Holy Toledo, Dave!

What this suggests to me is that -- even in some "planned" hybridization programs -- people have not been very good about their "controlled" crosses.  Other crosses, perhaps based upon the appearance of the resulting apple, were "speculated" to have a particular parentage.  It's all quite astounding to me in looking at your post.  Controlled hybridization has to be done very conscientiously in order to prevent unintended pollen donors.  ...As I've often told my wife over the last 3 decades:  "Good help is hard to find".  If you want it done properly, you need to do it yourself.  Plant hybridizing is not something that you leave to others....

In the case of those crosses for which records weren't kept, but nevertheless "assumptions" were made about parentage, those guesses are wild ones.  Unlike many other cultivated plants, the numerous characters exhibited in domestic apples are largely polygenic.  Consequently, one cannot expect Mendelian genetics to apply.  ...Dare I say it:  this is one of the things that makes apple hybridization such a challenge and adventure.

It's a bit amusing to me that the chart starts with 'Reinette Franche'.  That cultivar was among the very first few items that I requested from the national germplasm collection, merely because I was trying to acquire the "earliest known" Reinette.  It's interesting that someone, somewhere, is running the DNA profiles for so many apple cultivars.  Of course, the data is only as accurate as the veracity of the clone's identity.  🙂  Far too many varieties have never had a comprehensive, morphological and visual description published.

Nevertheless, this is a very fascinating post and I appreciate your posting it.  Somehow you manage to find all kinds of obscure things online.  I always appreciate it when you share them with "the rest of us" Forumites.

Thanks again!

Tim (Reinettes).

DW,

"I've seen great reviews of Keepsake as a good tasting, long keeper.  Mine ... was a shy bearing, small, scabby ugly apple and flavor not that good."

I've only had one opportunity to taste 'Keepsake' and that was, perhaps, 6 years ago at an HOS Fall Fruit Show (--ah, the memories...).  Given all the hype that I'd heard, I was rather disappointed to find it a rather small, unimpressively-tasting thing.  I'm guessing that its putative value is in its disease resistance, or ...something.  Perhaps, as a parent for further future crosses it's genes may learn to shine!  'Keepsake' itself, as a named variety, may as well have been something that I pulled off the the shoulder of the road to sample in a hedgerow.  

I don't mean to be mean in saying so.  If you and I both tasted the same clone of apple passing as 'Keepsake', then I....  Well.  Let me just leave it there.  I obviously don't know when to shut the heck up and I don't want to offend anyone.

Reinettes.