Stark Bro’s already owned a red apple ‘Delicious’ (itself a chance seedling found in Iowa USA), and had been looking for a large, good-keeping, yellow apple to add to its portfolio.  When they tasted the three apples sent by Mr Mullins, the Stark brothers knew that they had to have it.

“Even if it was at the end of the world, we must visit that tree. We must be the first to beat a path to its door.”

Paul Clarence Stark Sr. set off on a 1,000-mile railroad trip and a 20-mile horseback ride through the wild West Virginia mountains to find it.

“Far up in the topmost corner of the field was another small group of apple trees, most of which appeared leafless and barren. But gleaming forth from the midst of them, like a diamond amid straw, was one tree that seemed to have stepped fresh out of the Garden of Eden, it was so fresh and strong and vigorous. It had a solid wall of dark green foliage and its boughs were bending to the ground with an enormous crop of great golden apples. With a whoop, I started up that hill on the run.”

Having bought the tree from Mullins, Stark Bro’s propagated grafts at their nurseries and built a locked steel cage around the tree on Mullins’ farm to prevent anyone else doing so. They renamed their red apple Red Delicious and called the yellow apple Golden Delicious.

Large, crisp, juicy, and spicy, Golden Delicious was a marketing dream. Also, once propagated, the vigorous and productive tree growth provided apples that cope well with handling and storage, making it popular with the industry.

“The Queen of quality and beauty.”

But the Golden trail continued: Golden Delicious went on to become one of the five frequent “founding clones” of the apple world (along with Red Delicious, Jonathan, Cox’s Orange Pippin, and McIntosh). Because of its qualities, it has been extensively crossed by apple breeders to produce new varieties. The Golden Delicious is mother of Elstar, Pink Lady ®, Jonagold, Mutsu, Champion, and the important Chinese variety Qinguan. Also father of Gala, Falstaff, and Greensleeves, and grandparent of Jazz ™, Envy ™, and Honeycrisp, and great-grandparent of Cosmic Crisp ®. There are countless more offspring. With its vast progeny, this Golden trail through the genetics of the modern apple demonstrates the commercial importance of the qualities of Golden Delicious, but brings risks of inbreeding and future vulnerability by limiting the gene pool.

Today, the chance seedling from West Virginia remains the second most eaten apple in the world, despite all the new varieties bred over the last century. Widely grown, its reputation in the UK is perhaps tarnished by the memory of the deluge of imports from France in the 1970s. However, the prolific Golden Delicious is possibly the world’s most important apple and the archetype. Flowering date and harvest times for apples are normally expressed relative to Golden Delicious, and when scientists set about sequencing an apple’s vast genome, it was the Golden Delicious that they chose.

Sources:

• Juniper and Mabberley (2019) The Extraordinary Story of the Apple
• Morgan and Richards (2002) The New Book of Apples
• Noiton and Alspach (1996) Founding Clones, Inbreeding, Coancestry, and Status Number of Modern Apple Cultivars in the Journal of the American Society of Horticultural Science
• Stark (1919) The Trail of the Golden Apple in Stark Bro’s Golden Delicious: “Most Delicious of all Yellow Apples”
• Stark Bro’s (online) Little Old Letter, Big Piece of History Stark Bro’s website

Thanks to:

• Matt Bollinger, Director of IT and Digital Marketing, Stark Bro’s Nurseries & Orchards Co.
• Professor Fabrizio Costa, Associate Professor of Agricultural Genetics at University of Trento, Italy
• Professor Kate Evans, Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center, Washington State University, USA
• LeAnn Zotta, author of “200 Years and Growing: The Story of Stark Bro’s Nurseries & Orchards Co.”