Some Interesting Apples & Wilding Mother Orchard

42 Wilding Apples of The Camborne & Redruth Mining Landscape. A composite photograph of apples commissioned along with an essay on the same by @applesandpeople . For article go to the linktree in @williamlawrencearnold profile. Extract. "Pioneers The domestic apple growing wild on its own roots is an escapee, a neophyte non-native often germinating on waste ground and wayside where cores are casually tossed. Two of the biggest populations found during this project have been on the dune system of a popular holiday park at Par Sands and throughout the complex of former tramways turned recreational heritage paths of the Camborne & Redruth UNESCO World Heritage mining landscape. The latter location has an extraordinary population ranging from the crabbiest pippins on tractor flayed bushes to elegant orb-like specimens, grocer’s display ready despite the parent tree receiving no attention at all. The idea that all these apples, representing such huge diversity of colour, shape, and flavour, were the descendants of those eaten by the ordinary men and women who worked this hugely damaged and polluted but recovering landscape was irresistibly romantic. " I expected that I would find numerous records in the major archival store of Cornish historical documents at Kresen Kernow of local orchards supplying the mining communities but other than a few entries from the court records of those poor unfortunates caught and punished for scrumping, apple pickings were slim. To be fair, I was disabused of my notion that populations of wilding apples would bear any great resemblance to those grown historically in a given area early on in the ‘Some Interesting Apples’ project when I began my research photographing to scale all the apples of Cornish heritage orchards that I could access. While some genetic traits must be inherited, to the casual observer the apples of the hedgerow generally defy categorisation other than the odd supermarket Golden Delicious that hasn’t fallen too far from the tree. To continue reading see link in profile linktree. Apples collected 2020 and 2021 #apples #wildapples #biodiversity

Meet the team! Caitlin/William/James It’s been great to see a lot of interest in our wild apple research project since the release of @elenaheatherwick 's very sweet film for @ffern.co There are three of us behind the project these days… Caitlin - @ofthewoods1971 “I’m a cultural geographer at the University of Exeter, but these days I’m working on living up to my surname and becoming as much ‘of the woods’ as ‘of the books’. My neighbours and I tend an overgrown woodland garden in Constantine, Cornwall, and my allotment plot over the creek is home to a venerable Ben’s Red, a chance seedling of Devonshire Quarrenden.” William - @williamlawrencearnold “I have been fascinated by these trees for as long as I can remember, hooked on the narrative of the discarded core, seemingly against the odds germinating seeds by the side of the road to create wonderful free fruit. I’m an experimental, conceptual and documentary photographer, interested in the layers of human and natural history that comprise the making of the landscape. I teach on the natural history photography degree course at Falmouth University.” James - @vagrant.cider and @vagrantspomona “Raised in the commercial orchards of the Kent/Sussex borders but now based in Cornwall, I have been exploring cider and Perry making through my fledgling company, Vagrant Cider, working as an orchard consultant and running breeding/selection programmes. Always in search of true M. sylv. “ Image credit: William Dax /SWNN

The astonishing plasticity of Malus. Up at the Wilding Mother Orchard today removing the tape from the first 21 trees from our project. These are macro photographs of the union between scion and rootstock - viewed on a desktop they'll probably be larger than life size. Very F. Percy Smith. If you don't know who that is then treat yourself to a world of 1920s time-lapse photography on YouTube. Many of the scions from the wild seedling trees are extremely skinny so the grafts we use tend to be cleft-style - William #apples #grafts #graftscars #someinterestingapples

Skinny scions / hard graft. I know it might be hard to persuade you after that artisanal fragrance collaboration but we’re actually quite a dour bunch. The umbrella was an entirely non-whimsical necessity to collect the straggliest of cuttings for one of last year’s highest rated fruit. Out of morbid curiosity, I clicked the AI rewrite button - see last pic. We are DOOMED 100%.

Back to the graft. Surprisingly good scion wood on last year’s champion ///debating.gurgled.brisk. We are often dealing with the most minimal of new growth. It is also interesting to see all those aerial root burrs. This seems to be quite common on these damp coastal trees that layer themselves close to the ground. It would probably take on its own new roots from a hardwood cutting. ‘Pitchers’ is a regional dialect term for apples that do this - presumably one pitches it in the ground and off it goes.

///fearfully.notifying.positions - Up on Carn Brea while the car was in for its MOT visiting some especially rugged favourites. Not because they're nice. They're all rough as rats but they live up here on acid granite air.

Meeting up in a pub car park on a Sunday afternoon to taste apples out a car boot! Not wild apples but brand new commercially bred varieties kindly sent to us by @keepersnursery . We haven’t found anything quite this sweet in the hedgerow as yet. Some real sugar bombs in this collection!

New podcast episode out! 🍎 It was a joy to spend the day with @someinterestingapples at their tasting trials at @kestle_barton , Cornwall. Some Interesting Apples gathered a group of apple experts, artists and academics to select wild-grown, chance-seedling apples for the Wilding Mother Orchard. In this episode, we hear about how each apple tree grown from seed produces a new variety, and how this may produce unique, delicious and climate-resilient apples for the future. You can listen to this Found Sounds episode of @ffern.co ’s podcast ‘As the Season Turns’ wherever you get your podcasts Podcast episode made with production support from Catriona Bolt (@catreeona_ ) 🎥 Film by @nickwhit____ 🎵 The music is the instrumental for my song ‘Heart ii’ with @jacobnorrisss With thanks to @williamlawrencearnold , @james.fergusson , Caitlin DeSilvey & the panel for welcoming me & Nick!

