Apple Tree

The apple tree is a small to medium-sized fruit tree that grows in cool parts of the world. Its scientific name is Malus domestica. A full-grown apple tree usually stands 15 to 30 feet tall, about as tall as a two-story house. Apple trees grow in North America, Europe, and Asia, and farmers grow them in orchards on every continent except Antarctica.

Wild apple trees first grew in the mountains of Kazakhstan, in central Asia. Traders carried apple seeds west along the Silk Road thousands of years ago. The Romans loved apples and helped spread them across Europe. European settlers later brought apple seeds to North America in the 1600s.

In spring, apple trees burst into pink and white blossoms. These flowers are the start of every apple. Bees and other insects fly from flower to flower, carrying pollen as they go. When pollen from one tree lands on the flower of another tree, the flower can grow into a fruit. Without bees, almost no apples would form. By late summer or fall, the small green bumps grow into ripe apples.

Each apple holds five to ten brown seeds in its core. But here is something strange. If you plant a seed from a Honeycrisp apple, the tree that grows will not make Honeycrisp apples. The new tree might make small, sour, ugly apples instead. Apple seeds rarely grow up to match the parent. To get the same apple every time, growers use grafting. They cut a branch from a tree they like and tape it onto the roots of another tree, where it grows as part of the new tree.

There are more than 7,500 kinds of apples in the world. They come in red, green, yellow, pink, and even almost-black. Some are sweet, some are sour, and some taste like honey or spice. In the United States alone, farmers grow more than 200 kinds. Most of the apples sold in stores, though, are just a handful of popular types like Gala, Fuji, and Granny Smith.

Apple trees usually live for about 50 to 80 years, but some live much longer. The oldest known apple tree in the United States was planted in New York in 1647 and still grew apples until 2020. People love apples enough that the fruit shows up in stories everywhere, from Greek myths to fairy tales like Snow White. The saying "an apple a day keeps the doctor away" started in Wales in the 1860s.