Actually, apple varieties are preserved via grafting. If you take an apple seed, the tree that will grow from it only has 50% of the DNA of the tree that made the apple. So there is absolutely no guarantee that the taste was preserved across generations.
Apple grafting is incredibly easy and cheap. All you need is a bit of knowledge, a utility knife, cheap flagging tape and ordinary waterproof wood glue. Planning to procure scions and watching for the bark slip is necessary - usually right around when buds start to break. My first graft was successful. Now I graft all the time. Peaches were a problem for me until I learned that they must be grafted after blossoms drop - usually later than ideal apple grafting time.
Apples do not grow true from seed, you get a new variety unless you clone.
It blows my mind how many apple varieties (“cultivars”) exist.
Spoiler: over 7,000!
Yeah, the other number wasn’t even close. I don’t think you’d even be able to fit that many on earth in the solar system galaxy.
Sorry, I’m confused by these comments. I typed “7,000”. In the US, that translates as “seven thousand”. What is wrong with that?
Guy from the maths problem
I can only imagine how many useful genes that saves.
