One of the interesting things about old apple varieties is the sheer number of
alternate names they can accumulate over time. This speaks to their one-time
popularity, and often to the many different regions in which they were grown.
Ortley is a prime example. It originally grew as a seedling tree in the New
Jersey orchard of one Michael Ortley, but was mentioned in 1806 under the name
Jersey Greening by the great Irish-American plantsman Bernard McMahon. A few
years later, in 1817, the redoubtable William Coxe briefly described the apple
under the name Woolman’s Long Pippin. That name was probably a shoutout to
John Woolman, a Quaker preacher and abolitionist who hailed from Coxe’s
hometown of Burlington, New Jersey.
Later on, as the variety became more widely grown, its synonyms picked up
a boatload of other local synonyms. One of the more interesting names is White
Bellflower, which makes some sense because the fruit does look like a somewhat
paler version of Yellow Bellflower—though Ortley’s sprightly flavor doesn’t come
close to the sharp acidity of the latter apple.
In the 1870s Ortley even found its way to Australia and New Zealand, where
it became widely grown, especially on the apple-friendly island of Tasmania. Here,
I presume, some marketing genius decided to rename it ‘Cleopatra’, by which
name it’s still known Down Under. But here in America we have properly
dispensed with such puffery, stripped away the names of undeserving clergymen
and Egyptian queens, and returned the credit to where credit is due—to the
orchardist who first identified and grew the fruit.
S.A. Beach in The Apples of New York considered Ortley to be a very good
dessert apple, though he confessed that the variety was less acidic and better-tasting
when grown in more southern and western regions. He also recommends it as
popular for home orchards, though he cautions that the skin of the fruit can bruise
easily with rough handling, or even sometimes with the swaying and chafing of the
heavily laden branches.