Old Southern Apples

Old Southern Apples is a delightful and definitive review of the history and uses of apples in the South from Maryland to Texas and Florida to Arkansas. Although apples became a major commercial crop in parts of the South in the late 1800s, for three hundred years southern farm families grew apples as an important, year-round food source. Through the selection and grafting of wild seedlings, Southerners developed unique apple varieties adapted to the climate and soils of the South and suited to specific uses such as drying, cider, apple butter and winter keeping. It is truly astonishing to learn that Southerners developed more than 1300 apple varieties and grew another 300 varieties of northern and European origins.

Old Southern Apples opens with an overview of apple history, culture, and uses in the agrarian South. This is followed by an exhaustive compilation of apple varieties grown in the South before 1928. The more than 1600 varieties are divided into extant and extinct groups, and all known facts concerning the history and description of each apple are given, plus a listing of synonyms.

Appendices include a bibliography, a description of nurseries, which sell old southern apple varieties, and an index of more than 3,600 apple names and synonyms. Forty-eight color plates painted by United States Department of Agriculture staff artists between 1880 and 1930 illustrate important varieties of southern apples. Old engravings and drawings illustrate apple cultivation and propagation practices in the South.