dymock red

Dymock Red is a famous historic English bittersharp cider apple which dates from the mid 1600’s. Charles Martell describes it as being a “cider..[and] eating apple…[with] quality on par with the Kingston Black…” Recent DNA work has revealed that there are two similar apples—half-sibs—that have both been called Dymock Red. They share a important unidentified parent (currently called Unknown Founder 30). It is unclear which of the two Dymock Reds (if either) is the true Dymock Red. Maybe they both are! In 2013 I imported from John Teiser what is now being called DR2 (or Dymock Red 2). That apple (TH47928A2-6a) received final release from APHIS in 2024, and we grafted it into our Finley Lane test orchard in 2024 where it is currently growing.

In an email discussion about the apple in January, 2025, Nick Howard wrote, “I have this genotypic profile in my database named "Dymock Red (1)" with the genotypic profile of John's [Teiser] sample named "Dymock Red (2)". Neither of these has any offspring in the database and I haven't identified any parents for them. Both accessions of 'Dymock Red' are half-siblings, with their shared unknown parent being an offspring of what I've named as "Unknown Founder 30", which is an ungenotyped, unknown but imputed parent of some old cultivars from England including 'Cherry Pearmain', 'Cowarne Red', 'Eggleton Styre', 'Frederick', 'Longvilles Kernel', 'Merchant Apple', 'Red Styre', 'Redstreak', and 'Skyrmes Kernel'. 'Reinette Franche', the prolific mega founder, is also a close ancestor of both 'Dymock Red' profiles - possibly as a great-grandparent of Dymock Red (2).”