Apple blossom

“ Within these natural walls, clustered in the golden profusion of that favored clime, are often seen extensive groves of orange and pine apple, whose perennial verdure is ever relieved and blended with the fragrant blossom—loading the air with its perfume, till the sense almost aches with its sweetness—and the luscious fruit, chasing each other in unfading beauty and inexhaustible fecundity, through an unbroken round of summers, that know neither spring time, nor decay. ”

“ Apple-Blossom in Apple
Cut the apple into thin slices from side to side through the core. Take one of the slices from near the middle of the apple and hold it up to the light, so that the light will shine through it, then look carefully and you will see in the centre a perfect pattern of the apple-blossom you gathered from the tree (Fig. 212) . Apple-seeds form the centre of the flower. The petals, five in number, are of the flesh of the fruit. They are of the same shape and size as the real blossom. ”

“ Whipp babbled about your attentions. I don't want you to break the apple blossoms anyway."
"All right, honey, I won't. They're nearly gone; but I shall always love apple blossoms. They're fragrant like her spirit, pink and white like her, wholesome like her, modest like her. You see she has always been kept in the background. No one has taken the bloom from her freshness. She has had blows, has come in contact with some of the world's mud, but it washed away and disappeared under her own purity."
Mrs. Barry looked into the speaker's flashing eyes. ”

“ How much the apple blossom looks like the wild rose. It has five pink petals set in a rosette. It has a little forest of pollen hairs, too. When the petals fall the seed case swells and closes at the top and leaves, at the flower end, five little dry, brown sepals. The leaves of the apple tree are furry on the under side, the bark of the tree is smooth and bright, and the wild apples—the hawthorns andcrabapples have thorns. The apple tree is a very near cousin of the rose, nearer, very likely, than the strawberry. ”

“ The Apple-blossom is considered to be an emblem of preference. To dream of Apples betokens long life, success in trade, and a lover’s faithfulness.
APPLE OF SODOM.—The Solanum Sodomeum is a purple Egg-plant of which the fruit is naturally large and handsome. It is, however, subject to the attacks of an insect (a species of Cynips) , which punctures the rind, and converts the interior of the fruit into a substance like ashes, while the outside remains fair and beautiful. ”

“ Apple-blossoms died quietly in the deep orchard-grass, and tiny apples waxed and rounded and ripened and gained stripes of gold and carmine; and the blue eggs broke into young robins, that grew from gaping, yellow-mouthed youth to fledged and outflying maturity. Came autumn, with its long Indian summer, and winter, with its flinty, sparkling snows, under which all Nature lay a sealed and beautiful corpse. Came once more the spring winds, the lengthening days, the opening flowers, and the ever-renewing miracle of buds and blossoms on the apple-trees around the cottage. ”

“ The codling moth egg hatches shortly after the bloom falls, and the little worm instinctively goes into the blossom end of the apple, because that is the only place it can enter the apple at that particular time. Just why it does not enter on the side of the apple I can not say, but there is a little fuzz on the outer side of the apple at that stage of growth that perhaps prevents their getting in, and that fuzz as the apple grows larger disappears, so a little later they can enter on the side or at any other part of the apple that they choose. ”

“ Now and then one finds a double apple, with two fruits grown solidly together, two blossom ends and a single stem. A seedling tree I knew as a boy bore such apples frequently, sometimes a score of them among the crop of the year. This, of course, is a malformation or teratological state. Apparently two flowers coalesce to form these fruits. On the tree of which I speak, the two fruits were about equal in size, making a large, widened, edible apple, but I have known of other cases in which a diminutive undeveloped fruit is attached to the side of a normal one. ”

“ Judging from last season, we [Pg 281] expect a large crop of fine fruit from them next September, as well as a great quantity of new plants.
Apples are in a very satisfactory condition. I need to say but little about varieties. All kinds of bearing size bloomed full, and most kinds have set full of fruit. Of such kinds as Okabena, Duchess and Wealthy, it looks as though practically every blossom turned into an apple.
We received several seedling apple trees from Mr. Chas. Haralson, of the State Fruit-Breeding Farm. They were all set out, and all are growing. ”

