Apples are strewn all across my garden this year following the swelling rains and now strong winds. A huge crop that I will be hard put to make use of. Nord did not make a history of Earth section re geology, vegetation and creatures - well tut tut there but here goes anyway.
I did a casual glance at the history of apples and  Wiki claims that the original ancient plant grew in Siberia. So that brings one to wondering how they spread, changed and when did they grow in Britain. 
Other plants were not in Europe during Roman times...... if you can take your eyes of the filmed orgy, some  mistakes might be spotted in the  fruit bowl........ by which I mean wrong fruit. I'll stop there. But some might have recourse to knowledge of this subject......did, for instance, an apple a day keep the Druid away?

Gosh, what an interesting thread!

Well never mind the Druids, that serpent was right in there with his "Do try a a nice apple - why not?" temptation routine. The original bad apple - reptile and fruit. I have often wondered whether the Hebrew word used in Genesis really meant apple - the fruit we know by that name - or actually signified any kind of round, edible, fruity thing. Does anyone out there know enough Hebrew to tell us what the word used actually meant? Was the "apple" that led to the Fall actually an "apple"? 

Siberia is an odd place for apple trees to flourish - and rather a long way from the place thought up and named as Eden by some ancient priestly scribe. That genius of a story-teller presumably imagined Eden somewhere in the Fertile Crescent/Mesopotamia, not in the snowy wastes of an unknown northern land. There are very hardy varieties of apple tree that can survive in extreme cold - well below freezing - so Siberia as a place of origin is not impossible, I suppose. But how and when did apples get from Siberia to Mesopotamia for that priest to know of such a tempting fruit?


PS Errors lurking in the Roman fruit bowl did make me laugh, Priscilla - your wit is obviously as sharp as ever.

Temperance

From my commentaries on Genesis 1 to 11, it is an unspecified fruit.  Even the AV bible does not describe it as an apple.

Tim

Yes Tim, as I understand it the Hebrew Bible uses the word  פֶּ֫רִי  (peri) which just means fruit, any fruit, but generally it seems to have usually denoted something carried on a a plant other than a palm, bush or vine-born fruits/berries ... so it's probably not referring to dates, olives, elderberries, juniperberries, sloes, blackberries, grapes etc, and all of which anyway had their own specific names in ancient Hebrew. So given that the Garden of Eden was somewhere in the Middle East (or at least stocked with plants that Middle Eastern gardeners would likely have known) the fruit of The Forbidden Tree, if it wasn't just symbolic, was more likely to be a fig, pomegranate or apricot, than an apple.

That the Forbidden Fruit came to be associated specifically with an apple (at least in most of Europe) is because of a pun. In the fourth century Pope Damasus ordered his leading scholar of scripture, Jerome, to translate the Hebrew Bible into Latin. Jerome's 15-year project resulted in the canonical Vulgate Bible and used the late Roman Latin spoken by the common man of his time. As it so happens the Latin words for evil and apple are the same: malus. So when faced with translating the line about fruit of the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil", Jerome was unable to resist such a convenient coincidence (or maybe he saw it as just revealing an essential truth) and so he translated the Hebrew word peri meaning fruit, as specifically an apple, by drawing upon the simultaneous meanings of the word malus in denoting both apple and malign. But even in Jerome's time and for centuries after, the word malus (apple) could refer to any fleshy seed-bearing fruit: a pear was a kind of malus, so was a plum or peach etc, in much the same way that apple or pomme is still used to denote a generic globular fruit in many European languages: sinaasappel (Dutch for an orange) literally meaning Chinese apple; pommes de terre (French for potatoes) but literally earth apples; pomegranate (English) literally apple of Granada etc. In  much the same way that the Hebrew word piri just meant fruit, the Latin word poma, from which the French got their word pomme, just meant any type of fruit and not necessarily a true apple. 

PS : It's good to see both Priscilla and Temperance back on the board.

Well, Jerome should be ashamed of himself - just trying to be clever, like so many of those early Christians, thinking it was acceptable to malign a perfectly innocent fruit. Poor old apple. Never recovered its reputation, just like the unfortunate Eve. Next thing we'll learn is that the serpent was really a slow worm. Jerome and his puns - typical.

I have been pondering on possible errors in a Netflix Roman orgy production - focusing, as Priscilla suggests, on the fruit bowl. I suppose all the usual Mediterranean fruits would be acceptable as props in such a scene, but what about bananas? The Romans made it into North Africa, so presumably bananas would have been traded in Carthage - brought up from south? Or not?

