Hi Everyone,
Here are some photos of the apple that I planted from seed in 2002, which I am calling "Miss Jessamine", after my daughter Jessamine (pronounced jess-a-min). I took some to the All About Fruit Show, and they got a warm reception there. I will bring some scions to the exchange in March.
I don't know apple lingo well enough to describe the taste, but I would say it is more sweet than tart, juicy, firm flesh, with medium thick skin. Color is yellow-green with a blush of pink, and a little russeting on the top by the stem. Flesh is cream colored.
I am guessing it will store well because it ripens late (I picked the last batch today, Nov. 5) and the flesh is pretty firm. I have some in the refrigerator and some in a shed, to find out how long they store in those conditions.
The tree is super healthy, with only minor scabbing here and there. I have two other trees purchased from a nursery, one is somewhat scabby and the other is completely covered with scab, so the tree has definitely been exposed to scab. I do not spray anything on my trees other than a little compost tea 2-3 times a year. The soil is heavy clay, and the tree is crowded in between a pine, a fence, and an incense cedar. I really wish I would have planted it somewhere else, but there was nothing there at the time I planted it. I plan to remove the pine and cut back the cedar to give the apple more space.
I live in Camas, Washington, just across the river from Portland (USDA zone 8b).
If you want to see how it tastes, let me know. I would also appreciate help in properly describing it.
Here are some photos:
"Miss Jessamine". Photo taken Oct. 14, 2012
Oct. 23, 2012
Picked Nov. 5, 2012. Watch included for scale (probably should have used a ruler 
)
Picked Nov. 5, 2012
Picked Nov. 5, 2012
Picked Nov. 5, 2012
Jessamine in front of the tree Oct. 27, 2012
Oct. 23, 2012
From the top of the ladder, looking down. Oct. 23, 2012
It would be an honor to taste your lovely apple. Too bad I missed it at the All About Fruit show. It would have been amusing, but unkind, to take them to the apple ID team and ask them to identify it. I'd love to hear what they'd have said.
Do you know the female parent of your apple (what variety of apple the seed came from)?
I live in the Fern Prairie area.
For your pictures, did you pick out only the nicest looking specimens, or are those pretty representative of the variation on the tree? From the ones shown it looks like you were spared from the dreaded codling moth.
Does this apple seem less to their tastes than your others?
Have you done anything with the apples aside from eating them out of hand?
[quote="jafarj":17ennupc]It would be an honor to taste your lovely apple. Too bad I missed it at the All About Fruit show. It would have been amusing, but unkind, to take them to the apple ID team and ask them to identify it. I'd love to hear what they'd have said.[/quote:17ennupc]
At the show, I first went to the Information table and told them my story. They thought it was tasty and were quite interested in my story. They sent me to the ID team to let them try it & hear the story. The ID team had a camera mounted on stand so they sliced it open & took their reference photos of it, along with my information, which I assume goes into some database. Thanks to this forum I was able to put together an ID card in the same format as all the other apples, and I gave them a bag of the apples so they could put it on the table with all the others.
Do you know the female parent of your apple (what variety of apple the seed came from)?
No, unfortunately I forgot to write it down, or I lost the note, and I don't remember. I do remember that I had never heard of it before. The main differences from the parent that I recall are 1) these have more of a blush to them, 2) the flesh is firmer, 3) the skin is just a bit thicker, 4) I don't remember seeing any russeting.
I live in the Fern Prairie area.
I work at 164th & Mill Plain, let me know if you are going to be down this way and I'll bring some for you.
For your pictures, did you pick out only the nicest looking specimens, or are those pretty representative of the variation on the tree? From the ones shown it looks like you were spared from the dreaded codling moth.
The pictures are representative. The tree produced about 120 apples this year, I think there were maybe 5 that had codling moth damage. My other trees had way more codling moth damage, though a bit less than normal. I did use nylon footies on about 10 of the apples, I couldn't reach the rest.
Does this apple seem less to their tastes than your others?
Definitely. Also way more resistant to scab. One of the guys at the show thought that this may be due to the thicker skin.
Have you done anything with the apples aside from eating them out of hand?
I have dried them, but I haven't tried anything else. What did you have in mind?
