May news 2016
Blossom time is here again. This is Beauty of Kent, photo taken last year in our garden. Apologies, there are no names with the pictures in the Blossom Gallery, in the meantime please just enjoy the pictures, Can you spot the odd one out? there is one picture of pear blossom - all the rest are apples.
March news 2016
CUTLER GRIEVE
I have just been sent an email from Scotland suggesting that I have spelt Cutler Grieve wrongly and it should be Culter Grieve. This is how it is spelt locally in the area around a village called Culter - look online, it is a beautiful area. I double checked in all my reference books and there is definitely an apple called Cutler Grieve which agrees with my description although the painting I did does not show the red colour that finally develops. This is because the painting was done and photos taken at the end of September and was a little early for the colour to have developed. (I tended to have apples available then to paint and photo as Apple Day here on the IOW was late September) But is there another apple with this name? an apple distinct from the one I have on this website?
The earliest reference I have to Cutler Grieve is in H V Taylor's book The Apples of England which was printed in 1936, only 12 years after the apple was introduced in 1924. The description tallies with the description in Martin Crawford's Directory of Apples and Joan Morgan's New Book of Apples so I feel this is the apple I sampled and recorded. Deacons tell me they had the scion wood from Bob Bucket of Brighstone on the Isle of Wight (see entry under IOW Apple people and places on this website). So is the apple in Scotland a different apple? PLEASE EMAIL AND TELL ME IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION. I WOULD REALLY LIKE TO KNOW and so would Peter in Scotland who sent me the original query.
For interest here is the description in 1936 from H.V. Taylor in The Apples of England
'One of Mr James Grieve's seedlings, and introduced by Mr James Storrie, who sent trees to the National Fruit Trials in 1924. Is now listed by a number of nursery firms. Skin golden-yellow, carrying a bright scarlet flush in which are seen streaks and stripes of a deeper colour; medium size (2 1/2ins x 2ins), perfectly round, slightly conical. A very handsome apple, though the skin is apt to be greasy. The brilliant colour is the chief asset. Eye closed in a shallow basin, the sided of which are much puckered. Stem thin and long in a russetted cavity, deep but narrow. Flesh white, hard texture and juicy; flavour not too pleasing. Season November to December.'