I have no idea when bananas were brought to these shores (UK), but presumably they were a very expensive and fascinating import when they first became available here. And why the expression "to go bananas"? Were bananas at one time thought to have had hallucinogenic properties?

Adam blamed Eve
Eve blamed the serpent
and the serpent didn't have a leg to stand on

For the record, slow worms blink and snakes do not. Put this to the test on one that tried to come into my house..... I blinked first.  Mainly in fear that being so close to its head and it was not a slow worm but something with a nasty streak, I was in trouble.

So no one seems to know when the much maligned apple came to this island. I have four varieties in our patch.... if you count the neighbour's that hangs over and spills really good fruit onto us. Apples seemed all important in the Middle ages - long storage qualities in some varieties and must have been cooked or brewed in many ways. Other fruit  came in later, I think.

I dare say the ancients were not into five a day - wonder they survived, really.

The old names are not seen in super markets much - its all gala and pink ladies and such. 
But I recall the flavours if not the names of many of the apples of yore..... including an Essex brown Spicy one that matured in autumn... D'Arcy Spice....... hardly a tree of that left I was told but oh so good. I have some raw cider  vinegar not a clue as what to do  with it - or why I bought it. I guess half of staying healthy is in buying healthy products and feeling good about it.
No more on apples then?

Priscilla wrote:

  So no one seems to know when the much maligned apple came to this island.

Just been reading about the history of cider. One cider company (a Kentish firm) claims the Romans found the Brits knocking back gallons of an early form of apple drink and, having sampled it, the legions decided this native apple brew was indeed an excellent tipple. Cider-drinking apparently spread throughout the Empire from here, rather than the Romans bringing apples to us. Can this really be true? Was apple-growing and cider production actually going on here in England before the Romans arrived? The website says the Normans also took to the English drink after their conquest of England: that really surprised me. I should have thought both the Romans and the Normans, used to lovely wines produced in sunnier climes, would have hated the rough Celtic apple brew. Surely, too, Normandy would have had its own version of cider?

I suppose cider was a novelty to the wine-bibbers. Perhaps it was our secret weapon against the invaders - getting the Romans (and then the detested Normans) legless on Album Fulgar must have been amusing...



Some of the old English varieties do indeed have lovely names:

Granny Smith

Egremont Russet

Blenheim Orange ( a posh apple)

Knobby Russet

- and, of course, the delightful pippins -

Allington Pippin

Ribston Pippin

Cox's Orange Pippin.

Temperance wrote:

Cider-drinking apparently spread throughout the Empire from here, rather than the Romans bringing apples to us. Can this really be true? Was apple-growing and cider production actually going on here in England before the Romans arrived?

I see no reason why not given how much apples and apple trees appear in ancient Celtic mythology: wasnt the apple tree, along with the oak, holly and mistletoe, sacred to the Druids? Nevertheless apples, for eating rather than cider-making, had been cultivated throughout the ancient Greek world long before the rise of Rome. Hercules' Eleventh Labour was to steal three of the golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides and I doubt he would have gone to such lengths as he did if the said apples were uncultivated, tiny, sour, bullet-hard crab apples (scrogs) albeit that they were made of gold.

The Greek and Roman words for apples (μήλος  - milos and malus respectively) could sometimes refer to similar globular tree fruits such as pears, quinces, peaches and pomegranates, so it's not certain to what degree the Greeks' and Romans' apples were cultivated/improved over their wild European and Asian ancestors. In any case apple species can hybridize naturally to often produce fertile seed and indeed the true wild European crab apple tree (Malus sylvestris) is now quite rare in Europe as most are actually 'wildlings' descended from discarded apple cores and now gone native. The original Granny Smith reputedly grew from an Australian woman's compost heap, the Keswick Codlin from garden rubbish in Ulverston Castle and the first Shaw's Pippin from the council refuse tip at Wheatampstead in Hertfordshire.

Given how successful apples are at hybridizing and propagating themselves, even without any human encouragement, it is not surprising that by Roman times, when writers like Cato the Elder, Columella and Pliny the Elder were describing the products grown on their estates or readily obtainable in the market, several different varieties of apple were recognised. Roman horticulturalists understood how to improve the traits of a plant variety by selecting the best seed over successive generations and also knew the technique of grafting whereby a tree with desired fruiting characteristics can be grow attached onto a more vigorous 'wild' root-stock.

