Apples have some of wildest biology that I've seen as a non-professional biologist. At many genes, they carry two different alleles instead of two matching ones. They're almost all self-incompatible. A Honeycrisp flower cannot pollinate a Honeycrisp flower.
This means that you can't breed them in the traditional sense that we do with other plants. Outside of Granny Smith apples the ones you eat are mostly the results of mutations in the grown plants that we cut off and graft.
masklinn 1 days ago [-]
Heterozygosity and self-incompatibility are common to fruit trees in general, not specific to apples.
I think ancestral citruses (not the crosses) are the primary exception, as well as a few citrus hybrids which create clone seeds asexually.
> Outside of Granny Smith apples the ones you eat are mostly the results of mutations in the grown plants that we cut off and graft.
Honeycrisp is a chance seedling, though it stems from a horticultural crossbreeding effort it was grown from seed. And commercially useful sport mutations tend to come from popular chance seedlings to start with, since it is necessarily a more limited evolution of the basal cultivar, which needs to exist and in sufficient quantity that you’ll roll out useful mutations eventually (also useful is in the eye of the beholder as we can see with the red so-called delicious).
Tomte 1 days ago [-]
The coolest thing about some apple cultivars is how their story is "someone found an apple tree at the side of a road with tasty apples", and people kept grafting them to this day. Boskoop, for example.
masklinn 24 hours ago [-]
Getting to that is one of the reasons why people would kinda just grow apple seeds all over.
Plus they were not completely wasted, while not generally edible they’re fine for cider.
biotinker 15 hours ago [-]
> Outside of Granny Smith apples the ones you eat are mostly the results of mutations in the grown plants that we cut off and graft.
Not sure where you're located, but this isn't true in the US. The vast majority of apples available here are seedlings of crosses by two other varieties. Examples:
Golden Delicious, one parent is Grimes Golden, the other unknown.
Fuji, Red Delicious × Ralls Janet
Gala, Kidd's Orange Red × Golden Delicious
There are certainly some sports (the technical term for for the spontaneous mutations) like you mention. Royal Gala, available in NZ, is a sport of Gala. But most are not.
An enormous amount of industry effort goes into crossing known varieties, growing the seedlings, and looking for the apples with the best traits. Cosmic Crisp is a great example of a recent one.
jmartrican 15 hours ago [-]
Oh wow you may have just answered a question I been having. I planted some apple trees in my backyard. The AI helping me suggested 3 trees, one of which was a crab-apple tree that it said will be used to pollinate the other two. Maybe it lied to me. But i did follow its instructions. I was wondering why the other two (Honeycrisp and another delicious variety) could not just pollinate each other.
biotinker 15 hours ago [-]
The GP comment is overstating the genetic differences and pollination difficulties. Most apples are not self-fertile. Pairing pollinators together has more to do with bloom times; some trees bloom earlier/later than others and trees need to have flowers out simultaneously.
Why is the headline written in a magical realism style in an article about the analysis of the apple tree? "Solved mystery of ancient tree"? "Rewrote the history of fruit"? Like okay, it's cool but it's not Game of Thrones
dmos62 24 hours ago [-]
An excuse to say "apple detectives"? Choice of words drew me in, and I'm happy it did. This is quirky news; it's making a bit of geekery interesting to distracted geeks, like me.
altmanaltman 23 hours ago [-]
The subject is interesting and I am not doubting that. The story is interesting as well.
But the headline is just weird, especially for an outlet like that. Why do we need to resort to goofy theatrics to attract people to science (interesting in itself) is the problem I have. Same reason why I detest people who genuinely think Kip Thorne's most famous work is Interstellar.
dmos62 23 hours ago [-]
There's definitely something to be said about not trying to spin stories into something more. And, I'm usually on the other side of the barricade in these discussions. But, when I'm reading about apples, it's me being goofy, so it's nice when the author is tailoring for that. I would absolutely hate it if the same was done when writing about something I care about in a "real" way, for the lack of a better term.
pholypilz 22 hours ago [-]
[dead]
petesergeant 24 hours ago [-]
I mean "someone sent in an apple they found and it turns out to be an ancestor of most of other apples" supports 3 ad spots max.
amelius 1 days ago [-]
It's the Reality Distortion Field™.
Best known from The Bible, Steve Jobs, Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler.
Slightly more than half of the population is susceptible.
jhbggjnjih 19 hours ago [-]
> Best known from The Bible, Steve Jobs, Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler.
You did not just put these 4 things/people together in a single sentence. Tell me you didn’t. Please.
Christ HN is turning into reddit.
amelius 18 hours ago [-]
The old reddit, I hope.
bythreads 1 days ago [-]
Thinking gucci is gucci
HSO 23 hours ago [-]
first thought on reading the headline was: huh these apple guys have interesting hobbies
22 hours ago [-]
Honali 1 days ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 09:09:28 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
This means that you can't breed them in the traditional sense that we do with other plants. Outside of Granny Smith apples the ones you eat are mostly the results of mutations in the grown plants that we cut off and graft.
I think ancestral citruses (not the crosses) are the primary exception, as well as a few citrus hybrids which create clone seeds asexually.
> Outside of Granny Smith apples the ones you eat are mostly the results of mutations in the grown plants that we cut off and graft.
Honeycrisp is a chance seedling, though it stems from a horticultural crossbreeding effort it was grown from seed. And commercially useful sport mutations tend to come from popular chance seedlings to start with, since it is necessarily a more limited evolution of the basal cultivar, which needs to exist and in sufficient quantity that you’ll roll out useful mutations eventually (also useful is in the eye of the beholder as we can see with the red so-called delicious).
Plus they were not completely wasted, while not generally edible they’re fine for cider.
Not sure where you're located, but this isn't true in the US. The vast majority of apples available here are seedlings of crosses by two other varieties. Examples:
Golden Delicious, one parent is Grimes Golden, the other unknown.
Fuji, Red Delicious × Ralls Janet
Gala, Kidd's Orange Red × Golden Delicious
There are certainly some sports (the technical term for for the spontaneous mutations) like you mention. Royal Gala, available in NZ, is a sport of Gala. But most are not.
An enormous amount of industry effort goes into crossing known varieties, growing the seedlings, and looking for the apples with the best traits. Cosmic Crisp is a great example of a recent one.
Here's some more reading:
https://www.cumminsnursery.com/learn-trees/fruit-tree-bloom-...
https://www.cumminsnursery.com/learn-trees/fruit-tree-pollin...
https://www.mainepublic.org/maine/2025-06-02/on-verona-islan...
But the headline is just weird, especially for an outlet like that. Why do we need to resort to goofy theatrics to attract people to science (interesting in itself) is the problem I have. Same reason why I detest people who genuinely think Kip Thorne's most famous work is Interstellar.
Best known from The Bible, Steve Jobs, Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler.
Slightly more than half of the population is susceptible.
You did not just put these 4 things/people together in a single sentence. Tell me you didn’t. Please.
Christ HN is turning into reddit.