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Helpful definitions concerning a variety of horticultural matters.
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acid - Malic acid occurs in many fruits, including apples. The malic acid component of any fruit diminishes as it ripens. It's this acid that makes apples tart. However, "tart" is different from "sour." A sour taste is usually associated with citric acid (as in lemons) and tends to pucker your lips. Malic acid has a different, strong, but pleasant taste. There are some very low-acid apples that some people prefer. But we like those that are both sweet and have some malic acid. Even in sweet apples some acid is desirable because it reinforces the sugars and sharpens flavors. For us, the most exciting apples have high levels of both acid and sugar.
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blush - The coloring pattern of an apple when stripes are not present.
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budding - The process of inserting a dormant bud into the bark of a growing, vertical shoot or rootstock. Generally this is done when the shoot or rootstock is small, no more than a half inch in diameter. Once the bud and shoot grow together, any shoot or rootstock material growing above the grafted bud is removed. This directs all growth to the bud.
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budwood - New growth from which a bud is removed for propagation by budding. In New Jersey, budwood is cut in mid-August.
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calyx - The end of an apple that is opposite from its stem. The bottom. The calyx is made of the sepals, the part of the flower where the petals were attached when it bloomed in the spring. The petals fall off after blossoming, but the sepals remain. By harvest time, the sepals are small and dry in the calyx basin of the apple.
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cleft graft - A propagation method of cutting a branch or trunk off squarely, splitting it and then inserting a scion. Not unlike budding.
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clone - Verb: To use plant material to make an identical reproduction. Noun: The reproduced plant that results from cloning is a clone.
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cross - The combination of two parents, resulting in offspring. Apples are crossed when bees carry pollen from the flowers of one variety to flowers of another variety. (Varieties cannot pollinate themselves.) The apples created are the same variety as the tree they are growing on. But the seeds in the apples produce trees that are not the same as either of the parents. This is fine insofar as the fruit and eating it is concerned. However, this sexual reproduction is no way to propagate trees that are faithful to their variety. See generation.
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cultivar - Short for "cultivated variety" and abbreviated as "cv." Cultivars are created by breeding or grower selection.
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flesh - The white part of an apple. Usually described as coarse, fine, dry, juicy, soft, or crisp.
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generation - Apple trees are reproduced asexually, without the use of seeds. To get new trees, older ones are cloned from the original source tree. The resulting tree is said to be a "first generation" tree. If you use a first generation tree as a source tree, you get a "second generation" tree. In any generation, you could have one or thousands of trees, depending on how many you propagate. Regardless of whether you take your propagation material from the original tree or a tenth generation tree, your resulting maiden trees should be genetically identical to the original.
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graft - Verb: Grafting is cutting a shoot from a tree and attaching it to some part of another tree. The two heal, or grow together and become a single organism. Noun: The piece that has been attached is called a "graft."
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lenticels - Pores in the skin of an apple.
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maiden tree - A new tree that has been propagated, usually by budding or grafting, and then grown for a season in a nursery, is called a maiden tree. Trees planted in orchards by growers are typically maiden trees received from nurseries in a "bare-root" condition, meaning the nursery dug the trees out of the ground and provided them to the grower with no soil attached to the roots. It is not unusual for every tree in a stand to grow successfully when handled this way.
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mutation - New apple varieties usually result from crossing two parents. However, sometimes a tree that has been cloned spontaneously changes its genetic structure. Mutations of this kind are called a "sport" and occur naturally and unpredictably. If some aspect of a sport's fruit is considered an improvement, it will be preserved.
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oblong - An apple that is taller than it is wide.
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oblate - An apple that is wider than it is tall.
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pollen - Apple tree flowers produce pollen, the male sexual component of the flower. All apple tree blossoms produce both male and female parts but (in most cases) one variety of apple's pollen will not fertilize the female part (called stigmas) in a flower of the same variety. Thus, apple orchards always have more than one variety of tree.
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pollination - Moving pollen from one flower to another, fertilizing the recipient.
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propagate - Verb: Usually refers to cloning a new tree from a source tree. But seed growth is also propagation in the strictest sense.
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propagation material - Generally speaking, propagation material refers to something taken from a source tree, such as a scion or bud, to attach to a new tree. However, seeds are also propagation material, though rarely thought of as such.
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rootstock - A root and its associated growth buds, used as a stock in propagation. Most apple trees are two-part plants made up of a rootstock and a fruiting variety (called a "cultivar") grafted to it. There are many sorts of rootstock that have a variety of influences on the resulting tree. At Hill Creek Farm our M.9 is a dwarfing rootstock. But others can effect the time that trees bear fruit, the size and volume of production, and more.
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scion - The most recent growing season's terminal growth. This growth is cut for grafting onto a rootstock. Nurseries often set aside "scion trees" of each cultivar from which they cut their scions annually for the production of maiden trees.
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seedling - Any apple tree grown from a seed, regardless of its age. The name refers to how it was created, not its youth. Clones are reproductions made without seeds. Clones are identical, while seedlings are a unique.
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self-fertile - Able to reproduce fruit and seeds without cross-pollination. Few apples varieties are self-fertile, but some, notably Golden Delicious, don't require pollen from another variety to fertilize their flowers.
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source tree - The tree from which propagation material is taken.
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sport - See mutation.
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stratify - To keep seeds from germinating in the fall, producing seedlings in winter, apple seeds have evolved to require "stratification." They require a prolonged period of cold before moisture and warmth will germinate them. Growers typically refrigerate seeds to simulate this process.
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stripe - Apples color in two basic patterns, either a blush or a stripe.
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