Such interesting stuff from MM and Temps prompted me to look again into the old tales of the American Johnny Appleseed.
Disliking gafting, he did indeed have a sack of apple seed and sold his plants to establishing settlements. His notion and aim, much like others of Europe was to produce a hearty cider apple. I have never thought of the USA as being interested in cider but it seems there was a time when it was very popular.
I know a place where crab apples grow in the wild. It is in an area of a very ancient habitation and wayfaring - the Roman road there only following a far more ancient track that edged the melting glacial waters of the Thames. This is private,  deeply wooded land - the Roman mile post deep in it having long be stolen and I guess the current owners may not even know of all this. The embedded rural folk about there of my childhood, now long gone, knew and felt the antiquity - as did I - and spoke of the several crab apple trees about there as being a link to the old 'uns. They were almost revered, come to think of it.  It is said that mistletoe grows best on the apple...... gosh the weird stuff I learned at school when very young - so perhaps MM is right about it being a Druidical plant. 

PS is cider different from applejack?

I wonder what sort of apple fell on Newton's head? That was an important little fruit.


I am now totally confused: I've been googling about apples and Druids and magic apple-wood wands (Irish Druids in particular liked this apparently spiritually useful implement). No one seems to agree on anything - we need a proper expert to help us. Most sites seem certain that apple trees, with their excellent fruit and useful wood (apple wood burns beautifully, with a great smell), were indeed flourishing here well before the Romans took over, but a fair few insist that it was in fact the imperial invaders who introduced the fruit, along with peaches and cherries, roses and rabbits. Whom should we believe? 

The first written reference to the apple in England was made by Alfred the Great about 885 A.D. in his writing of Gregory's Pastoral Care. The costard (a large cooking apple) is mentioned in a shopping list for Edward I's kitchen supplies, so the Hammer of the Scots was obviously fond of a nice apple pie, presumably with custard. Shakespeare refers to the apple (including the crab apple) only nine times in all his works, poetry included, which surprised me.

Re America - when did "Mom's apple pie" become such a huge symbol for the wholesome American way of life we all admire so much?

The costard apple is of course the origin of costermonger - an itinerant street seller of fruit (and in later times of other foodstuffs too).

Richard II also liked apple pie, at least as is suggested by this recipe from 'The Forme of Cury' writtten in about 1390 by one of his master cooks:
Tak gode Applys and gode Spycis and Figys and reysons and Perys and wan þey are wel ybrayed colourd with Safron wel and do yt in a cofyn and yt forth to bake wel.

Temperance wrote:

I wonder what sort of apple fell on Newton's head? That was an important little fruit.

The original tree, planted in about 1650 is thought to still be standing in the garden at Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire. Regular sketches of the house and garden after Newton’s death continuously show an apple tree in the same spot as the current tree and there were no other mature apple trees recorded as growing in the garden, before or after Newton. Accordingly this tree is widely considered to be 'the one'. As a consequence of Newton's fame numerous cuttings have been taken over the years although nearly all currently in existence descend from a single tree growing at the Fruit Research Station in East Malling, Kent, which has been growing there since the 1930s and which was raised from a cutting taken from a tree which itself had been propagated from a shoot of the original Woolsthorpe tree in 1820. Trees raised from cuttings of the East Malling tree are to be found across the world, as universities, observatories, particle accelerators, national standards laboratories, botanical gardens and research centres have clamored for a Newton tree of their own. It is perhaps fitting that seeds from Newton's tree even visited the International Space Station in 2016, which in terms of this thread makes it one of history’s most well-travelled plants.

The original tree is a variety known as Flower of Kent, the cultivar having likely arisen in Kent during the 16th century. It was a cultivar once widely grown across England and although now rarely planted commercially is widely distributed across the world because of its novelty value. The fruit it produces is a medium-sized green cooking apple.

I had a look in my concordance for references to apples as distinct from fruit and there are 10 in the Old Testament but none in the New.  Dating the OT can be quite tricky but in the book of Deuteronomy it uses the phrase 'apple of your eye'.  During the reign of the Judean King Josiah (reigned 640 - 609BC) an unnamed book of the law was found hidden in the temple.  Scholars normally consider this book to have either been the book of Deuteronomy or something close to it which might give a 7th C BC reference for 'apple'.  However, our OT is based on the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew bible which was put together by Jewish scholars between the 7th and 10th C AD based on early texts.  Therefore one cannot be certain that the Hebrew word translated as apple originally meant that fruit in the 7th C BC.

So, a medium-sized, green cooking apple helped put man on the moon. What a paradigm shift that fruit triggered!

I had no idea that to be "the apple of someone's eye" had a biblical origin. What a stange expression that is. Another odd apple idiom is the reference to things being in "apple-pie order". And why on earth is New York the "Big Apple"?

