Apple Index - "Calvin to Chimney"

Description: Fruit medium to almost large, roundish to slightly oblong, conical; skin smooth, yellow, darker yellow on the sunny side; dots numerous, small and large, russet, some submerged. Flesh yellowish, not very crisp, somewhat juicy, mild subacid.

History: Said to have been carried from Virginia to Kentucky over a hundred years ago where it was mainly used as a brandy apple.  Lee Calhoun also felt it was an excellent apple for fresh eating. Jim Lawson sold it for years from his nursery in Georgia.

Description: Fruit medium or above, nearly round, slightly conical; skin smooth, dull, yellow, usually with a blush cheek, mottled with green russet and scarfed skin.  Flesh yellowish, fine-textured, firm, juicy, aromatic, scarcely sweet. Ripe late September/October.

History: Originated in Macon County, North Carolina, and rather widely grown in the South before 1900. In 1997 George Barker of Climax, North Carolina, brought Lee Calhoun some unknown sweet apples that he had found in the McMillan orchard near Cana, Virginia. These apples were a match for the picture and written descriptions of Camack’s Sweet, which was listed as extinct in the first edition of Lee’s book.  Mrs. McMillan says these sweet apples have been grown at her old homeplace for many years.

Description: Fruit medium to above medium, roundish to slightly oblate. Skin green, completely covered with dark red on sunny side. Numerous raised white lenticels. Ripe October.

Originated in the Caney Fork area of the Cumberland Mountains in Kentucky. Great cooking apple and an outstanding fresh-eating apple. Fruit is medium to large in size, round, symmetrical with dull yellow skin, mostly covered with a bright red flush and distinctive white dots on the surface. Ripens in early October and is a good keeper.

History: Limbertwig is not a single apple variety but rather a very large family of apples. It is difficult to say what exactly holds this family together—what trait the various kinds of Limbertwigs have in common. One might suppose that a drooping growth habit would be present in all Limbertwigs and, in fact, most kinds of Limbertwigs do have drooping branches.  Mr. Henry Morton of Tennessee said, “Limbertwigs vary in size, shape, color, quality, and tree habit, but they all have one distinguishing characteristic and that is their distinct Limbertwig flavor.

Description courtesy of Big Horse Creek Farm at bighorsecreekfarm.com. 

Description: Fruit medium, roundish conical; skin smooth, greenish with a faint rusty pink blush; dots large, numerous, yellow or gray. Flesh yellow, firm, crisp, aromatic, brisk subacid. Ripe October/November and keeps well.

History: On October 6, 1804, Samuel Bailey listed his nursery stock for sale in a Virginia newspaper. On this list is Cannon Pearmain, making it one of the few southern apples that can be traced back over two hundred years without confusion. Elwood Fisher, professor emeritus of James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia, has gone into the mountains and coves of the Appalachians seeking old apple trees still surviving in their lonely places. After years of searching he found a surviving tree of Cannon Pearmain on Headformes Mountain in Virginia’s Bedford County. He was led to the tree by Bobby Parks, a dairy farmer who grew up near the mountain and who remembered that old Cannon Pearmain tree.

Description: Fruit medium or above, roundish to slightly oblate; skin greenish with a red-blushed cheek covered up to half the apple; dots whitish, numerous. Flesh white, fine-grained, moderately crisp and juicy, aromatic, subacid. Ripe late July/August.

History: Captain Davis of the Confederate Army was discharged at Greensboro, North Carolina, on April 26, 1865. Walking home to Mississippi, he ate some apples “somewhere in the Carolinas” and pocketed the seeds. A tree from one of the seeds grew up on Captain Davis’ farm eight miles north of Kasciusko, Mississippi, and his descendants kept the apple by planting root sprouts. Mississippi apple hunter Jack Herring found a tree at the old Davis homeplace in 2003, and four other trees are growing nearby.

Description: Fruit above medium to large, roundish, slightly conical; skin pale yellow, faintly blushed, and striped with red on the sunny side; dots large and small, dark gray. Ripe late August/September.

History: The Collinsville Nursery of Alabama sold this apple in the 1920s and later, but its origin is unknown. It appears to be different (and better in quality) than several other apples called Pound. The late W. M. Longshore of Anniston, Alabama, worked in the Collinsville Nursery as a young boy and is responsible for saving this excellent apple. He in turn, passed it on to Joyce Neighbors of Gadsden, Alabama.

Description: Fruit above medium to large, sometimes very large, roundish to slightly oblate; skin green or greenish yellow washed with dull red with prominent darker red or purplish broken stripes, covered with a heavy bluish bloom; dots numerous, prominent, white. Flesh yellow or yellowish white, crisp, juicy, aromatic, mild subacid. Ripe late September.

