Apple Varieties
How many apple variteys are there?
Apples are by far the most diverse fruit in terms of
variety. In the UK alone we have developed over 2,500 varieties
of apples (of the 7,000 that exist worldwide). This means you could eat
a different UK variety every day for over 6 years, a fact we often roll
out when introducing our work. Interest in propagating new and wondrous
types has been going on since the Roman times, with peaks in the
medieval and Victorian eras when amateur gardeners started experimenting
widely with different cultivars. One amateur, a retired brewer by the
name of Richard Cox, developed one of the most famous apples in the
1820s, the Cox’s Orange Pippin.