Personally I rather like the more risqué allusion from the Song of Solomon ESV 2:3;  

As an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men.
With great delight I sat in his shadow, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.  

Sorry, I'm rather lowering the tone.  

Not lowering the tone at all, MM - it is beautiful poetry.


But let us return swiftly to apples. By our fruits shall you know us...

Off-topic really - just something about apples per se and not about plant movement, but can't resist adding it before this thread fizzles out like a glass of flat Appletiser. Also a chance for me to get in a remark about the Tudors. The following is not something dreamed up by Netflix or Philippa Gregory's imagination, but is reported in Professor Ives's great biography of Anne Boleyn - a little known fact is that the first news of the future Elizabeth I is linked to apples, or rather to Anne Boleyn's "incredible fierce desire" for the fruit.

On an evening in very early spring 1533, probably February 21st,  "the Lady", still not officially wife and certainly not Queen, swept out from the Palace of Hampton Court onto a terrace facing the gardens and, calling out to her friend, Sir Thomas Wyatt, she reportedly said, to be heard by the gathering of shocked courtiers all around, "Lord, how I wish I had an apple. Have you such a thing about you, my sweet Tom? For three days now I have had such an incredible fierce desire to eat apples. Do you know what the King says? He says it means I am with child. But I tell him: "No! No, it couldn't be, no, no, no!"

And, having thrown that bombshell, she disappeared back into the Palace, laughing loudly at the shocked hush she had created.

Technically, the child whose life had just begun, and who was causing all her mother's apple-cravings, was conceived out of wedlock, the "marriage" of January 25th, 1533 being invalid until Cranmer, hastily created Archbishop of Canterbury at the end of March, was able, in just under two two months in that Sacred Office, to declare the King's first marriage "null and void from the beginning" (a real Protestant "quickie"divorce, much needed after all the Catholic shilly-shallying about).
 
No record that Elizabeth liked apples.

Where was she expecting to get apples, fresh or otherwise, in February? 

Even at the time it was thought to stink of simple royalist propaganda, particulary as current lore at the time had it that a sudden craving for apples denoted not just a healthy pregnancy but especially one of a male child. It was all spin for the gullible masses and doubters, especially since the royal child had probably been conceived well out of wedlock as far back as late December the year before (one just has to calculate back from Elizabeth's well attested date of birth).

I think it has the ring of truth about it - not how a royal pregnancy would be announced, especially as the divorce hadn't been sorted...

Typical flouting of convention by AB to shout it out in front of all and sundry like that? She was riding high, so could get away with anything at that time... 

People around here store apples through the winter, although I suppose they would be a bit wrinkly by February: you wrap them in straw and put them carefully in your loft, making sure the individual apples are dry, unbruised and, absolutely vital, are kept separate - it's any soggy bits that causes rotting that spreads like wildfire throughout the whole batch.

Also fresh foods could be brought very swiftly from the continent - if you had enough money. The great orchards of Normandy and Brittany would supply apples, surely, until almost Christmas? Perhaps not

PS Wasn't there a story about Jane Seymour craving quails that had to be sent from Calais - I'll look it up.

PPS True she may have suspected she was pregnant around early December-ish - hence the hasty January 25th "wedding". But waiting 3 months before anything is announced is true still of a royal pregnancy - most miscarriages happen before 12 weeks.

I think I have misunderstood you, MM - are you saying that the whole incident was made up as propaganda, or that it did happen, but that the apple reference itself was a bit of propaganda, giving out the message: "I'm pregnant, and it will be a boy!"?

In other words, she didn't really want an apple at all?

Oh well, I thought it was a good apple story. That expression "such an incredible fierce desire" is so striking, though - so much more powerful than merely saying, "You know what, Thomas, I could really fancy a nice Cox's Orange Pippin, even a wrinkly old pre-Christmas-stored one."

1420 "The Wycliffe ‘Cider’ Bible is published. It gets its name owing to the translation of the verse, ‘For he (John the Baptist) shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor cider’ an elewhere "give cider to those that mourn". Re Bretons and cider vide https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v80jZ_ZI-Ec

Some apple types store very well - especially in very cool places.  My old  aunt used to in her spare room - and you could get no colder room.  Those were in paper covered trays - all well separated as temps say. When she went to cull from the store in January all the cores that I had,  left  with my childish guile-  were well separated  and had not really gone much mouldy. So my mother was told - the invites dried out at about the same time.

