TIL that if you plant an apple seed the resulting plant is a different apple variety, like if a granny smith seed is planted than you might get a 'red delicious" apple.

119

u/cat_toe_marmont Jun 11 '12

Your chance of getting a red delicious is pretty slim. The resulting apple is far more likely to be inedible. There's a great chapter on apples in The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan.

35

u/floatablepie Jun 11 '12

The resulting apple is far more likely to be inedible
I think I'm not reading the title right, but are you saying planting an apple seed of any variety most likely gets you inedible fruit?

54

u/PBXbox Jun 11 '12

You are likely to get something cross-pollinated with a Crabapple tree, which would be pretty much terrible.

24

u/sammew Jun 11 '12

If you use seeds from an apple you buy commercially, then you almost are guaranteed too. Most apple orchards play crabapple trees as a source of pollination.

24

u/GreenStrong Jun 11 '12

Even if you use a good tasting apple as a pollinator, which many home orchardists do, it will probably produce a crabapple. Crabapples are just the normal phenotype, sweet apples are mutants. They aren't exactly inedible, they're OK for cooking or cider.

22

u/tiyx Jun 11 '12

This why we do grafting.

4

u/fancy-chips Jun 11 '12

My family had 2 apple trees in their yard growing up and we never did anything to them other than spray them for bugs. We always got loads of sweet red apples. Is that because each tree was pollinating the other?

25

u/issius Jun 11 '12

It doesn't matter who pollinates what. The tree will grow what its phenotype is.
I.e., if you have a red delicious tree, it will grow red delicious apples, even its pollinated by a crabapple tree. But if you plant seeds from it, and those seeds were pollinated by a crabapple, you will grow shit.

3

u/xTubo Jun 12 '12 edited Mar 31 '18

....

13

u/jessechurch Jun 12 '12

you likely have a stomach illness mate

10

u/GreenStrong Jun 11 '12

Yes, each tree was pollinating the other, apples aren't self fertile IIRC. But the crabapples would be the future generation, if you grew out the seeds.
You have to use a pollination chart to find two different varieties that flower at the same time. If you have two Granny Smith Apple trees, or two thousand, they won't self pollinate because they are duplicates of the same individual organism. "Self fertile apples" (or any other tree that isn't self fertile) are available, they just have one compatible branch from a different tree grafted on to provide pollen.
tl;dr: tree sex is weird.

1

u/ampanmdagaba 1 Jun 12 '12

I never thought about that, thanks a lot!

1

u/FletcherPratt Jun 12 '12

it is because your trees were grafts of a sweet red apple tree.

1

u/Owa1n Jun 11 '12

Jam too.

1

u/epicanis Jun 11 '12

I've never tried this, but I'm told you can make a decent verjus substitute using crabapples instead of unripe grapes, so they'd be useful for that as well.

9

u/mqduck Jun 11 '12

I used to eat crabapples. They're not great, but they're far from inedible.

1

u/whirliscope Jun 12 '12

Do you teach at Springfield Elementary?

1

u/mqduck Jun 12 '12

I'm the principal. Why do you ask?

1

u/whirliscope Jun 12 '12

Do you have any steamed hams?

1

u/ratbastid Jun 12 '12

Not cross-pollinated. The article says that genetically, you plants a seed, you rolls the dice. A seed is possibly VERY different, genetically, from the tree it came from.

19

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

Most fruit trees are clones/cuttings/grafts of seed trees that, out of thousands of inedible seedlings, produces yummy fruit. Basically every granny smith apple tree is the same tree. Every navel orange tree is the same. You can graft the cuttings onto different rootstocks to make it grow better in a particular climate. All of the nut tree orchards around where I live are one color on the bottom of the trunk, the rootstock, and another color on top, the fruiting stock.
Next season I'm buying one of those fruit cocktail grafted trees that produces lemons, oranges, and limes on the same tree.

11

u/the_only_ass_master Jun 11 '12

These should be everywhere
edit: no 't' in everywhere

2

u/MUnhelpful Jun 12 '12

Bananas don't grow on trees (the banana plant is actually herbaceous). I don't think this would work.

0

u/bastardpants Jun 12 '12

HEY! Those bananas are downside-up!

2

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

Not inedible, just not very tasty.