That's a very beautiful apple tree you've grown. I have a couple first year seedlings from a Granny Smith apple that I've been considering grafting onto an M-26 rootstock to hopefully improve its manageability and long-term health. But your standard tree (I'm guessing standard because your daughter looks so short in front of it) looks very nice and gives me optimism about letting them grow as standard size trees. I'd love to taste one, but I won't make you ship one to Ohio!
David, It was nice to meet you and chat with you about your fruit breeding project 
Thanks for the sample. I think Miss Jessamine has some real potential. It was better than most of my 25 or so named apple varieties that bore this year and it still had a bit of starchiness. So maybe it will get even better with a little storage or hanging a little longer on the tree.
I look forward to trying one that you've stored for a few weeks.
I'd be most gratified if you'd allow me some scion wood this February so that I can add this new variety to one of my existing trees.
[quote="jafarj":3i4ktn2t]David, It was nice to meet you and chat with you about your fruit breeding project
Thanks for the sample. I think Miss Jessamine has some real potential. It was better than most of my 25 or so named apple varieties that bore this year and it still had a bit of starchiness. So maybe it will get even better with a little storage or hanging a little longer on the tree.
I look forward to trying one that you've stored for a few weeks.
I'd be most gratified if you'd allow me some scion wood this February so that I can add this new variety to one of my existing trees.[/quote:3i4ktn2t]
Will do!
Today I did some pruning and cut a bunch of "Miss Jessamine" scions for the scion exchange. I wrapped them in a couple sheets of slightly damp newspaper, then put them in plastic bags, wrapped them with a few rubber bands, and put them in the refrigerator. I learned the hard way that I should have measured the width of the refrigerator before cutting them i.e. I had to unwrap everything to cut them to fit.
I have a box of the apples in our tree house, and also a bag of them in the refrigerator (picked in October). The ones in the tree house are a little soft on the outside but in the refrigerator they are still nice & hard. I think it gets a little too warm in the tree house to store apples well.
I checked my mason bees cocoons (also stored in the tree house) and found some mold on some of them so I gave them a 20 second bath in a mild bleach solution. I let them dry off then put them back in the insulated container. This is the first time I have tried cleaning my cocoons. Previously I just left them in the reeds but I guess that leads to a build up of parasites (I did find a few parasites during cleaning). Cleaning them is a lot of work, in the future I think I'll just make sure to replace the reeds each year. I actually use teasel stems since those work well and they grow in my yard.
Regarding the scion exchange, I guess I should make a label. Does anyone know what info is on the scion labels?
Hey Dave M,
NIce to meet you in person. What a great apple that is! Still crisp in March,large, still with a subtle, distinctive flavor. Golden color, seemed to not have much bug/disease pressure. Thanks for bringing in the scion. I'm definitely going to try to graft it into my trees.
John S
PDX OR
Nice meeting you too John. Thank you for the kind words. I hope your graft is successful!
At the show I had a scion grafted onto M9 stock so I can have a smaller tree, in addition to the original which is going to get quite big.
One person asked me if I had sprayed the tree, and the answer is no, other than with compost tea a couple of times.
I should have many apples to share this fall. I would love to get some into the mouths of people who can properly describe the flavor.
One of the other seedling trees from the same set of store apples back in 2002 has been really stunted -- but in the last two years it has been sending out big, disease-free branches. This winter I pruned it to one stem and staked it straight, so we'll see what happens with that one. However I know it is very unlikely that it will produce decent apples.
At the fair when I went to place the Red Delicious scions in the Red Delicious bucket, I found that there was no Red Delicious bucket. This was not too surprising since they taste so bad. To me it was sort of a poetic statement that the apple most commonly sold in stores doesn't even warrant inclusion in the biggest scion exchange on the west coast. I suspect that Red Delicious continues to exist because it ships well, not because of its taste. I heard someone remark recently that perhaps the reason many kids don't like fruits and vegetables is because most stores put storability/shipability above flavor when selecting fresh produce to sell. i.e. if as a child you were only given Red Delicious apples, would you like apples?
Dave
[quote="John S":126q7p1s]Hey Dave M,
NIce to meet you in person. What a great apple that is! Still crisp in March,large, still with a subtle, distinctive flavor. Golden color, seemed to not have much bug/disease pressure. Thanks for bringing in the scion. I'm definitely going to try to graft it into my trees.
