Tree
'Bramley's Seedling' apple trees are large, vigorous, spreading and long-lived. They tolerate some shade. The apples are very large, two or three times the weight of a typical dessert apple such as a Granny Smith. They are flat with a vivid green skin which becomes red on the side which receives direct sunlight. The tree is resistant to apple scab and mildew and does best when grown as a standard in somewhat heavy clay soil. It is a heavy and regular bearer, and as a triploid, it has sterile pollen. It needs a pollenizer but cannot pollenize in return, so it is normally grown with two other varieties of apple for pollination. It has won many awards and currently holds the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit (H4).
Most of the stock of 'Bramley's Seedling' commercially available is slightly different in its growth habit and other characteristics from the original tree, probably because of a chance mutation (or mutations) that occurred unnoticed over the years. Plants produced from the still-surviving (then 180-year-old) tree by tissue culture in 1990 have proved to be much more compact and free-branching than the widely-available commercial stock. The cloning work was done by scientists at the University of Nottingham, because the original tree was suffering from old age and was under attack by honey fungus. Twelve of the cloned trees now grow in the University grounds; one was also planted beside the old tree at Southwell.
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Famous quotes containing the word tree:
“Every tree sends its fibres forth in search of the Wild. The cities import it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“the scythers, Time and Death,
Helmed locusts, move upon the tree of breath;”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)