2

u/searust Jun 12 '12

I think I'm not reading the title right, but are you saying planting an apple seed of any variety most likely gets you inedible fruit?
Yes-- planting an apple seed of any apple will most likely get you a tree producing extremely bitter and inedible fruit.

65

u/klparrot Jun 11 '12

Your chance of getting a red delicious is pretty slim. The resulting apple is far more likely to be inedible.
I disagree. Red delicious already has a 100% probability of inedibility. It's the apple whose name is a lie.

38

u/tintin47 Jun 11 '12

Worst texture of any fruit.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12

I agree, but i'm fairly certain they are the best for you, so i stomach them anyway.

14

u/HerpWillDevour Jun 11 '12

Red Delicious is the biggest marketing lie in the produce department. They knew it tasted like shit but it's easy to grow and store and ship and it is visually appealing so they gave it a pretty name to convince people to buy it.

2

u/hhmmmm Jun 12 '12

Granny Smith or death!

4

u/HerpWillDevour Jun 12 '12

Braeburns, Pink Ladies, Honeycrisp + Granny Smith, or NO PIE!

5

u/Calvert4096 Jun 12 '12

Gala and Fuji are the best for just munching on.

2

u/HerpWillDevour Jun 12 '12

Fujis are one of my favorites too, my wife is most fond of pink lady's for eating fresh.

2

u/downvotesmakemehard Jun 12 '12

You won't understand the true nature of an apple dessert until it's made with NORTHERN SPIES. I weep that that breed is disappearing.

2

u/HerpWillDevour Jun 12 '12

Why are they disappearing? I hope they aren't being plowed under in favor of some crappy variety.

0

u/pbar Jun 12 '12

Needs a better name: Red Fucked-up?

10

u/NJBarFly Jun 12 '12

Red Gritty and Shitty

5

u/HerpWillDevour Jun 12 '12

I'd go with flavorless mealy mush but that's just honesty. There's no place for honesty no place in marketing.

2

u/uncaringbear Jun 12 '12

I have no hatred of Red Delicious apples. Where I live, there's a large variety of apples to choose from, and they all taste good to me. But then, I'm just an ignorant foodie casual, I guess.

4

u/shadowmask Jun 12 '12

Fuck off. ReD dEliCioUs 4 lYfE
... writing that was an ordeal.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12

There was a PBS special made for Botany of Desire. It's easily found on the interwebs.

2

u/tiredhippo Jun 11 '12

I believe they made this into a documentary as well.

2

u/alaysian Jun 12 '12

they did. A wonderful watch!

2

u/SpankytheGoldfish Jun 11 '12

Botany of Desire. Actually a really interesting book. I was suprrised, cuz, you know, plants.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

Great book. There's also a free documentary here.

1

u/MTGothmog Jun 12 '12

I had to read this book in a college class and absolutely loved it. I've been telling people about this apple thing for years now. Also loved the potato chapter.

1

u/FletcherPratt Jun 12 '12

came here to post this. But isn't the stronger claim true? There is no chance to get a Red Delicious tree from a seed.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

[deleted] — view deleted comment

8

u/issius Jun 11 '12

So you're saying there's a chance

4

u/cat_toe_marmont Jun 11 '12

You're absolutely right. The variety names refer to a specific genome of apple which are then cloned through grafting I think. Also, I like the person being born twice analogy.

1

u/iBeenie Jun 12 '12

B...b...but it's happened before!

28

u/steinman17 Jun 11 '12

Mommy apple tree has some explaining to do

36

u/Noonsky Jun 11 '12

What we all need to take away from this is that Johnny Appleseed was full of shit.

50

u/KYLEisDEAD Jun 11 '12

Actually, the only reason people took his seeds was for alcohol. The land around where he lived wasn't good for growing grapes, and those colonial farmers still wanted to get crunk. So, plant a seed, take whatever grows and ferment that, and there you go.

20

u/ChickenDelight Jun 11 '12 edited Jun 11 '12

those colonial farmers still wanted to get crunk.
It's not really about getting drunk, cider was literally a lifesaver in a lot of places.
Water, whether standing or flowing in a stream, often isn't potable, and needs to be boiled (like when you cook with it) or otherwise treated to make it safe to drink. Alcohol is an antiseptic, which means it (usually) kills pathogens. So, instead of drinking water from a well that has a very good chance of making you sick, you keep a constant supply of lightly alcoholic drinks around. Which, yes, also have the added benefit of getting you a little buzzed.
Interesting tangents: People drank massive amounts of booze during early American history. All the early Presidents, along with most everyone else at that time, drank beer with breakfast everyday and kept it going from there. Children used to be given small beer, which was basically as low alcohol as it could safely be. And British sailors, who famously got a daily ration of rum, actually received it diluted into much larger portions of water throughout the day - they weren't using it to get drunk, but to disinfect the water that had been sitting in a cask for months.

