Do you remember where you bought it? You could try taking it back to the nursery and see if they can help you. Or if you ordered it by mail, send a picture to the supplier and see if they know what it is. I save all my plant mail order receipts for very much this reason.

Melissa, all apple trees from nurseries today are grafted to a root stock. It is the root stock that determines the size of the tree. An espalier tree is just the way the tree is trained to grow and not a type of tree. In your 4' x 25' area, with the right root stock, you could get as many as 6 apple trees planted 4' apart. We have semi-dwarf trees planted 4' apart in our tree rows (we have 17,000 trees in our orchard). In our retail nursery, we stock all dwarf and semi-dwarf trees and tell our customers what root stock they are getting. Most nurseries do not do that so you have no idea what size tree you might end up with. The most common dwarf root stock is Bud 9 or B9 and semi-dwarf is M26 or M9. If you contact Whiffletree Farm & Nursery, they can help you with the right trees for your situation. I know they grow a super-dwarf tree on M27 root stock that gets no taller than 6'-7'. Whiffletree is north of Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario. Her is one of our tree rows planted to espalier on M26 root stock spaced 3' apart. We also have a 3,000 tree apple tree maze planted to espalier! Hope this helps!

We have an old 30-40 some odd year old tree. Unknown variety. Earlier Apple variety. Looking at it a couple days ago there is one branch that has entirely different Apple than the rest of the tree. It has not been grafted previous to this year. First phot is the abnormal Apple It's a different shape and size, a different color (more yellow green than blue green) and it's shiny like a polished Macintosh where the other limbs have a waxy bloom. There's only one Apple like it because I cut the tree way back this year. So if it is a mutation and if I like this Apple, will the mutation be on the whole branch or just that spur? I've basically cut most of the main limb off to graft to this year via bark/rhind graft) and left a couple nurse branches and this mystery apple is on one of those branches. Branch is about 2-3" thick. Main limb is about 6-8" thick. I'll document size and shape with photos and dates and watch to see if it changes color. I'll have to taste it at some point too but will take photos of top bottom insides and seeds. Any input would be greatly appreciated!

I think you are worrying unnecessarily. Commercial orchardists routinely replace dead apple trees with a new one in the same spot. Very few diseases of any significance to apples will remain present in the soil and most of those can be circumvented by selecting a disease resistant cultivar (which Honeycrisp is) and by the appropriate rootstock. Your biggest worry is going to make sure you have the stump and roots of the old trees out of the way to make planting easy. btw, mummified fruit can just be as simple as fruit that never fell or eaten by any creatures and has started to deteriorate/decompose on the tree. And most old, untended apples will look 'diseased'......it is just a symptom of old age :-)