As for cider cup at funerals, wasn't the Wasailling  carol (or some such spelling) all about orchards and cider? And there must have been some apple blossom rites somewhere. I do know that the song about the old apple tree and what happened beneath was when I was hustled out of the front bar - during my most rural childhood, that was.

Green George wrote:

Re Bretons and cider vide https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v80jZ_ZI-Ec

GG, you should really have embedded the link, like how I've done it immediately above: it would make your message more understandable within the context of other posts, as well making it clear what third-party external site one is being directed to by clicking on the link. Frankly I doubt many here are going to click on your anonymous url link (I will because I know you are not a Troll) but who knows what it might possibly be about just from your post? Furthermore, having finally discovered that your link is to a song, since so few of us here actually speak Breton perhaps giving the words in English might have been useful too, if it's to at least be of any relevance to the thread, neh? Why do you always make your posts so enigmatic and hard to understand?

But nevertheless thanks for reminding me of what a good bit of music that is, however cryptically you presented it. Accordingly here's an English translation of the lyrics from me. Note that Laou is just a common male given-name in Breton, somewhat related to Louis in northern French (Norman, Picard and other langues d'oil), as well as being akin to Loïc in southern Occitan and Provençale (et les autres langues d'oc). Laou is you, his drinking buddy, his friend, his mate.

Son Ar Chistr - Song of Cider

Drink cider, Laou, for cider is good
Drink cider, Laou, for cider is good
Drink cider, Laou, for cider is good
A penny, a penny a glass
A penny, a penny a glass

Cider is made to be drunk
And girls are made to be loved

Let each of us love his own
And there will be no more jealousy

I was not married for three months
Before I was nagged every day

Kicks and slaps
And sometimes, the doorstep

But that is not what grieves me most
It is what was said about me

It was said of me that I was inconstant
A drinker of cider and a chaser of skirts

Drink cider, Laou, for cider is good
A penny, a penny a glass.

The melody is traditional but these words, originally in Breton, were written in 1929 by two Morbihan teenagers Jean Bernard and Jean-Marie Prima when Brittany (Breizh in the Breton language) was one of the poorest areas of France and the Bretons were struggling to retain their cultural identity. This song almost on its own has, albeit only much more recently, done a lot to promote and celebrate the ancient Breton musical tradition. It's a such pity that the words seem to promote antipathy against women, whilst his clear affection for his close male friend, Laou, also had to remain largely unsaid. But it was written in 1929.

Temp has mentioned cider being a cultural export from Britain to the Roman world, but it's likely the Romans first encountered cider when Julius Caesar invaded Brittany/Armorica - that is the lands of the powerful Veneti tribe - in 56BC, the year before he invaded Britain (I'm pretty sure there's a reference to it in Caesar's 'Gallic Wars' but unfortunatley I can't seem to find my copy). The Greek geographer Strabo (d. 24 AD) mentions the people of Brittany drinking a fermented apple drink, and of course the inhabitants of Bretagne (Brittany) had always maintained closer links with their cousins in Grande Bretagne (Great Britain) than with many of the other Celtic Gauls deeper into 'France'. Most of Gaul had originally been primarily drinkers of ale until they encountered wine, which they took to with rather too much vigour, importing vast quantites of the stuff from Republican Rome through the Greek colony of Massalia (Marseille) to the great detriment of their economy, until, having been conquered they learnt to cultivate vines and make wine themselves.

In France cider is the usual accompaniment for crêpes and so even here on the Mediterranean coast cider is what you traditionally drink for La Chandeleur (Candlemas on 2 February) when crêpes are de rigeur in a similar way that pancakes are traditional on Shrove Tuesday.

Going back a bit on this thread: Cox's Orange were my favourite apple but you just don't seem to find them easily now in Aotearoa/New Zealand. My husband tells me the season is very short for them and early. 

My son's is basically teetotal but he will have the occasional cider so we keep one in the fridge for the times he comes down. (It's very fortunate he doesn't drink: I was very worried when he was young as he has always loved driving and a combination of driving, drink and his rather reckless personality was not something I wanted to dwell on.)

Temperance wrote:

By our fruits shall you know us...

We’re not quite into the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness but with July and August of 2023 having been generally a cool washout and with the Bank Holiday forecast being for more of the same, then for those of us in the British Isles the best we can hope for is for an Indian summer this Autumn.

