
A
Note on the Text:
-
1st
published in The Atlantic Monthly (November 1862)
-
Source:
Excursions and Poems [The Writings of Henry David Thoreau
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906) p. [290]-322]
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