 Fall Means Apple Madness
A Brief History of the
Apple ...
 “the
Appyll tree is a tree yt
bereth apples and is a
grete tree in itself …”
-- Bartholomeus Anglicus,
Encyclopedia, Cologne,
Germany, 1470.
By the time this
sentence was written in
the fifteenth century,
apples had been around
for thousands of years.
Historical evidence
tells us that the first
recognizable apples
probably appeared in
what is now Kazakhstan.
From there they traveled
the ancient Silk Road to
China, India, Africa and
Europe.
Throughout the millennia
apples have appeared
consistently in both
history and legend. In
addition to the fateful
temptation of Adam and
Eve, apples figure
prominently in Greek and
Egyptian mythology, the
histories of China and
Mesopotamia (modern
Iraq), and more recent
European legend such as
the Swiss story of
William Tell who was
commanded to shoot an
apple off the head of
his son with his
crossbow in order to
save both their lives.
He didn’t miss.
In the first century
A.D. Pliny detailed
twenty apple varieties
in the Roman Empire. The
Romans brought apples
with them as they spread
their dominance
throughout Europe,
eventually planting the
first apple trees in
England; and it is from
England that the United
States received its
first apple trees,
planted by Puritans in
the Massachusetts Bay
Colony around 1630. In
the early nineteenth
century Johnny Appleseed
planted thousands of
acres of apple trees in
Pennsylvania, Ohio and
Indiana as the nation
grew to the west.
Click here for more on
Johnny Appleseed.
Since then the
cultivation of apples
has grown in every state
in the union, but
especially in
Washington, New York,
Michigan, California,
Pennsylvania and
Virginia, which together
account for over eighty
percent of apple
production in the United
States, with Washington
State by far the apple
leader with over
forty-five percent.
And, of course, the
positive image of the
apple has been
recognized and
celebrated as logos
adapted by the
manufacturer of the iPod,
and by a popular English
rock group of the
1960's.
Click here to return to
Apple Madness. |
