The amazing and generous apple tree has been one of humanity’s favorite trees — growing alongside us throughout most of recorded history. It was perhaps 10,000 years ago that farmers in the mountains of Asia first began growing and “domesticating” apple trees. From there, merchants transported apple trees and apple seeds along the legendary overland and maritime Silk Road trade routes into Europe and throughout the Western World. Greeks grew apple trees, as did the Romans after them, and long before the close of the First Century A.D., the beloved apple tree was dispersed to the far reaches of the known world.

After thousands of years of cross-pollination, today’s seed-grown apple trees are genetically more related to crabapples than their wild ancestors. Apple trees are members of the rose family, and are generally small- to medium-sized trees which burst with lovely five-petaled white-to-pink blooms each spring and adorn themselves with ripening orbs of growing fruit throughout the summer. Apple trees are deciduous, losing their mid-sized serrated leaves each autumn. Apple trees typically grow to heights around 15 feet, but in the wild they can stretch to more than twice that height. While they can live to more than 100 years of age, apple trees have a typical lifespan closer to 50 years.