May 2021 - 33

U.S. APPLE
The A, Bee, and Cs of apple pollination are crucial
TRACY GRONDINE
Vice President,
Communications
USApple
tgrondine@usapple.org
Happy spring! To celebrate the
season, USApple in mid-March planted
three apple trees outside of the USDA
building, adjacent to the National Mall
in Washington, D.C., as part of the Farm
Journal Foundation Voice of the Farmer
Garden. A huge thank you goes to Phil
and John Paul Baugher of Adams County
Nursery Inc. in Pennsylvania for donating
the Crimson Crisp and RubyRush apple
trees and equipment, and for helping
to plant them. Also, a big shout out to
Old Town Cidery's Philip Glaize III for
his onsite, mad planting skills. The next
time you're in D.C., be sure to check out
USApple's mini orchard!
Let's give it up for the bees! It's that
time of year again. Bees are hard at work
pollinating the nation's 295,000 acres
of apple orchards, including USApple's
mini orchard on the National Mall in
Washington, D.C.
It was in full bloom in mid-April. It
takes a lot of busy bees to pollinate the
blossoms on all those trees and produce
more than 27 billion apples every year
(enough to circle the Earth 41 times!).
Each flower is a potential apple if
pollinated. So, in that cluster of five
flowers (the king is in the middle) there
is the potential for five apples. Most
apples are self-sterile, meaning unlike
many major crops, they cannot pollinate
themselves. That's why bees and other
pollinators are necessary. (Thank you,
pollinators!) The Golden Delicious variety
is one that is self-fertile, but it still benefits
Apple plantings take shape near the National
Mall in Washington, D.C. Photos: U.S. Apple
Association
from insect pollination. Think about the
short window when apple trees are in
bloom. There are hundreds of blossoms
on a mature tree, all waiting to be visited
by a bee. And up to tens of thousands of
trees in the orchard. So, there is a good
reason for the maxim " busy as a bee. "
In a commercial orchard, the grower
would like to keep only one or two of the
five apples in each cluster to assure that
the apple gets all the " food " it needs from
the tree to grow to the ideal size. That's
what you have heard of as " thinning "
- removing all but one apple or so per
cluster so that the remaining apple will
grow to a larger size. If you left all of
them, the tree would equally allocate
resources (water, nutrients, energy from
the sun) and they'd stay too small.
Apple trees as we grow them consist
of two separate plants - the root, or
" rootstock, " and the tree, or " scion, "
that is grafted onto the rootstock to
make the complete apple tree. That tree
is considered the " mother. " And since
the apple tree is the mother, it oversees
the apple growth and development
and will produce a true-to-type apple.
This means if the apple tree is the
variety Honeycrisp, it will produce only
Honeycrisp fruit.
That is, fertilization will not change the
fruit. It will change the genetic code of the
seeds inside the Honeycrisp apple. Pollen
Jim Bair, far right, president and CEO of the U.S. Apple Association, joins other staff and
volunteers to establish a new apple planting in USApple's mini orchard in Washington, D.C.
" male " from other apples or crabapples
will create fertilization. Each apple's
genetics are 50% mother and 50% male.
Every apple holds 10 seeds. If you
take those 10 seeds from one apple
and plant them - and assuming all are
pollinated - you could have 10 different
apple trees, but all the same mother. If
you take the beginning cluster of five
flowers and multiply it by 10 seeds each
you could theoretically have 50 different
apple trees. You can see how over the
millennia Mother Nature has created
thousands of varieties of apples. In fact,
the research orchard at Cornell University
has more than 7,000 varieties!
So, thank you to the bees for making it
all possible! FGN
Volunteers work to plant Crimson Crisp and RubyRush apple trees, left. At right, Jessa Allen,
vice president of membership and events for the U.S. Apple Association, digs a hole for the
tree planting.
ROETERS FARM EQUIPMENT, INC.
565 - 120th Street, Grant, Michigan 49327
Phone (231) 834-7888 * Fax (231) 834-8655
Email: roeters.eq@att.net
www.roetersfarmequipment.com
FGN | MAY 2021 | 33

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May 2021

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