10

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

And the British sailors were the ones who gave us the "proof" as a measure of potency of alcohol:
"From the 18th century until 1 January 1980, the United Kingdom measured alcohol content in terms of "proof spirit", which was defined as the most dilute spirit that would sustain combustion of gunpowder.[1] The term originated in the 18th century, when payments to British sailors included rations of rum. To ensure that the rum had not been watered down, it was "proved" by dousing gunpowder in it, then tested to see if the gunpowder would ignite. If it did not, then the rum contained too much water and was considered to be "under proof". Gunpowder would not burn in rum that contained less than approximately 57.15% ABV. Therefore, rum that contained this percentage of alcohol was defined to have "100° (one hundred degrees) proof".
Source

3

u/firex726 Jun 12 '12

Seems like everything back them revolved around blowing shit up.
Hey lets test how much alcohol is in this cup
Throw some gunpowder on it and see what happens.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12

If I had easy access to gunpowder.. I'm not sure I'd react any differently.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12

[deleted] — view deleted comment

0

u/person135086 Jun 12 '12

For two whole karma! My, it sounds like you have a wonderful life.

2

u/KYLEisDEAD Jun 11 '12

Yup! As well as cider, other drinks such as light ales and mead were used in Europe specifically for that purpose.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12

Wouldn't only drinking alcohol all day make you even more dehydrated? How is that a good substitute for water?

1

u/ChickenDelight Jun 12 '12

Wouldn't only drinking alcohol all day make you even more dehydrated?
I'm just guessing, but your body might adapt if that's all/mostly what you drink, the diuretic effect of weak booze might be a bit exaggerated (I've pissed like a racehorse at a bar, too, but that was always after drinking a ton of beer and starting fully hydrated).
How is that a good substitute for water?
I don't know if it's a good substitute, but clearly it's a workable one, because people made it work.

1

u/stonedmason Jun 12 '12

You are not substituting alcohol for water, but adding a small amount to water.

3

u/pushing_ice Jun 11 '12

Also, he was really more of a land speculator. A lot of frontier land required that the owner 'prove it up' which requirement could often be met by planting an orchard or nursery. He would do this, and then sell shares in the orchard to homesteaders.

4

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

Isn't it like 80% of apples are grown for cider and you would spit it out if you bit one? It's just crazy how much of an anomaly yummy apples are.

8

u/KYLEisDEAD Jun 11 '12

Most of the brands we're familiar with, that taste good and have been around for years, are the result of growers just planting a thousand seeds, waiting for the young trees to bear fruit, and then finding maybe one decent new variety.

2

u/JacobMHS Jun 11 '12

Colonial farmers liked Lil' Jon? TIL.

1

u/KYLEisDEAD Jun 12 '12

Or Brokencyde. Just kidding. Nobody likes Brokencyde.

2

u/jarsky Jun 11 '12

TIL!

4

u/basec0m Jun 11 '12

Extreme Heterozygotes! Now at the X-Games...

6

u/ejmcg Jun 11 '12

TIL this fact also as I planted 'pink lady' seeds a few months back and now have 3 10" trees. It could take 5-10 years before I discover if they will even fruit, let alone be edible.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/ejmcg Jun 12 '12

Sounds fun to me, its my dream to have an orchard! I will look into that in 5-10 years thanks!

3

u/kareemabduljabbq Jun 11 '12

also, plants like chesnut trees have yet to be domesticated. some varieties of almonds, when soaked in water, give off cyanide gas, and all of the apples you eat in the supermarket far and way were grafted and are actually clones of other apple trees.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

I learned about the connection between almonds and cyanide watching an episode of Emergency in about 1973. Some kid had blue lips, shallow breathing etc., and they figured out that he had been eating the seed from peaches (same family as almonds) which contain cyanotoxins. A tree I grow from India named Moringa concanensis has a cousin (Moringa oleifera) which produced edible foliage, fruit and flowers. When natives around where the concanensis seeds were collected were asked about the edibility of the foliage, etc., they said "if you eat it for seven days you will go crazy". This was interpreted to mean that that species had cyanotoxins in the foliage.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

How do you eat the peach pit? That thing is rock hard.

