Submitted by Russel Barsh, Director of Kwiaht.

Kwiaht and the Fruit Genetics Program at Washington State University are unraveling the identity and parentage of apples from the island’s oldest orchards, its backyards and roadside ditches with support from the San Juan Island Community Foundation, the Millsdavis Foundation and island donors. Results thus far have been surprising.

Domestic apple trees were planted on San Juan Island as early as the 1850s. Parts of the Hudson Bay Company’s Bellevue Farm orchard still exist, and the trees continue to bear fruit. At Westcott Bay, a handful of trees remain from another HBC-era orchard that helped feed British Marines during the international boundary dispute. American settlers arriving in the wake of the Civil War planted orchards to “prove up” their homestead claims. Many of them had Coast Salish wives, who were already familiar with the stewardship of native crabapple (Malus fusca) groves. This included the Cayou orchard at Deer Harbor, the Chadwick orchard on Lopez Island and the Papillon-Rouleau orchard on San Juan Island, all of which still produce 19th-century fruit varieties.

By the 1890s, the San Juan Islands were the center of Washington state’s apple industry, originally exporting fruit by schooner to San Francisco, and later by rail to the East Coast. It was only in the 1920s that apple production shifted to eastern Washington and to new apple varieties developed for hot, irrigated summer growth. As the demand for island apples dwindled, farmers cut down hundreds of trees, saving the varieties that they used themselves for preserving, baking and dessert. Until the recent revival of interest in fermented ciders, most apple trees planted in the islands since the 1930s have been new, fresh-eating varieties.

Kwiaht botanist Madrona Murphy, who grew up on Lopez Island’s McCauley Farm, was determined to locate and preserve living relics of the islands’ apple heydays. With the assistance of island historian Boyd Pratt, she compiled a list of about 60 19th-century apple varieties that had been brought to the islands before 1920; and began sampling fruit from the remains of island orchards that were mapped in the 1890s, or appeared in the earliest aerial photos from 1932, to try to locate survivors of each variety. In 2024, Murphy began sharing leaf samples with Professor Cameron Peace of WSU’s fruit genetics laboratory at WSU.

Thus far, genetic analyses have identified 23 antique apple varieties in living island trees. Surprisingly, nine of these 19th-century varieties had not been mentioned in historical records of island farming. Indeed, Murphy and Peace discovered a number of 19th-century “ghost” varieties that could only be found genetically as one of the parents of novel seedlings or roadside hybrids. For example, Smith’s Cider contributed its genes to unique local hybrids before it disappeared from island orchards.

One of the most unusual heritage varieties was discovered at Spring Street International School: Glowing Coal, which was developed and sold by New York nurseryman John Lewis Childs in the 1890s. Childs’ 1895 nursery catalog described the fruits as “one-half bright shining red, while the other half is intense scarlet, and as they hang on the trees the large beautiful fruit can be seen for a long distance, glowing almost like a coal among the dense green foliage.” It seems to have been a favorite of Spring Street students long before its identity was rediscovered.

The one antique apple variety most widely mentioned by present-day islanders is King, or more correctly, “the King of Tompkins County,” which originated in New Jersey but was brought to upstate New York in 1804, where the trees thrived and were sold to farmers as apple culture spread westward. About one in four of the ancient trees analyzed genetically thus far in the San Juan Islands appear to be clones or sports of King. Murphy believes this is due to the versatility of this apple, which is tasty eaten fresh, sauced, baked or pressed for fresh cider. It was the one variety that island farmers were most likely to save when commercial apple production crashed a century ago.

By comparison, Baldwin, originally discovered in Massachusetts as a seedling about 1740, was extensively planted in early San Juan Islands orchards because it shipped well and had a long shelf life. It was an excellent choice for exports from the islands, as opposed to home use.

In the days before mass production of cane sugar made sweet baked goods affordable as everyday treats, dessert often consisted of pared and sliced apples, most often one of the many “russet” apples, crunchy and mildly sweet with nutty and unusual fruity flavors such as pineapple. A single variety, the Golden Russet, has been found in ancient orchards throughout the San Juan Islands. It also originated in New York, about 1849, and was growing in popularity when the first orchards were planted on San Juan Island.

In addition to well-documented heritage apple varieties such as King and Golden Russet, Murphy and Peace have thus far identified 24 unique hybrids, including six that have both native crabapples and a domestic apple variety as parents. Murphy has been exploring the unique traits of these “roadside ditch” seedlings with cidermakers, distillers and producers of fruit preserves in San Juan County.

The search for lost heritage varieties and unique seedlings continues. Kwiaht is committed to identifying more pre-1920 trees genetically, preserving island varieties in Kwiaht’s LeMaister Farm research garden and cooperating island orchards, distributing scions freely to gardeners and farmers, and sponsoring workshops on pruning ancient trees and grafting local fruit varieties onto new rootstocks. Look for the Kwiaht apple table in the Ag Tent at the County Fair, and in the catalog of projects in the San Juan Island Community Foundation’s SJI Cares County Fair Program.