Hi Carmellia-

I don't know what your apple may be, but this thought struck me: if it has been neglected long enough it's likely to be producing much smaller apples than it is capable of.

If you really like it you should go back in March or thereabouts and cut a scion for grafting to a good rootstock. It won't hurt the tree at all, and then you'll have a good example for yourself and posterity. And it might be a really neat, decent sized fruit. (I have a fondness for "survivor" apples and pears, as old trees have proved themselves resilient.)

Good luck,

M

Carmellia:

There are over 5,000 named asexually reproduced apple varieties around the world, and uncounted numbers of chance and deliberately planted seedlings, all of which are different from one another in some way. Trying to describe an apple in just the right words is extremely difficult, and even when you do it well the same words can apply to many different apples. The conical shape you describe is the classic Red Delicious shape, but it is one that is shared by many other apple varieties. Even experts can have a hard time identifying apples when they are on the table right in front of them, unless they have run across that particular apple in the past.

An apple tree growing far out on a fenceline is quite possibly a chance seedling, and the small size of the fruit would tend to support this conclusion, since most seedlings revert to smaller, crablike fruit. There are quite a few very good and quite beautiful crab varieties, some of which produce acceptably large fruit. Among them are Chestnut, Callaway, Whitney, etc.. I do not mean to underrate your extraordinary apple tree, but many crabs and other apple varieties can produce fine fruit and beautiful trees.

If you want to preserve your chance find, Mark's advice is sound. You will have to learn the basics of grafting and obtain a rootstock, but those are not insuperable obstacles. However, before you go to a lot of trouble, I would suggest you do a little investigating of the many apple varieties that would do well in your climate. It is quite possible you will find one or more that are better than your chance find, and that you can buy online or by mail as young, ready-to-plant grafted trees.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Thank you both for the benefit your expertise. My first choice would be getting rootstock and try grafting a scion. I say that as though I know what a scion would look like. But I will do some investigation . Am I right to assume that I can buy rootstock someplace or is it something I have to get someone to donate?

Wish me luck. This may be an adventure. Carmellia

Hi again Carmellia.

"Rootstocks" are probably properly thought of as being very young trees grown and chosen specifically for the purpose of providing roots for other varieties, but in use anything you can stick a cutting on may be thought of as a "rootstock".

So a lot of effort goes into producing very consistent, carefully cloned roots that will make their predictable effect on the resulting tree known: they may dwarf to some certain degree, or provide resistence to certain diseases, or maybe drought. They tend to have names reflecting their origin in East Malling, England: M-this, or M-that. They are not seedlings, but genetically identical reproductions of one another. But seedlings are also used as rootstock -and there's just as much predictability in seedlings as there is in cousins or such. Still, it works.

In the same way, any growing apple tree can be a "rootstock" to your new graft. You might buy a whip or branched tree from a nursery, cut it off part way up, and graft your new variety to it at the cut. Everything above the graft will be your new tree (and everything below it will not be.) You might find a large apple tree, and use it as a rootstock: cut a branch off, graft on a scion, and everything new from that cut will be your new tree. If you go back to that new growth and cut a new scion off of it it will carry a blueprint of the original with it and reproduce true to type. (Usually. "Sports" is a whole new topic!)

So I have a semi-dwarf Liberty apple that I bought as a branched three-year old in the late 90's, and now it has 13 varieties stuck on it here and there, and I can add others wherever I can make the space. One could go down the street to a crab apple in a neighbor's yard and put a Gala, Fuji, or whatever on it, and in a few years it should bear fruit. Or, one could cut a scion from the crab and bring it back to the Liberty. (This stuff goes on all the time- it's a miracle the government hasn't started regulating it!)

The other thing you need to know is "what is a scion?"

It's a stick off of the tree you want to reproduce- a chip off the old block.

Some scions are good to work with and some aren't. The best are pencil sized and last year's growth. They would be clipped during late dormancy (March is probably good) and stored with a damp paper towel stuck around the cut part in a ZipLock bag in the refrigerator. If you decide to go ahead with this there are superb tutorials available here and elsewhere. There's a number of experienced folk here who would like nothing more than to answer your questions and direct you hither and yon.

So give 'em heck.

Best wishes and good luck on the adventure,

M