John S
PDX OR[/quote:126q7p1s]
That's a funny observation about Red Delicious apples and I couldn't agree more. As a kid, I didn't know there were really any apples other than Red and Golden Delicious and Granny Smith. I still think Golden Delicious and Granny Smith have good flavor, but there are so many apples that have far superior flavor to Red Delicious. I've found that i tend to like those with a sweet/tart flavor like English varieties.
I was in the backyard taking some photos. Here is the other seedling tree that I planted the same day as the "Miss Jessamine" tree. It is about 6 feet tall.
For many years it was quite stunted but it has been really healthy the last few years. I wouldn't be surprised if it produces some apples next year.
Here is the "Miss Jessamine" tree for comparison (taken today). It is about 20 feet tall.
Wow, talk about what a difference a seed can make. Were these just 2 seeds from the same apple? I'm growing some seedlings right now also. 2 from a granny smith last year and another 2 or 3 from a gala this year. No idea what the male parent is though. It's a fun thing to do, even with its drawbacks. The 2 from the granny smith appear to be susceptible to powdery mildew. If you feel like taking some more scions, I'd love to see how it grows in Ohio next spring. I'll pay for shipping of course and a little extra for your labor.
[quote="sohoppy":3og49yg5]Wow, talk about what a difference a seed can make. Were these just 2 seeds from the same apple? I'm growing some seedlings right now also. 2 from a granny smith last year and another 2 or 3 from a gala this year. No idea what the male parent is though. It's a fun thing to do, even with its drawbacks. The 2 from the granny smith appear to be susceptible to powdery mildew. If you feel like taking some more scions, I'd love to see how it grows in Ohio next spring. I'll pay for shipping of course and a little extra for your labor.[/quote:3og49yg5]
I don't remember if they were from the same apple. I was fairly clueless about growing apples from seed back then so I did not keep any notes.
I think it would be great if everyone grew a few apples from seed. It seems like some of the seedling trees adapt to their environment more than grafted trees. e.g. they may look stunted & sickly for many years, then all of a sudden they are super healthy and grow quickly. On the other hand I had one seedling (out of 3) which was always stunted and sickly so I cut it down.
I would be happy to send you some scions, just send me your address via private message.
I borrowed a 14' orchard ladder to pick the apples. Even with my 8' pole I cannot reach all the apples, so the tree must be about 25' tall.
I grafted a cutting onto semi-dwarf stock in March, and that tree is 7' tall now.
The apples are not quite fully ripe but a squirrel has decided to take a nibble out of many of them, plus the windy weather is knocking a lot of them down so I am trying to get the rest of them. I had a lot of them drop off in August, perhaps because I didn't give the tree any water?
Rare deep watering is better if you aren't moving the trees and you don't want to have to water them. It is just an adjustment until the tree develops the deep roots that will protect it during the drought time of year. Also mycorrhizal fungi helps that too.
John S
PDX OR
I just wanted to mention that I received my Miss Jessamine scions from Dave a couple weeks ago and I don't think I've seen better packaging from even a professional nursery. I'll be grafting three of them to rootstocks and the others will be grafted onto other established apple trees. I'll post results. Thanks, Dave!
[quote="sohoppy":xslkao4v]I just wanted to mention that I received my Miss Jessamine scions from Dave a couple weeks ago and I don't think I've seen better packaging from even a professional nursery. I'll be grafting three of them to rootstocks and the others will be grafted onto other established apple trees. I'll post results. Thanks, Dave![/quote:xslkao4v]You're welcome! I am curious to hear how Miss Jessamine does in Ohio.
I still have about 100 scions in the refrigerator, in case anyone else wants some.
Hi,
Your wonderful apple was included at the Peninsula Fruit Club show yesterday! They had hundreds of different apples, pears, and other fruit on display, including your Miss Jessamine apple. If I recall, the label said something like, it was a new variety from southwest Washington. Like your pictures, it's really pretty. It was also utterly free from scab. We could get a sample, and the flavor was very nice, too. After following this thread, it was pleasant surprise to meet the apple "in person."
