On 11/04/18 17:56, Martin Brown wrote:
On 11/04/2018 12:35, john west wrote:
Having spent part of my childhood in Kent, i know a genuine Cox's Orange
Pippin apple when i bite into one.
A while ago we bought a so called Cox's apple tree. While it had a hint
of the Cox's flavour, it was definitely *not* the real thing.

If you buy bare root from one of the reputable tree nurseries I'd expect
that you would be able to get it. If you buy from a shed then it could
easily be a look alike that is much easier to grow in a domestic garden.

Cox's OP is more disease prone than the more modern cultivars that
incorporate most of the best features of the original old fruit.

https://www.orangepippin.com/apples/coxs-orange-pippin

There are many identification points on that page, but the one that I
always used to identify a "Cox" apple isn't there. In the 50s and early
60s, The Coxes bought from London market stalls had a strange property -
if you shook them hard you could hear the seeds rattling inside. There
weren't too many other varieties of apple available with which to
compare them - maybe Granny Smith and one or two others? Do other apples
have this property? Modern Coxes don't, and indeed don't have the
flavour that I remember either.

When we moved her almost 6 years ago we found an apple tree which had
quite a nice flavoured apple, although the tree hadn't been pruned for
years. The apple was identified by the RHS as "Laxton's Fortune" - one
of its parents is Cox's Orange Pippin!

You might want to get something that is less fussy about growing
conditions unless you are expert in fruit growing. Even then the scion
can be influenced by the rootstock vigour so commercial apple growers
will tend to have larger trees than make sense at home.

Mine is actually Sunset grafted onto a family tree with Egremont Russet.

Is there any way when we buy another tree that we can ensure that it is
the real Cox's we are buying?Â*Â*Â* Thanks.

I was surprised how nice a golden delicious apple could be when grown
slowly on a dwarfing rootstock and ripened on the tree. The pumped up
water flavoured supermarket things are nothing like a home grown one.

I think that's spot on. I haven't eaten a fresh Golden Delicious, but
you aren't the first person I've heard say that a just-picked GD is very
good.

We have settled on "Jazz" as our current apple of choice. Recently
though, we've been trying and liking "Envy". It's completely different
from Jazz, but, strangely enough, is also a Gala-Braeburn cross!

Still, if I had to choose only one apple variety for the rest of my
life, Egremont Russet would win hands down!

--

Jeff