Apples: A Silk Road Story

The wild ancestor of the domesticated apple, Malus domestica, is Malus sierversii, a species that grows in the mountains of Kazakhstan. Many travelers along the ancient Silk Road passed through the forests of Kazakhstan, which were filled in certain places with apple trees that reached heights of up to sixty feet. They probably picked and carried the fruit with them on their journeys.

The ancient Greeks and Romans were the first people to domesticate the apple. Pliny the Elder, (a Roman nobleman and historian who died in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D.) wrote that the Romans cultivated twenty-three different varieties of apple. They brought some of these varieties with them when they invaded England, including the tiny Lady apple, which is still available in supermarkets at Christmastime.

Apples strongly exhibit the biological characteristic of heterozygosity. Each wild apple (Malus sierversii) contains approximately 5 seeds, each of which contains the genetic instructions for a distinctly different apple tree. Each tree will bear fruits that look and taste very different from those on the other trees, ranging in size from ping-pong balls to softballs and ranging in color from yellow to purple. The same is true of the domestic apple, Malus domestica. Apples planted from seeds will express a wide variety of traits and bear little resemblance to the parent apple.