The sight of a Malus Sieversii must be awe inspiring;.
growing to a height of sixty feet and throwing off each fall a cornucopia of odd, applelike fruits ranging in size from marbles to softballs, in color from yellow and green to red and purple. I've tried to imagine what May in such a forest must look- and smell!-like, or October, with the forest floor a nubby carpet of reds and golds and greens (Pollan, 11).
These forests are the birthplace of the modern domesticated apple. This mammoth tree carries all of the traits that make the apple the unique fruit that it is. This one fruit from the mountains of Kazakhstan ended up taking journeys that would lead it to every corner of the world. .
The mountains of Kazakhstan, luckily enough, lie in the middle of the silk route between Europe and Asia. This location was very important for the apple's introduction to Europe. Travelers on the silk route would routinely pick the fruit of these trees for sustenance along their trip, thus carrying them back to their homes in Europe. "Along the way seeds were dropped, wildlings sprouted, and Malus hybridized freely with related species eventually producing millions of novel apples types throughout Asia and Europe" (Pollan, 11). Of these new apples growing in the wild most would not have yielded good tasting fruit, but the apples could be used for ciders. Enterprising Europeans enjoyed the fruit from Kazakhstan so much that they attempted to plant the seeds and grow their own apple trees. Their first harvest would teach them an interesting fact about apples.
The trees grown from the Malus seeds bore no resemblance to their parent; much to the dismay of their growers the fruit was unpalatable. This was due to a remarkable trait that the apple carried with it known as Heterozygosity. This trait allowed each apple to produce a different and sometimes new tree from its seed. Human beings share a similar trait in their own genetics that allows them to differ greatly from their parents.