Cheers to you!
katmendeux
Your wonderful apple was included at the Peninsula Fruit Club show yesterday! They had hundreds of different apples, pears, and other fruit on display, including your Miss Jessamine apple. If I recall, the label said something like, it was a new variety from southwest Washington. Like your pictures, it's really pretty. It was also utterly free from scab. We could get a sample, and the flavor was very nice, too. After following this thread, it was pleasant surprise to meet the apple "in person."
That is great! I have sent scions all over the country, this is the first time I have heard something back.
Re: scab, it can get scab but not much. In my yard it also seems to be fairly resistant to codling moth, I think mainly due to the relatively thick skin. But it is not resistant to apple maggot.
I have found that the best flavor and color occurs on apples that get a lot of sun, especially in late summer/early fall.
If anyone wants scions, let me know. I prune it pretty heavily every year.
I also have about a dozen other seedlings in the pipeline. I have grafted most of them already, but my sunniest tree is already heavily grafted and my other trees get some shade so the grafts grow more slowly (i.e. have not yet produced fruit). But the seedlings themselves (still in pots) are starting to really take off. My yard is pretty packed, but this winter I'll find some space to put the seedlings in the ground. I need to keep them around long enough to see if the fruit is decent.
Dave
Hi davem,
I'm glad to see that your 'Miss Jessamine' apple is becoming appreciated. Years ago, I grabbed a stick of scion wood at an HOS gathering in order to try it myself. Sadly, it was a graft that I lost. Thank goodness there are others who can make successful grafts and bring interesting new things to fruition! ...There was one year where I had 90% success rate across all of my grafts in a very broad diversity of varieties. Sadly, the success rate tends to be lower and often depends upon the fluctuations of the weather while the new grafts are "taking".
I hope that at some point I'll get to taste a 'Miss Jessamine" apple for myself. I still mourn the demise of the Home Orchard Society itself. The whole "Covid thing" appears to have been the executioner, given that the major HOS money makers were the scion wood meeting in the late winter, and the irreplaceable, exquisite fruit tastings in the autumn. RIP.
I'm pleased that the HOS Forum itself has survived this long, and I hold out a hope that a larger organization might -- just maybe -- be able to reconstitute at some point in the future. [My wife considers me a pessimist. Here is where I'm a hopeful optimist.]
Reinettes.
I talked to Joanie just before she ended the HOS. She said it was mostly because we couldn't get enough volunteers for the events. There were plenty of members, plenty of people willing to attend the events, and plenty of money. It's just that you can't run the events without volunteers running them. I'm also glad that the HOS exists as an online forum. I do still think I have Miss Jessamine, but it's hiding on the back side of one of my trees.
John S
PDX OR
I also have Miss Jessamine, probably in two of my trees. I think the labels are gone. One of them will probably get taken out since its on a big apple tree that I grafted too high, and is mostly Bramley and Hudson's Golden Gem which haven't been very useful for me. I'm thinking to topwork it with the backup grafts of some new varieties.
Regarding the HOS, my impression is that the lion's share of the work, planning, and responsibility was landing in fewer and fewer and older laps.
jafar said
....Regarding the HOS, my impression is that the lion's share of the work, planning, and responsibility was landing in fewer and fewer and older laps.
What's happened here isn't what's happened in California. I think we had alot to learn from the California chapters and what they are doing. They seem to have a collection of events spread out in the Sunshine State, and one still upcoming in 2 weeks regarding the Golden Gate city San Francisco. I think it should be called Tech city because of all the computer talent there. Through the public relation department (eg. the hos forums equivalent) I just contacted the volunteer head there about a cherry wood exchange between them and myself. I had done the same prior to covid-19 and it worked out then. It's conceivable we are fully functional in a way.
I asked them to contact me about this trade but it's only virus free cherry cultivars I'm interested in passing onto them, which could easily and just as well go to the chapter Joannie is still running here, if only there was a more automated way of filling out a form the way they do. This image is what I asked them. Hopefully this will spur some ideas about how to refine the splash page that preceeds this forum of topics, with a prayer some local talent specialist will donate some improvements here.
