[Sca-cooks] Historical Apples - substitutions for

[Lilinah]

Stefan asked about:
>  "sports" and "terrior"?

Femke made a typo - that should be "terroir". It is the word commonly 
used in French to describe wine grapes from a very specific region, 
and not just the general region where the grapes are grown, but even 
which side of a hill.

That is because the geographic location, the topography, the type of 
soil and the climate all effect the flavor of food grown on plants. 
So, as Femke was discussing, a particular type of apple grown in 
California and in Michigan, assuming that both the root stock and the 
specific grafted apple type are identical, will actually taste 
different.

Even if i grew a particular period apple tree in my back yard 
(assuming i had one) here in Northern California, there's a good 
chance that its apples will have significant flavor, and potentially 
even texture, differences from the same apple grown in, oh, say 
France.

Here's a definition of sport, not mine:
In botany, a sport is a part of a plant (normally a woody plant, but 
sometimes in herbs as well) that shows morphological differences from 
the rest of the plant. Sports may differ by foliage shape or color, 
flowers, or branch structure.

In other words, it is a spontaneous mutant.

For example, on a tree producing all yellow apples, a sport would be 
a red apple, which may also have some flavor differences from the 
yellow apples. If the differences are found to be desirable, then 
trees may be grown from that sport, and it can become a new breed.

On the Trees of Antiquity website, there are a number of apple trees 
they sell that were developed from sports. Since sports happen 
naturally, they have happened in the past as well.
-- 
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita

My LibraryThing
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/lilinah