What’s the most famous fruit? The apple, undoubtedly.
The first time it was mentioned was because of Eve. The “apple of discord,” the one Paris gave to Venus and which triggered the Trojan War, was used by Homer to help us study the Iliad. Newton hit it on the head; it was undoubtedly Eve’s apple, the apple of knowledge, because it discovered the force of gravity. Snow White, however, ate it, but it was poisoned. Then came Francesco Garnier Valletti, who mixed alabaster with wax and shaped all the apple cultivars, and more, that grew in Italy around 1858.
In short, the apple has been present everywhere throughout history, science, and mythology. As if that weren’t enough, in England they coined the proverb that an apple a day keeps the doctor away. It may not keep the doctor away, but an apple a day is certainly good for you.
And let’s return to the apple, which has never been a single fruit but part of an infinite variety of species, as if every region had its own apples and every farmer had his own. Until the first half of the last century, apple varieties were as numerous as the stars in the sky, with different appearances, colors, and flavors. There were those to eat immediately and those that kept until spring, there were tart ones and sweet ones, those to cook with, succulent ones, those that ripened in August and were meant to be eaten immediately, those with red, yellow, green, or mixed skin. All were smaller than those offered in supermarkets today, but they all had one thing in common: their scent. A basket of apples in the kitchen filled the house with the fragrance. The entire orchard smelled.
In Amelia, they’re doing a delicate job of reviving forgotten fruits and biodiversity. Amelia’s territory is small, yet there are many cultivars and varieties of fruit and apples. Unfortunately, they’re not available on the market, but only in specialized orchards and from a few farmers.
Before Christmas, in Amelia, an exhibition dedicated to local sweets and apples was set up in the cloister of San Francesco. It was curated by the Umbria Agri-Food Technology Park and the Amelia association that works on local biodiversity. From a distance, it seemed modest; there were just two tables. But what tables! They were 6-8 meters long, entirely covered with clusters of apples, each with its own label on the front. Three of them intrigued me:
- Ox’s Muzzle. Its shape vaguely resembles an ox’s muzzle or even a pear. When it’s ripe, the endocarp dries out, and if you shake it, you can hear the seeds crackling. It’s the one that perfumes the entire fruit store where it’s stored. Delicious cooked in winter.
- Blood apple. Luckily, it doesn’t bleed, but everything is red: the flowers, the leaves, the peel, and the pulp. It doesn’t seem to have much flavor, but it’s charming to look at.
- Rattlesnake apple. Nothing like the rattlesnake or even Snow White’s apple. It’s not poisonous, but it rattles. It has the same characteristic as the Ox-nose apple: when ripe, its seeds sound like a baby’s rattle.
How many apples have you never heard of and never tasted! Luckily, there’s the Umbria Agri-Food Technology Park, where the seed houses are located. The Park, and other research centers around the world, collect all types of seeds to conserve, reproduce, cultivate, understand, and publicize the genetic material recovered in their local area.
