Red Delicious

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Red Delicious is a cultivar of apple. It is the most widely grown apple in the world, red with darker red streaks, and five "points" on the bottom.

The Red Delicious, like many other cultivars, was a chance seedling. The legend is that a hardy seedling was found in 1868 by one Jesse Hiatt, an apple grower outside Peru, Iowa, USA. Hiatt tried to kill it, but it kept coming back, and finally Hiatt let it grow, eventually bringing its fruit to a fruit show in Louisiana, Missouri. It won first prize. All Red Delicious apples are direct descendants of this original tree.

The Red Delicious was originally called simply the Delicious but when the Golden Delicious was discovered in 1914 a name change was initiated.

This variety of apple became increasingly popular until the 1990s, when overproduction began to degrade the quality and when better storage and transportation techniques made other varieties more available. Recently, apple aficionados often consider this apple bland and deride the Red Delicious for its overly sweet, relatively simple flavor compared to other apple varieties. Nevertheless it is still one of the most easily recognized apple cultivars.

[edit] External links

• "Why the Red Delicious No Longer Is" - article from The Washington Post