Early promise… We’ve been holding the Some Interesting Apples wild seedling apple taste trials at @kestle_barton since 2020 when William put on a little show of apples and photography and we convened a group of six (only five showed-up) in a well-ventilated spot in that plague autumn to taste everything gathered by William, James and a few other enthusiasts with more than the usual amount of time on their hands. The top three were ///ghosts.taxpayers.given, a candy-sour veteran wilding from Chacewater ///cherish.immediate.looms, a real Snow White sweet, dense and crunchy specimen from a bus stop on the A390, and ///irritate.ahead.lays, a beautiful partially russetted pomme from a farmland hedge in Nancekuke, also known as Nancekuke Non-pareil before James had the bright idea of just using the w3w coordinates for names. In the spring of 2020, literally the week before lockdown and long before we had the Wilding Mother Orchard, James and William planted the rootstocks for two trees at Kestle Barton. The Good Apple tree for all the good apples and the Bad Apple tree for all of the difficult ones. These trees are now bearing fruit of several different varieties! The thing is, some of the ‘bad apples’ are also good apples. It all depends on the context. An apple perfect for cider will often be a challenging apple eaten out of hand and the same goes for the cookers… and what about those tiny Cornish pickling apples, or simply the tree that exists 600ft up the region’s highest hill on the thinnest acid granite soil and still fruits every year. After much discussion we’ve formulated a plan as a team to graft the top three highly rated apples from each year’s taste trial into the Wilding Mother Orchard plus two ‘SIA choice’. In that way we’ll have a fair representation of the preferred taste in dessert apples, but cider will be represented and also simple hard-core ruggedness – we are trying to propagate survivors for whatever climactic horrors lie ahead! Images: ///ghosts.taxpayers.given, ///cherish.immediate.looms, ///irritate.ahead.lays, BAD APPLE tree at Kestle Barton, William & James planting the GOOD APPLE tree, 2020. Image credit @williamlawrencearnold

Some Interesting Apples 🍎🌳🍏 You thought you knew apples - allow us to disillusion you. We’re delighted to present Ffern’s film, directed by Elena Heatherwick, made with William Arnold and James Fergusson at Some Interesting Apples - a Cornish project that celebrates the wild genetics of this most unassuming fruit. If you find any interesting apples yourself, do reach out to the team - find them here at @someinterestingapples or by searching for them online. And if you’d like to try our orchard inspired fragrance, please join our waiting list in bio or message [email protected] 🍎🍎🍎 Credits: Directed by Elena Heatherwick @elenaheatherwick Produced by Ffern and Pal Studios @pal__studios Executive Producer: Angus Dunsire @angus_dunsire Creative Director: Emily Cameron Producer: Bronte Markwick @brontemarkwick Set Designer: Clarisse D’Arcimoles @mckinlochstudio Costumer Designer: Frank Gallacher @frankgallacher DOP, Lee Burnett @leeburnett_ 1st AC: Joe Gubb @joegubb_focus_puller Gaffer John Crooks @crookseycam Sound Operator: Quillon Larratt @quillonlarratt Editor: Boris Hallvig Set Assistant: Jess Morris @jessmorrisis Driver/ Runner: Cris Barrios Sound Mixer: Will Berridge @willberridgesound Colourist: Caroline Morin @kawolinem Graphic Design: Ciaran Birch Story Researcher: Danny Farnham With thanks to @kestle_barton

We have a champion! ///debating.gurgled.brisk with an overall average rating of 7.3 / 10 takes the crown for the Some Interesting Apples wild & seedling taste trials of 2025. One of the larger apples on the table this year, found growing by William on the southwest coast path near Dean Point quarry. Almost certainly a cliff-path walker’s discard seedling but not of obvious supermarket provenance. Looks-wise there’s a bit of Colleggett Pippin about it – a Cornish dual-purpose cider-cooker. Taste-wise, it’s got quite a bit of sharpness, crisp, dense and stores very well. An easy description would be that it tastes like a properly ripe bramley with enough extra sweetness to make it a desirable dessert apple as well as a cooker. The tree is growing so low to a grass bank on the cliff edge that nearly all the apples were growing in the grass and consequently had rodent damage so only one survived until tasting day. There is therefore no official portrait – just these phone snaps of the fruit on discovery. One large unblemished fruit - big enough to split 12 ways for tasting - was however in perfect shape having been picked mid-September and stored cool-ambient until October. The blemished fruit were good cooked, not turning totally to puree like a classic English cooking apple but plenty tart enough. We’ll graft this for trial on 3 different rootstocks in the Wilding Mother Orchard early next year. An amusing aside, needing to double check the w3w before posting this as a typo can take you a long way from the mark, it would be interesting to see what is at that top option.

James of this project and @vagrant.cider has a book out! To Pre-order see QR code in next image. It is only available for the duration of the Kickstarter campaign which has now reached its target. There are large discounts on wholesale numbers. You have 14 days. *read the blurb* A Vagrant’s Pomona: The Untold Story of Scrumping What if stealing apples wasn’t just mischief, but a window into history, culture, and justice? Scrumping: the cheeky, often frowned-upon act of taking fruit without permission, has been around for as long as somebody planted an apple tree and said ‘This is mine, not yours’. It’s part rebellion, part necessity, part folk tradition. My project, A Vagrant’s Pomona, takes scrumping out of the shadows and into the spotlight, exploring its historic, cultural, and social significance through the eyes (and taste buds) of a landless cider-maker. This isn’t just a book about fruit. It’s about who gets access to land, how traditions evolve, and why the humble apple still stirs up such strong feelings today. - James Fergusson #apples #scrumping #landaccess