History: Colonel Carter of Mount Meigs Depot, near Montgomery, Alabama, originated this apple in the 1840s. Carter’s Blue was grown widely in the South as a high-flavored apple borne on a vigorous, productive tree.  For many years this fine southern apple was extinct in the United States. Thanks to information from Theodore See of Corvallis, Oregon, a tree of Carter’s Blue was located in the National Fruit Trust in Kent, England. Scions of Carter’s Blue and two other southern apples were imported from England to this country, and the trees are now available.

Description: Said to be a North Carolina apple in an 1860 South Carolina nursery catalog. Described as large, oblate conical; skin light yellow and green with patches of russet; flesh fine-grained, tender, white, aromatic, subacid to almost sweet. Ripe winter.

An apple called Catawba and generally fitting the above description has been found by Tom Brown in Troutdale, Virginia, but it ripens in August.

Possibly the same as an English cooking apple described in England as early as 1688. Cathead was sold by a Georgia nursery in 1851 and Virginia nurseries from 1859 to 1904. In this country, Cathead was first described by Coxe (1817): “This is a very large, round apple, flattened at the ends and deeply hollowed; the stalk is short and thick and so deeply sunk as to be almost imperceptible; the color a greenish yellow; the flesh white; a good apple for cooking and drying but apt to drop from the tree from its great weight; deficient in point of richness and flavour.” Ripe September.

Description: Fruit large to very large, some apples weighing over a pound, roundish; skin light green or yellowish with a red blush and some obscure red stripes, but some apples are almost entirely red; dots scattered, whitish or russet, often areolar. Flesh slightly yellow, crisp, mild subacid. Ripe August/September.

History: A tree, fully grown, was found in 1919 in the yard of John Cauley near Grenada, Mississippi. Three young trees were grafted from Mr. Cauley’s tree by J. W. Willis, who planted them at the Delta Branch Agricultural Experiment Station in Stoneville, Mississippi, where one tree survived the famous 1927 Mississippi River flood. This surviving tree averaged over a ton of apples each year during the 1930s.

Description: Fruit medium or larger, oblong conical; skin smooth, almost covered with crimson stripes; dots few, inconspicuous, white, small, often submerged. Flesh white, tender, juicy, slightly aromatic, subacid. Ripe July/September.

History: Grown since the early 1900s in the western part of Alexander County, North Carolina. One tree, found by Tom Brown, belongs to Lynn St. Clair of Taylorsville, North Carolina.

Description: Fruit medium or larger, oblong conical; skin smooth, almost covered with crimson stripes; dots few, inconspicuous, white, small, often submerged. Flesh white, tender, juicy, slightly aromatic, subacid.

History: Originated in New York or Connecticut before 1850. This beautiful apple, excellent for fresh eating and cooking, ripens in autumn in the North but is a summer apple in the South.  Elwood Fisher of Harrisonburg, Virginia, recorded Chenango Strawberry apples as ripening from July 20 to September 17. He says this was his mother’s favorite dessert apple and makes outstanding applesauce.

Description: Fruit below medium, roundish to slightly oblate; skin light green about half covered with dull, slightly purplish red with indistinct red stripes; dots numerous, large, irregular shaped, tan. Flesh almost white, very juicy, crisp, subacid. Ripe late July/August.

History: In 1987, Lee Calhoun collected a Black Apple from Ernest S. Sellers, a ninety-three-year-old man in Cherryville, North Carolina, which had been in his family for many years. This apple was probably named for Elszy Black, the grandfather of Mr. Sellers.  Lee called this apple “Cherryville Black” and said it was one of his favorite late July apples.

Description: Fruit small, about the size of a ping pong ball. Round-flattened. Skin bronze colored with red stripes, often russeted. Flesh is pale yellowish, firm, fine-grained, crunchy, juicy, sweet, slightly tart.

History: This apple is a cross of Malinda and Siberian Crabapple. Developed at the University of Minnesota and released in 1946. Good for fresh eating and jelly.

Description courtesy of Pomiferous.com.

Description: Fruit medium, roundish, slightly conical, flattened on the ends; skin lumpy, light green, about half covered with a brick-red blush, some apples almost entirely red; dots numerous, some tiny and white, interspersed with larger, rough, protruding whitish dots. Flesh slightly yellow, fine-grained, juicy, moderately crisp, subacid. Ripe August.

History: Callie Ruth Price of Stuart, Virginia, wrote to Lee Calhoun in 1989: “My grandfather, W. Crawford Carter (1858-1945), had an old apple orchard in which his Chimney Apple thrived. He found the original seedling about 1875 growing beside the chimney of an abandoned cabin, hence the name. His son, J. Eldrin Carter, of Patrick Springs, Virginia, has some of these trees today, and the fruit is a very popular one in our area.”  Mr. Carter told Lee that before World War II, he loaded a railroad car with barrels of Chimney Apples each August for shipment to market. In the late 1920s and early 1930s he would fill an old school bus with Chimney Apples and peddle them on the streets of Danville, Virginia, and Durham and Burlington, North Carolina, where they sold well.