I'm glad to see that your 'Miss Jessamine' apple is becoming appreciated. Years ago, I grabbed a stick of scion wood at an HOS gathering in order to try it myself. Sadly, it was a graft that I lost. Thank goodness there are others who can make successful grafts and bring interesting new things to fruition! ...There was one year where I had 90% success rate across all of my grafts in a very broad diversity of varieties. Sadly, the success rate tends to be lower and often depends upon the fluctuations of the weather while the new grafts are "taking".
I hope that at some point I'll get to taste a 'Miss Jessamine" apple for myself.
Thanks for the note! Just last week I sent 75 scions to a commercial grower in Washington who is willing to try growing some, without even tasting one! And of course if you want to try again to graft it, I can send you some. I am finishing my pruning this week, so let me know ASAP. I recently sent some to a guy in Pennsylvania and another in Molalla.
I can relate to losing grafts - last year I got a late start on my grafting and we had some freak hot weather, killing nearly all of them. I'm going to start earlier from now on.
If you're down this way (Camas) in late Sep-Oct-Nov, stop by and I can give you some Miss Jessamine apples. I have it grafted on to two of my trees, plus the original seedling so I get quite a few. Although the original seedling is now shaded all morning (neighboring trees got big) so those apples don't all get fully ripe. Obviously if I would have been thinking 15 years ago I would have put it somewhere else.
I think it is also likely that some of my other seedlings will have fruit for the first time this year. I'll keep you posted on those.
Hi davem,
Thank you very much for the scion offer, but I have a limited number of rootstocks available this year and they all seem to be "earmarked" for several fairly local apples in the region that I'd like to propagate, as well as a couple of my own unique apples that I don't want to lose.
For your 'Miss Jessamine" and "Hey Jack" apples -- both unique -- I'd suggest that you look into sending dormant scions, or summer budwood, to both the national apple germplasm collection in NY as well as the Botner Collection in OR. Worthwhile fruits should be preserved for others to try in the future. Today our fruits and limited choices are ruled by corporations which are more interested in size, their idea of beauty and marketability, and their ability to be held in cold storage for six months until they can be exported to countries in the southern hemisphere as "fresh, ripe fruits in their prime". A sad situation. 
Reinettes.
I'm glad to hear that 'Miss Jessamine' is getting more widely dispersed! Good show!
Reinettes said
For your 'Miss Jessamine" and "Hey Jack" apples -- both unique -- I'd suggest that you look into sending dormant scions, or summer budwood, to both the national apple germplasm collection in NY as well as the Botner Collection in OR. Worthwhile fruits should be preserved for others to try in the future. Today our fruits and limited choices are ruled by corporations which are more interested in size, their idea of beauty and marketability, and their ability to be held in cold storage for six months until they can be exported to countries in the southern hemisphere as "fresh, ripe fruits in their prime". A sad situation.
Joanie (whom I think of as the "queen" of HOS) specifically asked me to bring some Miss Jessamine scions for her to one of the HOS events so she could have them at Almaty Farm. But I have never seen it in their list of varieties so I think maybe the scions got lost. I'll see about reaching out to them next year.
Re: the national apple germplasm, I'm not sure how to go about sending them scions, nor if they would be interested.
I actually have another seedling, planted the same day as Miss Jessamine. Its fruit is nothing special flavor-wise, but completely free of pests and disease. It seems to want to be a dwarf tree which is interesting. Would be interesting to try it as a rootstock, not sure how to do that though. It does tend to throw up some suckers, but so do many of my other rootstocks. It is a very tough tree, last winter it got completely girdled, but that didn't slow it down a bit.
I heard back from Cameron Peace (WSU) on the Miss Jessamine DNA test:
Results are in for your tree!
Miss Jessamine (ADMC-001): Unique, not genetically identical with any named cultivar or any other individual in our current dataset – as expected for a known seedling tree that you raised yourself! Its parents are very likely Golden Delicious and (Red) Delicious.
The GD-RD combination is the most common we detect for one-off seedling trees of the last century, and has produced many delicious-fruited (no pun intended) trees. I even have a big GD-RD tree in my backyard that is strongly flavored and enjoyed!