This is the time of year when apples, pears, plums, cherries and hazelnuts are in abundance in the orchards. Whereas apples, pears and plums in Britain date from at least Roman times, cherries and hazelnuts aren’t really recorded in England before the 16th Century. In Kent children were well used to differentiating between the 2 main types of hazelnut as cobs (round hazelnuts) and filberts (long hazelnuts). That previously common knowledge and usage, however, is seemingly no more with the large-scale decline in the number of nut trees in the county over the last 100 years. The current generation of youngsters is generally unfamiliar with the fact that hazelnuts can even grow in England let alone knowing about the different cultivars. Today 'Kentish cobnuts' (i.e. hazelnuts) sold in UK shops are more likely to be the produce of Turkey and Italy etc.

But in early spring the presence of hazel catkins in quite newly planted hedges has surprised me. Whether this is by intent or the result of squirrel  hoards, who knows? I was born an raised in - and on -  a place of really ancient over laid habitation. Hazels grew at the end of every property - if by design or accident, I know not but the clumps were gnarled and old. I planted a cob at the end of my own here a few years back - for some odd reason it feels right and I am at last comfortable in the property. It produces nuts but now I leave them for  wild life there being scant else for them about here. You say, Viz that there is no early record of hazel yet it is used for dowsing.....or is that not an ancient business? I recall going nutting  in wild parts of Oxfordshire as a child - with special hooked poles for it too but never heard of it elsewhere and never now anywhere. As for sweet chestnut, I have no idea where there might be a tree now but knew of many as a child. As for walnuts, we always had one of those too and which grew to quite a size - not for your average garden, walnuts- a Roman introduction to our area was ever my belief as a child but perhaps that was romancing the nut.

Vizzer wrote:

Whereas apples, pears and plums in Britain date from at least Roman times, cherries and hazelnuts aren’t really recorded in England before the 16th Century.

Yes, it seems that it was Henry VIII who was instrumental in introducing the cultivation of sweet cherries to England.

In 1533 Henry ordered the Royal Fruiterer, Richard Harris or Harrys (and note that despite his title the man wasn't a grocer but rmore a gardener responsible for supplying the Court from his majesty's orchards), to obtain saplings of sweet cherry varieties for the Royal orchards at Tyneham in Kent, after the King had enjoyed the fruit in France. It's my guess that Henry had first tasted the new sweet variety of cherry just the year before in 1532 during the round of sumptuous banquets that accompanied Henry and Anne Boleyn's diplomatic visit to François I in France to try and gain the French king's support for their intended marriage. This was in October 1532 and so fresh cherries were unlikely to have been available and presumably the cherries eaten were candied or otherwise preserved in syrup or brandy. Nevertheless they seem to have impressed the king - although I suspect it may well have been Anne's notorious sweet-tooth rather than Henry's that ultimately prompted the Royal fruiterer to import cherry saplings/grafts from Northern France and so start growing the new varieties in Kent.  

Of course somewhat like with apples, the wild ancestor of the cultivated cherry was already a native of Britain and had been a valuable wild food resource since mesolithic times. The two native species of wild cherry, Prunus avium (more common in southern Britain) and Prunus padus (more common in the north), while perfectly edible tend to be somewhat bitter and so were very rarely eaten raw. But they were still tasty if cooked with sugar or honey. Indeed in 1376 - 150 years before Henry VIII's time, the Reeve's Account of the Manor of Tyneham (the same manor as supplied fruit to Henry but then owned by the Archbishop of Canterbury) records, "twenty pence as payment for cherries sent to the lord". At about the same time the 'Forme of Cury', the cookbook complied by Richard II's mastercook, contains a cherry-based recipe: 'chyryse' or 'chireseye' (ie cerise, from the French for cherry) is a sort of bread pudding made of stoned cherries, wine, butter, ground almonds, breadcrumbs and sugar, not completely unlike the traditional French dish clafoutis. In the 14th century, although clearly grown as a valuable orchard crop, these would still have been essentially wild cherries and so the fruits were generally small, rather dry and doubtless quite tart, unlike the juicy dessert cherries one usually buys today.

Cultivated varieties of cherry seem to have first been developed in central/western Asia by selectively crossing Eurasian wild cherries with other closely-related Asian species. The introduction into the Roman Empire of these cherry cultivars which were sweet enough to be eaten raw, is usually reckoned to have been by the statesman and general, Lucius Licinius Lucullus, on his return to Rome in 66 BC after a decade-long military campaign in Anatolia and the Black Sea region (this is all well attested by Plutarch's 'Life of Lucullus'). Lucullus brought back an enormous amount of booty and plundered art works, but also many exotic plants that he'd picked up during his travels and which he then installed in the large garden of his villa in Rome. From here the cultivation of varieties of sweet cherry rapidly spread throughout the Empire. Cherry cultivation however seems to have died out in Saxon England and north-west Europe, although it was kept going in the monasteries of Southern France and Italy from where it eventually spread back northwards again and ultimately back into England where growing cherries became especially associated with Kent.

