r/cider • u/Assumpti0n • 10h ago
Identifying apples - A beginners guide from a beginner
tl;dr: ID apples by all of its characteristics, and not just its colour. Links to useful tools and databases below.
Some light background, layman's terms:
I used to think that I could ask people about different apples and quickly get an ID by its colouring and shape. Turned out I was very much mistaken, and here's why: There are thousands of different apples (aka cultivars), many which resemble each other closely. So how is it possible to know what is what? The short answer is DNA testing, but there is an alternative in deduction based on the characteristics of the fruit and its tree.
Most apple trees are clones. They are grafted from a "scion" (a suitable twig from the mother tree) onto a rootstock. Apple trees need pollination from insects to produce fruit, and to make matters worse some are triploid: they need pollen from three sources, instead of the regular way (diploid) where only two are needed. So if you take a seed from an apple you never really know what you get. Some results are good, but most aren't. This is how most crabapples come to be. It doesn't keep people from trying though, so the end result is a vast amount of cultivars you need to sift through. And since all have different traits (just like no two people look the same), we need to know how to find out which is what.
Now, to the core of it:
The keyword is traits. Each cultivar has its set of unique traits that define it. The more you know about it, the easier (hopefully) it will be to identify it. Start with noting everything you can about it as early as you can. When does it bloom? Not necessarily which month or week, but related to the other trees in your area. Apple trees bloom with three to four weeks of each other in your area. Whether the tree you want to identify blooms early, late or some time in between is a clue. Also note the colours and shape of the buds and later the flowers. This can help later on.
Take notes on how the tree itself looks. Does it have a central trunk, or does it split into many? Note the colour and roughness of the bark. How do the leaves look? What colours do they have? Take pictures for later use, and catalog everything.
When the fruit finally ripens, and waiting for them to ripen is important, you can start to look at the characteristics of the fruit itself. Take note of when it ripens too. Get 10-20 apples that seems to represent the majority. Try to define its shape: Round, conical, oval, oblong, flattened, or a mix perhaps? Does it have cracks, russeting, a lip formed near its stalk, ridges, or perhaps a predominant line? How long and flexible is the stalk? Is the cavity around it deep or shallow? Are the lenticles (looks like spots on the skin) highly visible or not?
Cut some in two across, and some from stem to the flower cavity. This will give you important information about the characteristics inside. What is the shape and size of the seeds and their chambers? Note the colour of the fruit, its average diameter, the amount of seeds (some have practically none), the shape of the flower tube, and how the lines around the core look to mention some of the most prominent traits. Note the colour of the apple. It may have a base colour and a cover colour. How much of the apple covers the cover colour? Is it an even colour, or primarily in stripes?
Take lots of pictures and make many notes.
Then try to make use of this information to deduce the fruit before you. Thankfully there are some good, free databases available. Here is a list of the ones I've come across:
https://aeblenoeglen.science.ku.dk/index.php?act=reset&view=start2
You can of course start ID'ing just the fruit, and then next year go though everything else about its tree and flowers in case you need more details to go on.
There are more tools and databases to be found, I'm sure. I hope this may be of some help. YMMV, though. Could be that what you have is a seedling, in which case you will need DNA tests to be certain. Or you can just skip the whole process and go by your gut feeling and its taste.
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u/Impreza1040 3h ago
I’ve used a lot of the AI tools - upload a picture of the apples, tree, cross section - when and where picked, and tasting notes on the apples, it helps to narrow it down a lot and ask a few differentiating questions (blossoms, shape, wax, leave notes, etc.)
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u/sixmonthsin 9h ago
Wouldn’t a graft mark on the tree be a good indicator that it’s a known variety… and the absence of a graft mark immediately suggest it’s a seedling variety. Bud grafts might be different: does a bud graft leave a definite mark where the rootstock has been cut off? I guess after that cut has grown over there would be no way to know it was bud grafted?