Well so much for my "unusual variety" memory :-). The unusual one probably just inspired me to try starting whatever was in the refrigerator, i.e. Golden Delicious. I did have about six seeds that I grew into trees. All but two of them really struggled, so I finally put four of them out of their misery, probably including the unusual variety.
But regardless of its "boring" parents, the apple itself is one of my favorites, for the following reasons:
- Good flavor
- More firm/crunchy than Golden Delicious
- Attractive
- Good size
- Very productive
- Disease resistant
- Somewhat pest resistant
And this year I think there is a good chance that I'll get fruit from from my recent batch of 14 seedlings from Opal and Ambrosia.
davem,
It sounds to me like you've got a winner there! A number of introduced apples have that same parentage, but one has to keep in mind the VAST assortment of re-shuffled genes that go into each and every apple ovule, and the potential for something outstanding within that midst. Let's face it: domesticated apples come from a long lineage of complex hybridization and are "bastards", or "mutts", (if you'll pardon my coarse language), given their genetic histories. But amid all of those scrambled gene combinations some just make something especially appealing to humans.
After all, it's all about the individual fruit and its flavor and other pleasant characteristics.
Best wishes, davem. I hope 'Miss Jessamine' gets its appropriate recognition by apple lovers.
Reinettes. 
Reinettes said
davem,It sounds to me like you've got a winner there! A number of introduced apples have that same parentage, but one has to keep in mind the VAST assortment of re-shuffled genes that go into each and every apple ovule, and the potential for something outstanding within that midst. Let's face it: domesticated apples come from a long lineage of complex hybridization and are "bastards", or "mutts", (if you'll pardon my coarse language), given their genetic histories. But amid all of those scrambled gene combinations some just make something especially appealing to humans.
After all, it's all about the individual fruit and its flavor and other pleasant characteristics.
Best wishes, davem. I hope 'Miss Jessamine' gets its appropriate recognition by apple lovers.
Reinettes.
Thank you Reinettes. It is nice to have a tree that doesn't require much babying other than keeping it from becoming giant.
I think I mentioned that I sent some scions to a commercial grower in far northern Washington. Will be interesting to see what they think of it.
katmendeux said
davem,Thank you for keeping us up to date with the news of your apple. It's really interesting. Let's see if I understand this -- you found the seed that grew into a one-in-a-million apple in a grocery store apple? Congratulations, you won the lottery!
kat
I wouldn't say it is one-in-a-million. I think the old adage that you cannot grow a good apple from a handful of seeds is bogus. Two of the trees that I still have from my handful of seeds decades ago are definitely interesting and worth eating, and the Miss Jessamine one is downright tasty, as well as its other positive qualities I mentioned above. And even the less-tasty one (I should probably name that one as well) seems to want to be a dwarf and thus I may try it as a dwarfing rootstock. I do think that only one-in-a-very-large-number apple seedling will meet the requirements of the "corporate machine". But their goals are very different than most of us in this forum.
Being west of the cascades means my trees are exposed to a lot of disease-inducing conditions. Both trees struggled when they were young, then suddenly (many years apart) overcame whatever was ailing them and became super healthy and vigorous, and remain so to this day. Kind of like when a person gets sick and gets better, then they have immunity for life. I don't know if apples can "develop immunity" when they are young, but something like that is what I have observed. Of course not all of my seedlings reached this point, some died on their own and I put others out of their misery.
Here's a recent photo of a Miss Jessamine apple:
And the un-named, dwarf seedling. I would guess this is also a Golden Delicious/Red Delicious child, based on the looks and flavor. The apples are about half the size of a regular grocery store apple. They ripen really late thus it is hard to judge the flavor since I've only eaten them when they weren't fully ripe. Animals usually get them before they fully ripen.
And if indeed this is a child of GD-RD, it reinforces Reinettes point that siblings can have wildly different characteristics.
davem,
Your Miss Jessamine is in good company. Ambrosia, Cameo, Hawaii, Kinsei, Lananer Suessling, and Splendour have all been proven genetically in published work to be crosses of Golden Delicious and Red Delicious.
I have Miss Jessamine, and it does well for me also although it does get anthracnose like everything else in this climate. It’s a tasty apple. Thanks for sharing it at the HOS propagation fairs.
Idyllwild
jafar
Marsha H
Viron
John S
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