hob wrote:

"Farm1" please@askifyouwannaknow wrote in message
...
"sherwindu" wrote in message
Kay Lancaster wrote:
On Thu, 16 Nov 2006 00:38:12 -0600, sherwindu
wrote:
Why put all this effort into an apple tree that will produce
lousy tasting
apples.

You're sure about that? cv Delicious was a chance seedling (and
they're

Naturally, only the successful chance seedlings were passed down
through the
years.

I think that many chance seedlings produce fruit that is not only
edible but quite good.

Each year we visit a lot of chance seedling trees and eat and harvest
the fruit. If we can beat the birds to them, most are good to very
good

Good is a relative term. How do they compare with a known heritage
or well engineered apple like a Honeycrisp?

and those that aren't are fine for cooking. These trees grow
along a very quiet country road and we are sure have grown from apple
cores thrown from passing cars. There must be at least 100 of these
trees and we watch and check with interest each year.

Are you saying that natural selection through the history of the apple has
led to a fruit that is desired by birds/animals, and a more desirable apple
for the propagation vector to eat spreads the seed better than apples that
are bitter and tasteless?

There are a lot of vegetables and fruit that pigs eat but I wouldn't find them
tasty.
You can't compare a bird's taste buds to a human. Sometimes, they will eat an
apple just to get the moisture out of it.

Johnny Appleseed spread a lot of seeds in his lifetime, but most of them
produced
apples that were not very tasty, and were used instead for cider or mash to feed
the animals.
In those days, for most pioneers it was a question of survival, not enhancing
their palette.

Sherwin D.



Who woulda thunk...