Today in the orchard
1760 Dantziger Kantenapfel
Lumpy Red from Harpswell
I went to Brunswick to give an afternoon talk at the Curtis Memorial Library. I rarely get asked to give late winter/spring talks. This one was fun and well-attended. Several friends who I hadn’t seen in some time where there. I grafted a Black Oxford tree on the spot and was able to avoid doing damage to my fingers or the library carpet. After the presentation we tasted apples from our rootcellar, including Frostbite, Roxbury Russet, Black Oxford, Ashmead’s Kernal and Hudson’s Golden Gem. All are still very tasty. One of the attendees told me about another Kavanagh tree Freeport that I hadn’t known about.
Later Alyssa Gravlik and I went down the Harpswell Neck peninsula to collect scions from the Dantziger Kantenapful tree, an apple that Roberto McIntyre introduced to me long ago. He called it Lumpy Red (an apt name). I was able to make a tentative ID using the 1760 Pomologia by Johann Hermann Knoop. Another highlight of our Harpswell tour was a stop at the amazing Baldwin tree that Roberto also introduced to me. That’s the tree from which our Baldwin scionwood comes.
