Rhode Island Greening

When most Americans today shop for a cooking apple, especially one for pie

baking, they automatically think Granny Smith. That’s understandable, because

Granny Smith is so widely grown and so ubiquitous in our supermarkets. It’s often

the only tart cooking apple available, surrounded by a lot of crisp, sweet modern

eating varieties. Granny is an heirloom variety that originated in New South

Wales, Australia in the mid-1800s. Yet there is another, all-American pie apple

with a much longer history—two centuries longer. And here’s the secret most

people don’t know: The flavor of Rhode Island Greening, whether as a tart eating

or cooking apple, kicks Granny Smith’s ass, in my humble opinion.

As to its origins, Rhode Island Greening hails from the state we New

Englanders like to call “Little Rhody,” specifically from the village of Green’s End,

near Newport. It dates back to at least 1650, which gives it the distinction of being

one of the two oldest American apple varieties; the other, Roxbury Russet, is

usually said to have been discovered around 1647 or 1649. But honestly, when

we’re talking about two 375-year-old apples, does a year or two really make much

difference?

From the outset, Rhode Island Greening was wildly popular. As the story

goes, the original tree died because so many people took scions (cuttings) from it to

graft and grow themselves. This wide dispersal made Rhode Island Greening one

of the premier varieties in the northeastern U.S. for centuries, along with the

Baldwin apple. A few years ago, I even came across an apple industry nod to the

Greening as a minor commercial apple today, but one that was still being grown in

certain parts of the country, mainly for processing. That didn’t surprise me, since

the apple slices do hold their shape well in baking or cooking.

One of the wonderful but probably apocryphal stories associated with this

apple concerns Roger Williams, the first colonial governor of Rhode Island, who

lived there in the 1600s, when the Greening was a mere youth. (As an aside, more

people should go look up Roger Williams’ history, as he was one of the first great

American free-thinkers. He was banished from Massachusetts for his religious

heterodoxy and his at the time radical belief that all people, not just white settlers,

were created equal.) The story was that Williams, and perhaps his wife too, were

buried beneath a Rhode Island Greening tree at his home. When 19th.-century

archeologists dug up the site, they did discover a skeleton and what they said was a

suspiciously human-shaped root system. No greater love hath a man than feeding

his favorite apple tree, I suppose. (Not to spoil a ripping good yarn, but I have seen

old photos of this supposed “man-root” and I’m unconvinced by the looks of it.)