'Some Interesting Apples' Delves into the World of Feral Fruit

"In 2019, Cornwall-based artists William Arnold and James Fergusson began paying a lot of attention to wild apple trees growing in unique and sometimes unlikely locations around the Cornish countryside. Remarkably, every apple seed is capable of producing an entirely different variety. And it's this immense genome that inspired the pair to begin their ongoing project called Some Interesting Apples."

"Apple cultivars that we often see in supermarkets, like Gala or Honeycrisp, need to be carefully produced in a process called clonal propagation, in which a cutting from a desirable tree is grafted onto a new one, creating, essentially, a copy. Because even if a Honeycrisp seed sprouted and produced a tree, it wouldn't be another Honeycrisp! Arnold and Fergusson have discovered more than 600 wild apple varieties throughout Cornwall over the past seven years."

William Arnold and James Fergusson began documenting wild apple trees across Cornwall in 2019, focusing on varieties growing in unique or unlikely locations. Every apple seed can yield a distinct variety, an immense genetic diversity that motivated the project Some Interesting Apples. Many supermarket cultivars are clones created via grafting, so seedlings rarely reproduce named varieties. Over seven years the pair identified more than 600 wild apple types. Arnold photographs each discovery while both sample and record tasting notes, later compiled in a short film produced by Ffern. Instead of formal names, the apples receive what3words location-based labels that combine three words.

Read at Colossal