Thread

Apple detectives solved mystery of ancient tree and rewrote the history of fruit

71 points · 19 comments · nkurz

CSMastermind · 1789709616 · focus · HN ↗
Apples have some of wildest biology that I've seen as a non-professional biologist. At many genes, they carry two different alleles instead of two matching ones. They're almost all self-incompatible. A Honeycrisp flower cannot pollinate a Honeycrisp flower.
This means that you can't breed them in the traditional sense that we do with other plants. Outside of Granny Smith apples the ones you eat are mostly the results of mutations in the grown plants that we cut off and graft.
1. Tomte · 1789719130 · focus · HN ↗
  The coolest thing about some apple cultivars is how their story is "someone found an apple tree at the side of a road with tasty apples", and people kept grafting them to this day. Boskoop, for example.
  1. masklinn · 1789723792 · focus · HN ↗
    Getting to that is one of the reasons why people would kinda just grow apple seeds all over.
    Plus they were not completely wasted, while not generally edible they’re fine for cider.

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