TODAY IN THE ORCHARD
While I was doing apple ID’s and descriptions and making compost, the crew packed week #4 of the CSA. One of the apples we offered this week was Ananas Reinette. The fruit came from Scott Farm in Dummerston, VT. Here’s some information I put together about the apple:
This is an amazingly distinct and beautiful apple. The fruit is conic to oblong conic and electric yellow-green, sometimes blushed with golden, deep school-bus-yellow. It’s prominently dotted with green or russet freckles. The size is about 2 1/4 - 2 1/2" (5.5 cm - 6.5 cm). The stem short to almost medium and thin. The cavity shallow to very shallow and typically greenish or sometimes russetted. The basin is shallow to very shallow, wavy and wrinkled.
Ananas rhymes with “Sha Na Na,” the rock ’n roll revival band of the late 1960’s and ’70’s (the “s” is silent.) Reinette is pronounced “Rye-net.” The apple is also known as Pineapple Reinette, Goldapfel, Kindbetter or Ananas. The full French name roughly translates to “Royal Pineapple” or “Pineapple Princess.” Ananas Reinette is thought to have originated in France or perhaps the Netherlands, somewhere between 200 and 500 years ago. Recent DNA profiling has shown it to be a cross between two very old varieties, Golden Harvey and Unknown Founder #1 (UF#1). Golden Harvey is an old dessert and cider apple, and a child of an even older French variety, Reinette Franche. Unknown Founder #1 is a very old—and as yet unidentified—European variety that shows up in the ancestry of many modern apples. Given its parentage, Ananas is likely several hundred years old, possibly dating to the 16th century.
It’s difficult to determine when Ananas first appeared in the United States. Dan Bussey includes a December 8, 1900 watercolor of the apple painted by Deborah Passmore in The Illustrated History of Apples in the US and Canada. The specimen for that painting was grown in Austria, exhibited at the 1900 Paris Exposition, and then sent to Washington, DC where the watercolor was painted. The famous California plant breeder Albert Etter (1872-1950) trialed Ananas and used it in his breeding so we know it was in the States by the early 1900’s. Etter’s Katharine apple, named for his wife, may be a cross between Ananas and the old New York apple Wagener. The modern European varieties Freiherr von Berlepsch and Roter Ananas are also children of Ananas.