“ It is fortunate for us all that the wild creatures are doing what man will not and it may be that their planting will some day give us so beautiful and well flavored a wild apple that we too shall be moved to plant and the country blossom with orchards once more. All the best varieties were thus seedlings originally and have been perpetuated by transferring their buds to the limbs of less valued stock. ”

“ And now Apple blossoms are coming on in rosy swift succession. How beautiful they are! and is it not time that water-colour artists should cease to weary, by attempting so vainly to pourtray them? (This only by the way.) They have the merit of lasting just long enough for us to enjoy them well; yet beautiful as they are, I do not know if they can ever quite compare with the frail short-lived cherry. If the Espaliers in the kitchen garden alongside the middle walk would but flower together all at once, that walk in May would be better than [Pg 123] any picture-gallery. ”

“ These may all be planted.
"The next signal to watch for is given by the blooming of the apple trees. This is the planting time for the more tender seed. These need a temperature of about 60 degrees in the shade, real apple-blooming time. Corn, beans, egg plant, melon, squash, cucumber, pumpkin, tomato and pepper seeds may be planted.
"But when is the time to put out the hotbed, or indoor-started seedlings? When the apple blossoms drop their petals and have passed by is the signal for them to go into the ground. ”

“ Our orchard is fast ripening; and the apples and great thumping pears strew the grass in such abundance that it becomes almost a trouble—though a pleasant one—to gather them. This happy breeze, too, shakes them down, as if it flung fruit to us out of the sky; and often, when the air is perfectly still, I hear the quiet fall of a great apple. ”

“ For so life's most deep and fruitful hours are hid in mystery. Apples are growing on every tree; all Summer long they grow, and in early Autumn. At length the fruit is fully formed; the leaves begin to fall, letting the sun approach more near. The apple hangs there yet; not to grow, only to ripen. Weeks long it clings to the tree; it gains nothing in size and weight. Externally, there is increase of beauty. Having finished the form from within, Nature brings out the added grace of colour. ”

“ Round the windows the Vines are yellowing, with green fruit ripening fast. These are unusually sweet for outdoor Grapes, and have yielded a fair wine in their time. Large green Apples (Reinette du Canada) , in the walled garden, are nearly as beautiful as the trees of Blenheim Orange which are reddening in the orchard.
Very pleasant and Arcadian in the mellow autumn sunshine are these days of Apple gathering! There is no undue haste; the man on the ladder up in the tree leisurely fills his basket. Baskets, half full of fruit, stand near, upon the leaf-strewn grass. ”

“ “The nightingale appear’d the first,
“And as her melody she sang,
“The apple into blossom burst,
“To life the grass and violets sprang. ”

“ Each year, when the cuckoo came calling in the spring, there was no finer sight in all the world than the Apple Tree. So thick was it with blossoms that scarce a branch or twig could be seen. Its fragrance floated on the breeze, drawing every bee and butterfly for leagues and leagues about. Surely with such a tree I might look for a bounteous harvest, one would think. But, alas! No sooner was the Apple Tree thus decked like a bride than my wicked enemy, the North Wind, would come and blow these blossoms far away. ”

“ The apple grows mild and pleasant. It softens, sweetens; in one word, it mellows. Some night, the vital forces of the tree get drowsy, and the Autumn, with gentle breath, just shakes the bough; the expectant fruit lets go its hold, full-grown, full ripe, full coloured too, and with plump and happy sound the apple falls into the Autumn's lap; and the Spring's marriage promise is complete. ”

