Ten Kinds of Apples Thought to Have Died Out Found in US West

Two retirees in the United States have found ten apple varietiesthat many scientists thought had died out.

The apples once identified as "lost" were among hundredsof fruits collected last autumn in Idaho and Washington state. The discoveryrepresents the largest number ever found in a single season by a not-for-profitgroup called the Lost Apple Project.

The group has just two members: EJ Brandt and David Benscoter. Thetwo learned about the results of their hard work from experts at the TemperateOrchard Conservancy in Oregon, where all the apples were sent for study.

Brandt described the recent results as "almostunbelievable." He added, "I don't know how we're going to keep upwith that."

Each autumn, Brandt and Benscoter spend many hours searching for old— and often dying — apple trees across the Pacific Northwest. The two travel bytruck, all-terrain vehicle and by foot. They collect hundreds of apples fromfields where apple trees once grew. They find these orchards by using old maps,newspaper stories and sales records.

By connecting names from those records with property maps, Brandtand Benscoter can find where an apple orchard might have been. They often finda few trees still growing there. The two carefully note the placement of eachtree using global positioning system technology. They then tie a piece ofplastic around the tress, collect some apples and ship them to the Oregonexperts for identification.

In the winter, the two men return to the trees — often in badweather — to take wood cuttings. These cuttings can be put, or"grafted," onto roots to make new trees.

The work is difficult. North America once had 17,000 named varietiesof apples, but only about 4,500 are known to exist today.

The Lost Apple Project believes settlers planted a few hundredvarieties of apple in the Pacific Northwest alone.

With the 10 latest varieties identified, Brandt and Benscoter haverediscovered a total of 23 varieties. The latest finds include the Sary Sinap,an ancient apple from Turkey; the Streaked Pippin, which may have grown in NewYork as early as 1744; and the Butter Sweet of Pennsylvania, a variety that wasfirst noted in Illinois in 1901.

Botanists from the Temperate Orchard Society compared the collectedapples to watercolor images created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture inthe 1800s and early 1900s. They also studied written descriptions in old botanybooks, some of them more than 150 years old.

One apple, the Gold Ridge, was hard to identify because the expertscould not find any paintings or descriptions of it anywhere. Finally, botanistJoanie Cooper found it in a book written by a botanist who died in 1912.

"It's the luck of the draw," said Shaun Shepherd, anotherTemperate Orchard Conservancy botanist. "And we learn more as we goalong."

With spring returning to the Pacific Northwest, the Lost AppleProject will soon enter its busy season. As they wait, Brandt and Benscoter arebusy grafting wood cuttings from the newly discovered "lost" appletrees onto root stocks and updating their records from the last season.

Their nonprofit group took a major hit when they had to cancel twoevents: an annual fair where they sell newly grafted "lost" appletrees and a class on how to graft wood to grow a new apple tree.

The cancellations were due to the new coronavirus.

The two events raise much of the group's $10,000 yearly budget. Themoney goes toward travel costs, apple shipping and apple identification.

Benscoter said, "Two months ago, I was thinking: ‘This is goingto be great. We've got 10 varieties that have been rediscovered,' but ....right now, we couldn't pay our bills."

Still, the self-described apple detectives get pleasure in theirwork. They often imagine the lives of the people who planted these trees.

"It was a hard life. I can't even imagine what they wentthrough, but they survived and they went on with their lives," Brandtsaid. "It's hard now, too, but it's going to be OK. It's all a part oflife."

I'm John Russell.