Page 32 - ARUBA TODAY

A32 FEATURE
Thursday 21 November 2019
Botanists scour aging orchards for long-lost apple varieties

By GILLIAN FLACCUS base lists apples including
Associated Press the Shackleford, the Flush-
PULLMAN, Wash. (AP) — The ing Spitzenburg and the
apple tree stands alone Dickinson— all varieties re-
near the top of a steep discovered by the project.
hill, wind whipping through Apples from newly discov-
its branches as a perfect ered trees are placed in a
sunset paints its leaves a vi- Ziploc baggie and care-
brant gold. fully labeled with the tree's
It has been there for more latitude and longitude and
than a century, and there the date the fruit was col-
is no hint that the tree or its lected. The apples are then
apples are anything out of shipped to the Temper-
the ordinary. But this scrag- ate Orchard Conservancy
gly specimen produces more than 400 miles (640 ki-
the Arkansas Beauty, a so- lometers) away in Molalla,
called heritage fruit long Oregon, for identification.
believed to be extinct un- There, experts work to iden-
til amateur botanists in the tify them using a trove of
Pacific Northwest tracked it U.S. Agriculture Depart-
down three years ago. ment watercolors and old
It's one of 13 long-lost apple textbooks. Once a variety
varieties rediscovered by a is identified as "lost," the
pair of retirees in the remote apple detectives return to
canyons, wind-swept fields the field to take cuttings
and hidden ravines of what In this Oct. 30, 2019, photo, Joanie Cooper, of the Temperate Orchard Conservancy, compares a that can be grafted onto
was once the Oregon Terri- rare apple to a 1908 watercolor illustration of the same variety in a U.S. Department of Agriculture root stock and planted in
tory. E.J. Brandt and David book, as she works in her lab in Molalla, Oregon. the conservancy's vast or-
Benscoter, who together Associated Press chard, to be preserved for
form the nonprofit Lost enjoy what our forefathers future generations.
Apple Project, log count- did." Brandt and Bensco- The trees could eventu-
less hours and hundreds of ter scour old county fair re- ally boost genetic diversity
miles in trucks, on all-terrain cords, newspaper clippings among modern-day apple
vehicles and on foot to find and nursery sales ledgers crops as climate change
orchards planted by set- to figure out which vari- and disease take an in-
tlers as they pushed west eties existed in the area. creasing toll, said Joanie
more than a century ago. Then they hunt them down, Cooper, a botanist at the
The two are racing against matching written records Temperate Orchard Con-
time to preserve a slice of with old property maps, servancy who's helped
homesteader history: The land deeds and sometimes identify many of the lost
apple trees are old, and the memories of the pio- varieties found in northern
many are dying. Others are neers' great-grandchildren. Idaho and eastern Wash-
being ripped out for more They also get leads from ington.
wheat fields or housing de- people who live near old She and two others found-
velopments for a growing orchards. In this Oct. 28, 2019, photo, apples are shown in an orchard at a ed the nonprofit conser-
population. The task is huge. North remote homestead near Pullman, Wash. vancy in 2011, and oper-
"To me, this area is a gold- America once had 17,000 Associated Press ate it on a shoestring, after
mine," said Brandt, who named varieties of domes- ner of the Pacific Northwest FBI agent and an IRS crimi- recognizing the need for a
has found two lost variet- ticated apples, but only alone. The Homestead Act nal investigator, pursues repository for rare fruit trees
ies in the Idaho panhandle. about 4,000 remain. The of 1862 gave 160 acres (65 leads on lost apples with in the U.S. West.
"I don't want it lost in time. Lost Apple Project believes hectares) to families who the same zeal he applied "You have to have variet-
I want to give back to the settlers planted a few hun- would improve the land to his criminal cases. ies that can last, that can
people so that they can dred varieties in their cor- and pay a small fee, and In one instance, he found grow, produce fruit, sur-
these newcomers planted county fair records that vive the heat and maybe
orchards with enough va- listed winners for every ap- survive the cold winter,
riety to get them through ple variety growing in Whit- depending on where you
the long winter, with apples man County, Washington, are," Cooper said. "I think
that ripened from early from 1900 to 1910 — an that's critical." For Bensco-
spring until the first frosts. invaluable treasure map. ter and Brandt, however,
Then, as now, trees planted In another, he located a the biggest joy comes in
for eating apples were not descendant of a home- the hunt. Brandt, a Vietnam
raised from seeds; cuttings steader with a gigantic or- veteran and passionate
taken from existing trees chard by finding a family historian, last year found a
were grafted onto a ge- history she posted online. homestead near Troy, Ida-
neric root stock and raised Once he discovers a for- ho, by matching names on
to maturity. These cloned gotten orchard, Benscoter receipts from a nursery led-
trees remove the genetic spends hours mapping it. ger with old property maps.
variation that often makes He has pages of diagrams Three wind-bent apple
"wild" apples inedible — so- with a tiny circle denoting trees neatly spaced along
In this Oct. 28, 2019, photo, amateur botanist David Benscoter, called "spitters." each tree, with GPS coordi- the edge of a wheat field
of The Lost Apple Project, examines an apple as he works in an Benscoter, who retired in nates alongside each dot. were all that remained of
orchard near Pullman, Wash. 2006 after a career as an A lengthy computer data-
Associated Press the orchard.q