“ The flowers of the apple are perhaps the most beautiful of any tree’s, so copious and so delicious to both sight and scent. The walker is frequently tempted to turn and linger near some more than usually handsome one, whose blossoms are two thirds expanded. How superior it is in these respects to the pear, whose blossoms are neither colored nor fragrant!
By the middle of July, green apples are so large as to remind us of coddling, and of the autumn. The sward is commonly strewed with little ones which fall still-born, as it were,—Nature thus thinning them for us. ”

“ AN OLD APPLE TREE Beyond the meadow, perhaps half a mile from my window, stands an old apple tree, the last of an ancient line that once marked the boundary between the “upper” and the “lower” pastures. It is a bent, broken, hoary old tree, grizzled with suckers from feet to crown. No one has pruned it for half a century; no one ever gathers its gnarly apples—no one but the cattle who love to lie in its shadow and munch its fruit. ”

“ What care I for Iduna’s apples so long as I can get these?
When I go by this shrub thus late and hardy, and see its dangling fruit, I respect the tree, and I am grateful for Nature’s bounty, even though I cannot eat it. Here on this rugged and woody hillside has grown an apple-tree, not planted by man, no relic of a former orchard, but a natural growth, like the pines and oaks. Most fruits which we prize and use depend entirely on our care. Corn and grain, potatoes, peaches, melons, etc., depend altogether on our planting; but the apple emulates man’s independence and enterprise. ”

“ We are so accustomed to the apple-tree as a part of an orchard, where it is trimmed into shape and its bolder irregularities controlled, that we do not think it has beauty when left to itself to grow as it will. An apple-tree that takes its own course, as does a pine-tree or an oak, is looked on as unkempt and unprofitable and as a sorry object in the landscape, advertizing the neglect of the owner. Yet if the apple-tree had never borne good fruit, we should plant it for its bloom and its picturesqueness as we plant a hawthorn or a locust-tree. ”

“ Though withered, they still cling to the boughs. But finally a day comes in the autumn when suddenly the air is full of falling foliage. It takes a long time for the apple to reach its growth, but a very brief time suffices for the ripening. ”

“ We see, too, at times, fields heavy with harvest, and often the apple trees in bloom and the cuckoo calling among them,—indeed, the sweet scent of apple gardens, like the keenness of the winds of spring, beautiful as are the phrases that present them, become almost stock phrases. ”

“ But I have not spoken enough of one notable feature of the every-day apple tree that we may see without a journey to the East. The fully set fruiting branch of an apple tree in health and vigor, properly nurtured and protected against fungous disease by modern "spraying," is a thing of beauty in its form and color. See those deep red Baldwins shine overhead in the frosty air of early fall; note the elegance of form and striping on the leathery-skinned Ben Davis; appreciate true apples of gold set in green enamel on a tree of the sunny Bellefleur! ”

“ This is a curious and uncommon shrub that one rarely sees outside the walls of a botanic garden. The flowers are dark purple or chocolate brown, fully 2 inches across, and succeeded by a yellow, oblong, pulpy fruit, that is relished by the natives, and from which the name of North American Custard Apple has been derived. In this country it is quite at home, growing around London to quite 12 feet in height, but it wants a warm, dry soil, and sunny sheltered situation. As a wall plant it does well. ”

“ Even its bark and its gnarly trunk will hold converse with me, and its first tiny leaves of the budding spring will herald me a welcome. Once again I shall be a youth with the apple-tree, but feeling more than the turbulent affection of transient youth can understand. Life does not seem regular and established when there is no apple-tree in the yard and about the buildings, no orchards blooming in the May and laden in the September, no baskets heaped with the crisp smooth fruits ”

“ The winter apple-tree in the free is a reassuring object. It has none of the sleekness of many horticultural forms, nor the fragility of peaches, sour cherries and plums. It stands boldly against the sky, with its elbows at all angles and its scaly bark holding the snow. Against evergreens [Pg 14] it shows its ruggedness specially well. It presents forms to attract the artist. Even when gnarly and broken, it does not convey an impression of decrepitude and decay but rather of a hardy old character bearing his burdens. In every winter landscape I look instinctively for the apple-tree. ”