Wild Apples

By Henry David Thoreau

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Title: Wild Apples

Author: Henry David Thoreau

Release Date: November 1, 2001 [eBook #4066]
[Most recently updated: February 10, 2022]

Language: English


Produced by: Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILD APPLES ***




Wild Apples

by Henry David Thoreau


Contents

 THE HISTORY OF THE APPLE-TREE
 THE WILD APPLE
 THE CRAB
 HOW THE WILD APPLE GROWS
 THE FRUIT, AND ITS FLAVOR
 THEIR BEAUTY
 THE NAMING OF THEM
 THE LAST GLEANING
 THE “FROZEN-THAWED” APPLE




THE HISTORY OF THE APPLE-TREE


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
_Rosaceæ_, which includes the Apple, also the true Grasses, and the
_Labiatæ_, 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
shrivelled Crab-Apple has been recovered from their stores.

Tacitus says of the ancient Germans that they satisfied their hunger
with wild apples, among other things.

Niebuhr[1] observes that “the words for a house, a field, a plough,
ploughing, wine, oil, milk, sheep, apples, and others relating to
agriculture and the gentler ways 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.

 [1] A German historical critic of ancient life.


The apple was early so important, and so generally distributed, that
its name traced to its root in many languages signifies fruit in
general. Μῆλον (Mēlon), 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.[2]

 [2] The Greek myths especially referred to are The Choice of Paris and
 The Apples of the Hesperides.


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 Alcinous “pears and pomegranates and apple-trees
bearing beautiful fruit.” 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,[3] “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).

 [3] The stories of the early Scandinavians.


I learn from Loudon[4] 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.”

 [4] An English authority on the culture of orchards and gardens.


The apple-tree 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 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, some more civilized.” 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, king-bird, 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, 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,[5]—carrying me forward to those days when they will be
collected in golden and ruddy heaps in the orchards and about the
cider-mills.

 [5] The Roman goddess of fruit and fruit-trees.


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 godlike 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,[6] while they grow
wrinkled and gray? No, for Ragnarök, or the destruction of the gods, is
not yet.

 [6] Jötunheim (_Ye_(r)_t′-un-hime_) in Scandinavian mythology was the
 home of the Jotun or Giants. Loki was a descendant of the gods, and a
 companion of the Giants. Thjassi (_Tee-assy_) was a giant.


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 hillside, 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 remember 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 fulfil 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 bow, 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 hillside 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, “whose
nature has not yet been modified by cultivation.” It is found from
Western New York to Minnesota and southward. Michaux[7] 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
sweet-meats, 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.”

 [7] Pronounced _mee-shō;_ a French botanist and traveller.


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 back-woodsmen 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 Easter-brooks 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 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 a 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 circumstance, 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[8] and Knight.[9] This is the
system of Van Cow, and she has invented far more and more memorable
varieties than both of them.

 [8] A Belgian chemist and horticulturist.


 [9] An English vegetable physiologist.


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 hillside, 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, “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
wood-pecker 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 “Non-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[10] 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.

 [10] An English writer of the seventeenth century.


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 Saunter-er’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. 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 Nawshawtuck 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_[11] firm and erect on the tongue and palate, not easily
flattened and tamed.

 [11] A Latin word, accent on the second syllable, meaning here the
 rough surface of the tongue and palate.


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 outdoor 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
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?_[12] Who shall stand god-father 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.

 [12] _Lingua vernacula_, common speech.


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
_Musketa-quidensis;_ the Assabet Apple; the Brindled Apple; Wine of New
England; the Chickaree Apple; the Green Apple (_Malus viridis_);—this
has many synonyms; in an imperfect state, it is the _Cholera morbifera
aut dysenterifera, puerulis dilectissima;_[13]—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;_[14] 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 culti-vated 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_.”


 [13] The apple that brings the disease of cholera and of dysentery,
 the fruit that small boys like best.


 [14] The tramp’s comfort.




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[15] 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.

 [15] Robert Curzon was a traveller who searched for old manuscripts in
 the monasteries of the Levant. See his book, Ancient Monasteries of
 the East.


I learn from Topsell’s Gesner, whose authority appears to be Albertus,
that the following is the way in which the hedgehog 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, wrhen 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 priee 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 palmer-worm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that
which the locust hath left hath the canker-worm eaten; and that which
the canker-worm 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 vine-dressers!...

“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.”[16]

 [16] JOEL, chapter i., verses 1–12.




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