Pioneer-era apple types thought extinct found in US West

> Many apples grow readily from seeds. However, more than with most perennial fruits, apples must be propagated asexually by grafting to obtain the sweetness and other desirable characteristics of the parent. This is because seedling apples are an example of "extreme heterozygotes", in that rather than inheriting genes from their parents to create a new apple with parental characteristics, they are instead significantly different from their parents, perhaps to compete with the many pests. ...

> Because apples do not breed true when planted as seeds, grafting is generally used to produce new apple trees

That means that if you plant the seeds from a Gala apple, you are almost certainly not going to get an apple tree which produces Gala apples.

Not only that, but they are likely not going to be tasty. The folk story about Johnny Appleseed is that he planted apple seeds wherever he went (Wikipedia says he actually planted nurseries). If someone had done that, it would have been apples for pigs, and for hard cider.

They're great for making pie or jam or such things. Homemade Apple crumble(crisp, I dunno whatever same shit...both good) is probably one of the best things next to homemade strawberry rhubarb pie, but either way, they're a far cry even from Granny Smith apples which, I enjoy, but as far as I know, most people use for baking.

We get so focused on 'the BEST', that's how we wind up with a monocrop of banana clones, or the inedible (but pretty) Washington Delicious, etc.

Wheat was once cultivated as far north as Maine, where cold-hardy varieties were developed in order to lengthen the growing season and allow local farmers to supply the state's bakeries in what would otherwise be an inhospitable climate to more productive, but less hardy varieties of wheat grown in warmer areas further south. However, once the railroads reached Maine in the 19th century and were able to bring cheaper grain to market, farmers stopped growing wheat and the varieties grown then are now completely lost. Many northern homesteaders would love to have that seed today but it's gone.

Another example I heard from a woman who specializes in selling heirloom tomato seeds and starts. By the way, in contrast to apples, which do not produce identical offspring from seeds, tomatoes do. If you plant apples, expect the unexpected. But if you plant tomatoes, you'll get pretty much the same thing you started with. The tomato grower showed me a delicious variety that was discovered when a schoolboy arrived at school with a tomato and told his teacher "My grandfather says this tomato is special. But he's dying and he doesn't want it to be lost." It turns out that his family had brought over a variety of tomato from Italy as immigrants and had cultivated it for generations. Its quality was the reason it was almost lost forever - so good they kept it their own special secret until time almost ran out.

Nope. Cider varieties fell out of favor because cider fell out of favor, and most don't taste very good for eating. But heritage eating apples fell out of favor because they do not ship well, or don't grow well in synthetically fertilized dirt, or due to marketing. Most heritage varieties of eating apples taste WAY better than bland crap like honeycrisp. Red delicious were the most produced apple for many years even though basically nobody likes them. Because they look very appealing, and they are very durable so they can be handled roughly and shipped all over. Try a Cox's Orange Pippin and you'll never be able to eat grocery store apples again.

There was a long, long period in which resistance to rough handling during shipping and long storage was far more important than taste. To some degree, that's still true, although we're in much better shape with respect to tasty fruit and vegetables than people were even as recently as the 1980s.

For decades, just about the only type of tomato you could get in a standard grocery store was the aptly-named "Red Rock" variety. Farmers markets and specialty stores sometimes offered a better selection in rural and large urban areas, but for most of the country it was either Red Rock or grow them yourself.

1. apple not capitalized 2. use of word pioneer

although the domain being appnews.com did make me question my reasoning.