3/3/12 (Saturday)

I am still in the chapter 1 of “The botany of desire”. I am a bit too slow, because I have been working on my part of a collaborative proposal with a professor at  ______ University. I did not have much chance to absorb what I have read, but I want to write down what I have learned so far.

1.     Apple species is native to Kazakhstan, and wild apples over there produce small and bitter fruits. The Silk Road once passed through the wild apple forests in Kazakhstan. When merchants travelled along the Silk Road, they picked up good ones, ate them, and dropped the seeds along the way to Europe. Eventually Europeans started growing them. Finally, apples were brought to the New World by the European immigrants.

2.     Apples are reproduced by cross-pollination, which means that each seed contains a different set of genes, and therefore will be different from the apple tree it comes from.  So we generally propagate apple trees by grafting – an asexual reproduction, in order to retain the desirable genetic traits.

3.     Apples were primarily used to make apple ciders via fermentation before Prohibition.  Because apples were small and bitter, and were not very attractive fruits. Only after Prohibition, due to the development of many new apple varieties that are sweet and pretty, people start eating whole apples. Especially the marketing slogan “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” really made apples popular fruits.