I grew up with manzanita trees. Mom did also. No, we never ate the fruit.
Shudder.
I'm gonna admit to what must have been "theft."
about 30 years ago, I discovered an apple tree in a public park. There was quite a planting of "crabapples" but there was this
one tree that was very
different!
The park was quite large and on a hillside so steep that in the fall with a litter of wet leaves on the ground it was easy to slip and fall in the upper reaches of the park. That's were this one tree was
.
Of course, the public was delighted to walk through this grove of crabapples when they were flowering but late in the season, it was quite popular with the deer and squirrels ... people, not so much. I'd show up
. Sometimes, it was so deliberate that I'd park on the road above and walk thru the forest about 100 yards - just after those apples, dontcha know ...
Honestly,
honestly, I never carried a bag or backpack. No! I always carried my 35mm camera in it's case - leaving the camera out and hanging around my neck. I would only fill my jacket pockets and the camera case with apples. That was it! (Of course, I might make a couple of park visits during the harvest season. Unfortunately, that one tree was cut down and replaced with a crapapple
)
Steve
Well, that's no different than what I do now with the crabapple tree near Peabody Field. That's public land as well, so I'm stealing when I take those apples just as much as you were. Technically, I'm also putting public property at risk, since I have to stand on the picnic table there to reach the apples, and, given that I weigh 360 pounds, more or less, I could easily break it under me.
In truth, ALL of the apple trees I find are on presumably public property (or property that might belong to the business next to it) and I NEVER ask for permission before taking the apple samples (I wouldn't know who to ask).
And it's for similar reason to your story I am so FIXATED on that crabapple. it too is "different". While every other crabapple tree in the so called "crabapple orchard" is short, and produces only tiny blueberry sized crabapples that are pretty much all seeds and are super sour in what little flesh they have, the one by the picnic table is HUGE (it's too forested in at that point to get a good look at the top, but based on the girth of the trunk, we're probably talking 30 plus feet.) and it's apples while still small (maybe golf ball diameter, or the size and shape of one of those tiny mandarin oranges they use mostly for canning*.) and quite tasty. And the reason I keep such a close eye on it is in CASE they decide to cut it down (say, to widen the rest area there) I need to get there and take, not some apples, but a branch (if I can) to try and graft on to another tree to keep this one going (this is going to be hampered a bit by the fact I SUCK at grafting. I'd take the whole tree with me if I could, but obviously stealing a 30+ foot tall tree that would have to be hand carried out of the area would be completely impossible. I MIGHT be able to get the Village involved and have them take some scions and pass them onto someone who IS skilled with grafting apples and knows someone with some room (Phillipseburg restoration has a lot of old apple trees on their property, even factoring how many of them die of old age or disease every year by now so they might. But they are pretty strict about keeping everything historically accurate, so might not accept an apple that couldn't be proved to have been growing there in the 1670'-90's.) But getting the Village involved will lead to a lot of red tape tie-ups and blockages by people who really don't care and would prefer not to have extra work, so by the time anything WAS done, the tree would likely have been long cut down, chopped up and sent through the wood chipper**.
There used to be a LOT MORE apple trees around here. Our next door neighbors had three or four (gnarled things with not great, worm ridden green fruit) but they all got TOO gnarled and had to be taken down. The were six to eight on the side yard of the house at the base of Evergreen street where we would hold the manor Halloween party, but they're all gone now too (I think, there may be one left, but I don't walk by there much anymore, so can't confirm). The was one at the base of Hemlock that got taken down when I was in high school (I remember the workmen were tossing apples off it to anyone who passed by.) There was the mysterious one I found in the gully between Fremont pond and the railroad station that was producing full sized red apples with ZERO insect damage (pity my parent's never let me taste any of those.)
Further afield, there was the "Kisco Spitter" that grew over the fence of the parking lot in Mount Kisco across from the Target that started all of this hunting. That died of disease the year after I found it (I still have a few seeds, but since these are now almost eight years old AND extracted from some withered fruits I found hanging on the tree AFTER it died (and so were LAST YEAR'S fruits that had been out all year, I doubt they are still viable.***) There were some tasty ones in front of the Casual Male XL in Nanuet, but they took those down when they put in the Chipotle. There was one on Central Avenue between Pagoda (now a Vietnamese restaurant) and the grocery store (now a 24 hour gym) that they must have taken out when they expanded the parking lot.
All that leaves left is the gnarled green one in the parking lot by the Central Avenue Best Buy (which has looked like it was about to die for the last six years or so), the yellow fruited one on the corner in Ardsley by the burned down plant nursery (which I can't get out and test because it is a blind corner with constant heavy traffic veering around it both ways) and a handful of others in places I can't get to (like the pasture on the Rockefeller property, a cul de sac in Tarrytown near Bridge Plaza, and a side street in Pleasantville near the turnoff for the highway, that is probably in someone's yard.****
*Which are actually extremely tasty fresh, if you can find them that way.
** We have had a massive kudzu problem on one wall between the Rockefeller property and the Village that NO ONE has done anything about for at least ten years, simply because, each side says it's the other ones responsibility. My dad even talked directly to the head of the Village Board about it, and HE couldn't get anything done!
*** There MAY have been other trees near to it (there's definitely another crabapple there, but it's the tiny fruit kind) I think there were, but as the rest are behind a metal fence, there's no way to get back there and check (barring lucking out and being there where the Mount Kisco village tree trimmers are there and asking THEM to check and pass apples to me over the fence, if they would.)
**** I also saw an intriguing looking tree with bright pink, sausage like fruits by the side of a field fence in the Mahopac/Carmel area when we were looking for a Chinese restaurant there, but as dad was already crabby about how far afield the GPS had taken us for this place, I decided it was not wise to ask him to stop. And since he has made me promise never to ask him to go there again because it's so far away, there's no way I could get back to it.