As Mr Jingle says in Charles Dickens' Pickwick Papers, "Kent, sir, everyone knows Kent. Apples, cherries, hops and women."

Earlier in my retirement I had a side job (only once every two months) as a minute taker for a society.  They (It)  had a problem with Japanese knotweed which had encroached on to their (its) land.  It is a difficult weed to get rid of and if my memory serves me correctly its spread has to be controlled by law.  I have enough trouble with convolvulus in my back garden.  I do have a gentleman come and cut back the weeds for me over the spring and summer and early autumn months periodically.

Caro wrote:

Going back a bit on this thread: Cox's Orange were my favourite apple but you just don't seem to find them easily now in Aotearoa/New Zealand. My husband tells me the season is very short for them and early. 

My son's is basically teetotal but he will have the occasional cider so we keep one in the fridge for the times he comes down. (It's very fortunate he doesn't drink: I was very worried when he was young as he has always loved driving and a combination of driving, drink and his rather reckless personality was not something I wanted to dwell on.)

Caro, I don't drink a lot of alcohol but would occasionally treat myself to something like a G&T.  However I am going teetotal - not for the sake of virtue - I used to be on a combined medication for high blood pressure.  It's been discovered that one of the constituents runs a slight risk of being conducive to a type of skin cancer so I'm just on Lisiniprol now and my blood pressure readings have been high so it's no alcohol for me henceforward.  I have some "decaf" tea which I am using. I do like my 'cuppa'.  Just looking online things such as green tea and beet juice are among ideas suggested as perhaps being helpful though neither of those appeal to me.  I've exercised less and walked less with having had a dodgy back since January though a physiotherapist at the doctors' surgery I attend has suggested some exercises to strengthen my lower back.  Exercise is suggested as being beneficial for lowering blood pressure so I'll have to work on being more active even if it's indoor exercise.

I like Cox's (not too sweety-sweet).  I couldn't tell you what variety the apple tree in my back garden is except that the fruit is red when ripe and the apples are 'eaters' rather than 'cookers'.  In the past I've sometimes eaten 'cookers' raw. As I say I like a not too sweety-sweet apple.

I open a bottle of white wine every second Friday and have a glass a night until it is finished. I take a cocktail of pills mostly for spasms and seizures but nothing seems to affect me badly. Apart from my stroke leaving me unable to walk very far (and not at all without a quad stick), I have no illnesses and never get sick. Even when I got Covid a while ago it didn't seem to affect me at all, so much so that I wondered if it was a false positive and tested myself midweek but it was still positive. So I must just have a very good immune system for some reason. I've never had the flu in my life. (Did get the usual childhood diseases like measles.)

Back to the thread and I found this: "Apples have been grown in New Zealand since Europeans first settled in the country. The missionary Samuel Marsden introduced the first apple trees in 1819. Pipfruit growers were quick to realise the export potential. The first export apples were sent from Christchurch to Chile in 1888."

It's interesting that the first exports of New Zealand apples were to Chile and not to Britain. Apples generally store well for at least a few months after harvest and they could have been readily shipped in the new fast steam-ships, which from the 1880s onwards were being used to carry frozen mutton from Australia and New Zealand to supply the 'mother-land'. But it seems with apples there was just no pressing demand and that in winter most Britons simply managed as they had always done on home-preserved fruit.

Chile is now a major apple growing/exporting country in its own right. Being in the southern hemisphere both Chile and New Zealand export a lot of apples to France (and the EU generally) in March, April and May (the time of the southern autumn harvest) to cover the seasonal gap. I think France itself is actually a net exporter of apples but even with its overseas territories it can't supply the domestic demand all year round. Caro, you mentioned trouble finding Cox's Orange Pippins in NZ however I'm fairly sure I've see New Zealand Cox's Oranges being sold here in French supermarkets earlier in the year - perhaps your apples go mostly for export. We also used to occasionally get English apples too (when in season) but that seems to have stopped with brexit.

The main local variety of apple here around the town of Cérèt (about 30 mins from me) is the reinette (little queen) the various local cultivars of which - both eaters and cookers - have been grown throughout France since at least the seventeenth century. (I once thought the variety might have been named after Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV, popularly known as Reinette, but apples of that name pre-date her by at least a hundred years). The town of Cérèt is however most famous for its sweet cherries; by tradition in May the town always sends the President of France (in the past the King) a gift of the first of the year's crop.

