Content
Preface
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1. What are apples?
Apple relatives
Apple fruits, flowers and seeds
Apple dispersal
Apple country
Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau
Monsoon region
Tian Shan
Chapter 2. Origin of the apple
Malus domestica and its relatives
DNA evidence
Other evidence from cultivars
The origin of the apple: a tentative conclusion
The fruit forest
The three phases of the apple crop
Enter the bear
Enter the horse
Camels
And dung beetles?
Chapter 3. Archaeology and the apple
The Turkic Corridor
Pack animals
Ancient apple names
Chapter 4. Apples and grafting
Grafting and the apple’s move westwards
Archaeological evidence for grafting
Grafting in the Middle Ages and after
Grafting in China
Apple rootstocks
Graft hybridisation
Chinese names for apples
Silk Roads
Lapis lazuli road
Demise of the long transcontinental routes
Apples in Europe
Romans in Britain
The Empire of Charlemagne
Berbers and Moors
Post-Roman place-names and the apple
The Battle of Hastings
Why this unparalleled emotional power and iconic popularity?
The image of the apple
The apple in Germany
The textbook and the apple
The apple in folklore and other stories
Newton’s apple
‘Norfolk Beefin’
‘Bramley’s Seedling’
‘Ribston Pippin’
‘Blenheim Orange'
And some non-apples
Scurvy
Colonies
‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away’
Cyder and cider
Early Europe
Britain
Vinetum Britannicum
France
Johnny Appleseed
Virtues of cyder
Other methods of apple preservation
Apple-growing
Apple wood
Apple hybrids
Ornamental crabs
Chapter 8. A dénouement
The future of the apple
Appendix: classification and distributions of apple species [compiled by D. J. M.]
References
Index