Johnny Appleseeds

I've always been fascinated with the tale of Johnny Appleseed travelling across america feeding fruit to the west through cunning horticulture. If you pay attention to British verges whilst travelling by car you can see evidence of a similar effect.



This lovely stunted little apple was right next to a set of traffic lights on a busy road. It almost certainly started life as a core thrown from a car possibly by a snacking kid in the back seat. Whilst we do have a wild malus in the uk the high incidence of apples by road sides is indicative that a high proportion of these are core-grown fruit. Wild crab apples have very small fruit and whilst growing an apple from a seed is a bad idea if you want good fruit for your garden the roadside trees often have larger fruit (one I know has absolutely huge fruit) closer in size to what you would buy in a grocers. The taste may well not be as sweet as commercial varieties however; some taste horrible.

Normally I'm against litter but in the case of a biodegradable item with such a beautiful result I can't complain about this!