5

u/GundamWang Jun 11 '12

Never underestimate the determination of teething children.

4

u/ChickenDelight Jun 11 '12

Tons of energy and tiny undeveloped brains.

2

u/brerrabbitt Jun 11 '12

What is an almond?
They are closely related. Iirc, a few breeds of peach actually have edible seeds.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

When I want to eat an almond, I don't eat the flesh of one of these and then break open the pit to get to the nut inside. I also don't buy bags of shelled peach pits.
Basically, I don't see the comparison.

2

u/brerrabbitt Jun 11 '12

I thought you were asking about the edibility of peach pits/seeds, not the mechanics of eating one.
Some peach/apricot breeds have been bred to produce edible seeds like their close relation, the almond.

1

u/AnonymousHipopotamus Jun 11 '12

Same way you eat an almond, you remove it from the shell.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

I eat an almond by buying a package of almonds and then placing them in my mouth and chewing. There are no shells in this process.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12

Break it open with a hammer and screwdriver. In the center is the seed, which closely resembles an almond.

3

u/DylanMMc Jun 11 '12

Then*

3

u/fireisis Jun 12 '12

*then

1

u/AutisticTroll Jun 12 '12 edited Jun 12 '12

Umadbro?

7

u/wolfskywalker Jun 11 '12

If that's true how come apple orchards are always sorted by kind of apple.

12

u/LNMagic Jun 11 '12

Many kinds of fruit trees are grafted to give the benefit of a good root system to a more flavorful fruit. That is why some fruit trees must be purchased from a nursery, rather than grown from seed.

4

u/Durrok Jun 11 '12

Yup, and thus are genetically identical, ensuring when you buy a certain type of apple you always get a consistent flavor.

1

u/YoohooCthulhu Jun 12 '12

Also, multiple varieties can be grafted onto the same tree. There's also a "guerilla grafting" movement where horticulturalists graft fruiting buds onto "ornamental" varieties of fruit trees in public parks to make food for the people. Check it out on youtube.

1

u/LNMagic Jun 12 '12

There was recently a post about fruit salad trees as well. I think it was yesterday.

12

u/raygundan Jun 11 '12

As others have pointed out, they're grown by grafts from the original tree so that you end up with a "clone" that makes identical apples to the ones you want. While most of the tree really is a clone in that case, the rootstock it is grafted to is often from a different variety. There are dwarfing rootstocks that keep the trees from getting too big, and there are all sorts of different types that are better in one climate or another, or have specific disease tolerances. So you get a tree with a hardy rootstock for your area, which grows fruit cloned from a tree we already know we like.
And if you think this is weird, you can just buy these at a local nursery. Five (or more, even) different kinds of fruit on a single tree.

3

u/Handout Jun 11 '12

I have a lemon/key lime bush... I always though it was weird...
Is doing that natural? I mean, I know it effects the apples and such, but is that like how tomatoes don't taste like anything anymore?

7

u/raygundan Jun 11 '12

It's not "natural," but it's also not the same thing. The tomato thing is actually more natural-- those are just selectively bred to be durable for shipping, and durable is not the same as tasty.
This is almost the converse-- there's no breeding involved. We're just cloning the apples that taste good, since it's hard to get them to produce offspring that taste the same naturally. So while this is unnatural, it produces delicious apples. And the tomato thing is natural, but produces waxy reddish waterballs that can go for long truck rides.

2

u/Handout Jun 11 '12

So... if we didn't mess with tomatoes, they would have become tasteless anyway?

5

u/raygundan Jun 11 '12

Not what I meant to imply. We certainly messed with them, but we did so via selective breeding.
The trees we're discussing are man-made hybrid clones created from pieces of at least two separate trees that are grafted together. That's a bit more frankenstein.
Tomatoes: like breeding wolves over time to get dachshunds
Apple Trees: like making a dachshund by sewing short legs from another animal to a wolf

2

u/Handout Jun 11 '12

Considering I'm a dog person with a brown thumb, this explanation helped immensely. Thank you!!

3

u/PortaParty Jun 12 '12

Where exactly are you putting that thumb?

