A very good variety for culinary purposes; but chiefly used as a cider apple in Somersetshire, where it is much grown for that purpose.
Fruit, large, three inches and a quarter wide, and two inches and a half high; obtuse-ovate, broad and flattened at the base, narrowing towards the eye, with five prominent ribs on the sides, and in every respect, very much resembling a small specimen of Emperor Alexander. Skin, smooth, pale straw-yellow, marked with faint broken patches of crimson, on the shaded side; but streaked with yellow and bright crimson, on the side next the sun. Eye, open, with short, stunted segments, placed in a deep, angular, and plaited basin. Stalk, short, imbedded in a round, funnel-shaped cavity. Flesh, yellowish, soft, and tender, transparent, sweet, and briskly flavored, but rather dry.
An apple of very ordinary quality, in use from October to March.
IDENTIFICATION.--Pom. Heref. t. 23. Lind. Guide, 111. Down. Fr. Amer. 146.
Fruit, small, and nearly globular. Eye, small, with short connivent segments of the calyx. Stalk, short. Skin, of a bright gold color, tinged with faint and deeper red on the sunny side. The fruit grows a good deal in clusters, on slender wing branches.
This remarkable apple was raised by Mr. Knight from the seed of the Yellow Siberian Crab, impregnated with the pollen of the Golden Harvey. I cannot do better than transcribe from the Transactions of the London Horticultural Society, Mr. Knight’s own account of this apple. “The fruit contains much saccharine matter, with scarcely any perceptible acid; and it in consequence affords a cider, which is perfectly free from the harshness which in that liquid offends the palate of many, and the constitution of more; and I believe that there is not any county in England in which it might not be made to afford, at a moderate price, a very wholesome and very palatable cider. This fruit differs from all others of its species with which I am acquainted, in being always sweet, and without acidity, even when it is more than half grown.
“When the juice is pressed from ripe, and somewhat mellow fruit, it contains a very large portion of saccharine matter; and if a part of the water it contains be made to evaporate in a moderately low temperature, it affords a large quantity of a jelly of intense sweetness, which to my palate is extremely agreeable; and which may be employed for purposes similiar to those to which the inspissated juice of the grape is applied in France. The jelly of the apple prepared in the manner above described, is, I believe, capable of being kept unchanged during a very long period in any climate; the mucilage being preserved by the antiseptic powers of the saccharine matter, and that being incapable of acquiring, as sugar does, a state of crystallization. If the juice be properly filtered, the jelly will be perfectly transparent.”