Historic Hood River
Big Tree
7-15-2022
Notes
At first glance I thought this was a maple sugaring image, but it’s just a farmer showing off his really old apple tree. Modern day orchards stick with semi-drawf stock. I know those are easier to harvest, and it’s probably easier to keep up with whatever variety is fetching top dollar. But every once in a while you find a big tree like this at an old farmhouse or homestead site. There is a good network of people who hunt down old trees with heirloom apples that might represent a long lost variety.
nels
That's an amazing apple tree . Must be a wild variety to be that old. Didn't know they could grow that large. Would love to hear from orchrdists.
kmb
I have to play the skeptic here…is there something in this image that proves this is an apple tree? Or something outside the cropped image? I have never seen an old apple tree that large or with bark like that.
nels
I tried to pick out a leaf or two, but not clear. Looks like a compound leaf to me.
Jeffrey Bryant
It doesn’t look like an apple tree to me either. On the Marsh place on Brookside my father had some of the first Newtown trees planted in the valley. They were large, but nothing like the tree in the picture.
ArthurB
I don't have any definitive proof, but the leaves on the suckers look like apple leaves to me, and the bark looks like the bark on this 1826 apple tree: http://historichoodriver.com/index.php?showimage=2521.
nels
I .wonder if the OSU Ag Station would throw in their 2 cents worth?