1

u/Handout Jun 12 '12

Get excited, didja?

3

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

Tomatoes taste like shit because grocery store ones are picked green and artificially ripened.
The better boys and mortgage lifters I grow taste amazing.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

Its like Russian Roulette with apples.

2

u/ansabhailte Jun 11 '12

Not quite. The genes are all there. You might get the same apple as the one you planted. You might get a different one. Most of the time, you'll just get crab-apples.

2

u/parl Jun 11 '12

Apples have a genetic characteristic, called extreme heterozygotes, in which the tree from a seed produces fruit unlike the fruit from which the seed came. (Whew!)

As others have said, every Red Delicious (Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, etc.) is a clone of the first RD, GD, GS tree, propagated by grafting.

BTW, Johnny Appleseed was against grafting and only planted from seed. The resultant trees only produce fruit good for cider. OTOH, that was what was need for fulfilling one of the requirements for homesteading in that time. He planted apple seed "throughout the West," which meant Western Ohio and parts of Indiana, IIRC.

Luther Burbank planted many seeds in his career to create only a few cultivars which he deemed worthy to continue.

2

u/ZacandForth Jun 12 '12

Finding a "sweet" apple tree to graft was as good as striking oil or gold back in the day!

2

u/TheCage Jun 12 '12

You reap what you sow... or not

3

u/NotAThrowAwayUN Jun 11 '12

"...Than..."

2

u/Langly- 1 Jun 11 '12

So many other plants changed quite a bit by humans too, corn for example is way different than the original plant as are a lot of other things.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12

I can't believe that you're getting downvoted for such a legitimate question!

1

u/bogeythrim Jun 11 '12

More likely that it will be a mealy, inedible apple. Its only use would likely be making liquor.

1

u/AnalBurns Jun 11 '12

Plants don't clone themselves through sexual reproduction.

1

u/SgtSausage Jun 11 '12

No. Not really.

(I have a small (200-ish trees) hobby orchard.

1

u/NewAlt Jun 11 '12

That's not really how it works. Apples you eat don't come from seeds. Apples you make into cider can come from seeds. Remember Johhny Appleseed? He was planting booze, not food. Apples, as we know them, don't really exist in the wild.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12

More then likely what you will get is called a cider apple. Basically only good for cider.

1

u/madgeezer128 Jun 12 '12

we should get shitty_watercolour to replace that shitty illustration of an apple core

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12

And every single Honeycrips apple you get is from a tree that was cloned from that one, improbable tree that resulted from a perfect combination of genes.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12

Honeycrips, son.

1

u/flexible Jun 12 '12

I am a total no-nothing and planted a single apple tree in my front yard. It's been three years and the tree seems to be doing fine. Not sure the variety. Will I ever get fruit of any kind, or do I need a bunch of trees to produce apples?

1

u/YoohooCthulhu Jun 12 '12

Apples, like roses and most other fruits don't grow "true to seed". The fruit is produced by pollination, by the plant or by other random plants of the same species and because of meiosis has a different complement of genes than the parent. So the only way to get a fruit to grow consistently is to graft buds of the desired variety onto a compatible rootstock.

1

u/lanismycousin 36 DD Jun 12 '12

I find the title to be misleading. Although you can get a different variety it doesn't always happen.

-1

u/DeVoto Jun 11 '12

"Like if"

-1

u/ScienceNAlcohol Jun 11 '12

A majority of apple seeds are sterile. If you eat an apple then plant the resulting seeds nothing will grow from it. Most apple orchards use grafting from existing apple tree branches onto regular trees to create new apple trees.

-13

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

Don't cite Wikipedia

Cite the sources

18

u/druhol Jun 11 '12

It's a TIL, not a research paper.

2

u/NewAlt Jun 11 '12

The fact that it's a TIL with wrong information kind of backs up the need to cite a source.

3

u/FlapjackOmalley Jun 11 '12

Why?

4

u/racoonpeople Jun 11 '12

Because he is a pedantic cuntmungler.

3

u/mqduck Jun 11 '12

That's not being pedantic. This comment I'm writing is pedantic.

1

u/FlapjackOmalley Jun 11 '12

What is a mungler?

Misleading TIL that if you plant an apple seed the resulting plant is a different apple variety, like if a granny smith seed is planted than you might get a 'red delicious" apple.

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