The word “pippin” is featured in many older apple variety names. It’s a general
term, indicating only that the apple grew from a planted seed (“pip”) and that it
was not originally propagated vegetatively by grafting (i.e., cloning) from the parent
tree. The other two analogous terms for a seed-grown variety are “kernel” (e.g.,
Ashmead’s Kernel) and “seedling” (Bramley’s Seedling, etc.).
So far so good. But, if you think about it, there are an incalculable number
of apples that could be called “pippins.” Every time a feral (or for that matter a
cultivated) apple tree drops its fruit on the ground, often to be eaten and excreted
somewhere else, each of its seeds can produce a genetically unique offspring, since
apple trees cross-pollinate so readily through the agency of bees or other insects.
Most of the young trees that grow from these seeds never become a recognized
variety with an official name. Yet they are all legitimate “seedling” apples.
Imagine my surprise, then, the first time I visited my apple-growing, cider-
making friends, the Sheltons, down in Virginia’s beautiful Albemarle County, some
20 years ago as I’m writing this profile. They were referring to one particular
heirloom apple simply as “Pippin.” And I wondered what made this particular
apple—historically and culturally linked to the Virginia Piedmont—so singular and
so valuable that its reputation outshone the country’s almost infinite number of
other pippins.
As it turns out, though much is known about the famous Newtown Pippin,
its story is more complicated than one might expect. For one thing, the very name
is different depending on which strain of the apple you’re talking about: there’s a
Green Newtown Pippin and a Yellow Newtown Pippin. Meanwhile, in the Mid-
Atlantic states, the name given to the yellow strain grown there is usually
Albemarle Pippin. The green and yellow strains have been differentiated since at
least 1810, when William Booth offered both types for sale in his Baltimore
nursery. In 1817 William Coxe, the great American fruit author, heaped effusive
praise on both the yellow and green types. Of the “Large Yellow Newtown Pippin”
he writes: “This is in most of its varieties the finest apple of our country, and
probably of the world.”
Let’s go back even further, though, to a seedling tree discovered growing
sometime around 1720 on the estate of Gershon Moore in the village of Newtown,
New York, now located in the Elmhurst neighborhood of Queens. (My old friend
Tom Burford has even suggested that the seed might have come from England
along with the first Moore to settle in Newtown, around 1666.) Thus, Newtown
Pippin originated in what is today part of New York City. In fact, in the early
2000s hundreds of trees of this native New Yorker were planted on public lands by
the city parks department, as well as by Slow Food NYC and other private
organizations. The original Newtown tree died in 1805 as a result of overcutting by
zealous admirers wanting to propagate the variety. But long before that time the
apple’s reputation had spread, both in this country and even abroad. In 1759
Benjamin Franklin received a shipment of the fruit while he was living in London,
and cuttings were imported as well, though the apple never really grew as well in
England as it did in America.