Pomiferous: The most extensive apples (pommes) database
pomiferous.com
pomiferous.com
I run a nonprofit group that maintains a similar but different database, ours focuses on identification of heritage varieties, I.e. apples that existed pre WWII. We're in the PNW so we also have catalogs of where they were sold to make their way to us, etc, as we identify trees in old orchards.
I've learned some interesting stuff along the way, like that English varieties keep showing up in eastern Washington because English nurseries shipped to Vancouver in the late 1800s.
Our apple database is here: https://heritageapplecorps.org/varieties/
Our nonprofit has a fairly extensive list of trees we catalog and maintain on both public and private land. Here's the public trees: https://heritageapplecorps.org/index.php/All_Trees
But our mission is really heritage trees, which we loosely define as pre-WWII. We do work with landowners to get their trees DNA tested and identified if they're interested. But despite maintaining the encyclopedia I linked in the other comment, we're a small group of volunteers (~6 people) and are mainly focused on a specific geographic region.
I used to work for some growers on various bits of custom systems and some of those fruit names were their big sellers.
https://www.seriouseats.com/how-honeycrisp-apples-went-from-...
Rather, think about all the apples picked that don't meet grocery-store grading. One little bird peck and you're applesauce... ok maybe not exactly.
But the biggest (most vapid) apples go to the store aisle and the little ones (for whatever reason) go to Snack Bags. By the time you see 'em, apples have been graded and picked over to maximize sticker price.
Oddly, for a small grower, the fruits which don't make the cash-crop fresh-eatin' apple cut, might become higher-margin products like cider, jam, pie filling.
It's REALLY hard as an amateur to grow a grocery-store-perfect apple. (I made a lot of applesauce and canned pie filling.)
Consumers want the same fruit all year round even though growing fruit(or any plant/vegetable) is very region & season specific.
Growers are big cargo cultists when they see a particular crop getting attention they all rush in. The past 5 years has seen record planting of avocado crops in Australia that now the growers either rip them out or have to sell the farm.
Just enjoy a delicious tasty snack in the appropriate season, and if it’s not on the shelf when you go to the shop then find another in season delicious tasty snack.
the apples that are so far gone with worm/larva frass I called "deer apples". Because I could make a pile and the deer would take them. I've also seen deer "climb" trees to get apples.
https://www.specialtyproduce.com/
(also no affiliation)
Apples have not, and I think that's great.
Is this because other fruit varietals are generally not significantly different? Is there some special sauce behind apple distribution?
Sorry, couldn't resist.
The site is caught in something of a bind as to its name. "Pomiferous" isn't correctly formed; it means "fruit-bearing", because Latin pomum refers to all fruit equally.
The word for an apple is malum. But in an English-speaking context, that will tend to confuse people over similarity to the word for evil, which is... malum [compare "malevolent"]. (In Latin, the word for "apple" has a long A, while the word for "evil" has a short A, but this is not a distinction we can draw in English.)
-logy is a Greek-derived suffix and you'd want a Greek root. For apples, the ancient Greek word appears to be "melon", so your word would be "melology".
I hear 'pom' as coming to English through French, so that works for me.
Now technically "pome fruit" is the fruits from Rosaceae that encase the multiple seeds, so maybe that site ought to cover Pears, too?
(my Swiss-method apple manual did cover pears.)
I first looked up -ferous (to hand: Eric Partridge, Origins) and noticed the Latin root fer (ferent) is cognate to English 'bear'?
Next, a web site for Belgian Fries enthusiasts: "pommesfritefer.us"!
Seriously, thanks for your comment.
Yes, we have fer ⟷ bear just like we have frater ⟷ brother.
Watch out, those forests are ursusferous.
I wonder if there is a way to report issues. We have several apple trees of different varieties, and as I was playing around with the harvest period calculator, I entered the peak harvest of one of our later ripening varieties, and asked it to calculate the harvest time for our earliest ripening variety. It told me that peak harvest would be in December. It's actually (as the description for the variety notes) in June/July. So either there is an issue in the harvest period for that variety, or else the calculator is messing up somehow.
I use this site for many years: https://www.orangepippin.com
"Slightly hotter than a Jalapeno" means very little when a Jalapeno is anywhere from 3,000 scoville to 60,000 scoville.
https://pepperscale.com/hot-pepper-list/
I feel like I remember using another one much more similar to your site a while back but I can't seem to find it. But pepperscale is really cool and has individual profiles for cultivars
All of those you mentioned can be grown in Europe, except bananas that are shipped from South America and arrive in good condition despite the long travel. Many other tropical fruits may be too fragile or expensive to transport at scale.
I remember reading an article about banana import and it's a surprisingly complex process involving a lot of R&D to get to where we are today.
apples have spread from Kazakhstan in their thousands of varieties adapted to climates from cool to frigid (the original liked the slopes of a breezy river valley.)
So since the colonies in North America, you could easily have an apple grove. If you were fancy, you bought imported cultivars from Stark Bros, see Thos Jefferson.
In the United States, the #1 beverage until Coca-Cola was apple cider. Lots of factors there.
It's kinda like saying "why is France so focused on wine?" Or California! But if you go to California, it's apricots, almonds, peaches plums pears persimmon blackberry blueberry boysenberry which have all got shorter shelf-life and season.
It's really quite unfortunate because the overabundance of apples and oranges means that nobody cares about the local seasonal fruits and they risk going extinct.