The Columbian exchange following the Spanish and Portugese 'discovery' of the Americas heralded a great period of plant migration between the Old and New Worlds. Potatoes, tomatoes, chilli peppers, maize, avocados, vanilla, cocao, cassava, haricot beans and sweet potatoes, all natives of the Americas, found their way to Europe, Africa and Asia - while wheat, rice, oranges, lemons, sugar cane, bananas, mangoes, ginger and coffee were soon being grown in gardens and plantations across the New World. But in many cases the route these new plants took was not simply a direct exchange across the Atlantic.

Potatoes for example, which are now grown worldwide, are native to the Andean highlands which were then the heartland of the Incan Empire. When the Spanish first arrived in the Caribbean and then a bit later Mexico, they encountered the sweet potato and as it stored well it was used to replenish ships returning across the Atlantic and so was transported to Spain. It was however decades later, only once Pizarro had explored down the Pacific coast of South America and subdugated the Incas, that 'proper' spud-type potatoes were transported back back to Spain along with the Andean silver and gold.

The Taino people of the Caribbean had called the sweet potato 'batata' while the Incas called the white potato 'papas', and almost inevitably the two names merged creating considerable confusion over which type of potato is being referred to in the written records. The earliest records must refer to the central American sweet potato but once Andean silver started to be transported to Europe it is likely that Andean potatoes travelled with it. However until detailed botanical descritions started to be made in the late 16th century it is not always clear if the tubers being referred to are ordinary or sweet potatoes (the two plants are not closely related). Nevertheless white, spud-type potatoes are certainly recorded as being grown in the Canary islands in 1562 and it seems it is from there that they were introduced to Europe by several different ports of entry. The first, logically, into Spain around 1565, the second into the Low Countries shortly after (a shipment between Las Palmas in the Canaries and Antwerp is recorded for 1567) and the third into the British Isles between 1588 and 1593. The potato's introduction to the British Islands, if it didn't first arrive from Antwerp, may have been due to Sir Francis Drake returning from his circumnavigation or to Sir Walter Raleigh returning from the Roanoke colony (hence why it was sometimes called the Virgina potato), both of whom replenished in the Canaries before continuing on their way back to England. Alternatively potatoes may have been introduced by Basque fishermen from Spain who used potatoes as ships' stores for their voyages across the Atlantic and who landed in Western Ireland to dry their cod. By the beginning of the 17th century potatoes were being grown across Europe, although often only as food for livestock or the very poor as its resemblance to plants of the nightshade family meant that it was regarded with suspicion.

Potatoes were nevertheless regarded as a good survival food that stored well and it is likely potatoes were amongst the stores carried from England with the Pilgrim Fathers: they are certainly recorded as being grown in the colony soon after (and as they aren't Indigenous, any potatoes eaten at the first Thanksgiving in 1621 must have been grown from tubers brought from England). These would be the first potatoes to ever be grown on the North American continent. To get there the humble spud had travelled from the Andes, up to the Ithsmus of Panama, across the Atlantic via the Canaries to Spain, then to England, and finally back across the North Atlantic. In much the same way the potato eventually travelled with merchants and colonists via Flanders to northern Europe and Russia, via Spain to the Levant and to the Far East, and via Portugal to India. Today by far the largest producer of potatoes is China.

I suspect most other plants that first crossed the Atlantic following the columbian exchange, had similarly convoluted travels as they spread around the globe.

Meles meles wrote:

Potatoes were nevertheless regarded as a good survival food that stored well and it is likely potatoes were amongst the stores carried from England with the Pilgrim Fathers: they are certainly recorded as being grown in the colony soon after (and as they aren't Indigenous, any potatoes eaten at the first Thanksgiving in 1621 must have been grown from tubers brought from England). These would be the first potatoes to ever be grown on the North American continent. To get there the humble spud had travelled from the Andes, up to the Ithsmus of Panama, across the Atlantic via the Canaries to Spain, then to England, and finally back across the North Atlantic.

That's remarkable Meles. I hadn't appreciated that. As you suggest, the popular story of Sir Walter Raleigh and the 'Virginia potato' can be misleading.

I believe it was a similar story with sunflower oil. Sunflowers originated in the Americas and were transported to Europe in the 16th century. The production of sunflower oil is recorded in western Europe as early as 1716. It didn't become commercially widespread, however, until the 19th century which was in Russia. Immigration from Europe in the early 20th century then introduced sunflower oil to North America.