Apples

This board holds the pictures gathered for Apples, one of the books in James Lantos's Pictorial America series of illustrated histories. They trace one of the most familiar fruits in the country back through its orchards, harvests and advertising.

The apple is not native to America. Colonists brought seeds and cuttings from Europe in the 1600s, and orchards soon became part of every farm. Most early apples were not eaten fresh. An apple tree grown from seed produces fruit that differs from its parent and is often sour, so most of the crop went to cider. Hard cider was one of the most common drinks in early America, for adults and often for children.

John Chapman, remembered as Johnny Appleseed, fits into this story. In the early 1800s he planted apple nurseries across Ohio and Indiana, ahead of the settlers, and sold the young trees when they arrived. His apples were mostly cider apples. The legend made him a gentle wanderer, and the real man was also a shrewd businessman.

To get a dependable eating apple, growers had to graft cuttings from a good tree onto new rootstock. That is how named varieties spread. Over the 1800s Americans grew thousands of them, from the Baldwin to the McIntosh. Later the Red Delicious, which began as a chance seedling on an Iowa farm, became the best-selling apple in the country for much of the 20th century. When the temperance movement turned against alcohol, growers promoted apples as a healthy fresh fruit instead of a drink.

The pictures show orchards in bloom, pickers on tall wooden ladders, barrels and crates being loaded at the farm, and cider presses at work. Look at the colorful labels from apple crates, mostly from the Northwest. Growers in Washington and Oregon competed for buyers in faraway markets, and the labels had to catch the eye of a grocer across a crowded warehouse.