Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 24, 1995 TAG: 9509250020
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDY HEVENER THE DAILY NEWS LEADER
DATELINE: BLUE GRASS LENGTH: Medium
It's been a year since the mystery apple tree in Conley Colaw's orchard surprised horticulturists who tentatively identified it as the long-lost descendant of a celebrated apple missing from Thomas Jefferson's Monticello orchard for more than 100 years.
Nothing in the past year has uprooted its identification as the famed Taliaferro apple.
Peter Hatch, Monticello's director of gardens and grounds, still believes it possibly is the only apple tree missing from Jefferson's orchard and anticipates it filling the only remaining hole in the orchard. Still, no one is 100 percent sure it actually is the Taliaferro and, in all likelihood, it never will be positively identified.
``I think we will plant it, but the judge is still out,'' Hatch said. ``It may be close enough to make a good Taliaferro substitute if it is not actually Jefferson's mystery apple, especially if it makes a very good cider. We plan to plant it in the orchard if it really resembles the Taliaferro, which makes cider like silk champagne.''
Part of the problem in proving that Colaw's Highland County apple is the missing Taliaferro lies in the descriptions. Those written by William Coxe and James Mease in an agriculture publication during Jefferson's time differ slightly from Jefferson's own writings. That, coupled with the almost indisputable assumption that no one living today knowingly tasted the lost apple, makes certifying authenticity impossible.
In the year since the apple's tentative identification, nothing has disproved its recognition, but a sliver of doubt always will remain. Last week, when Tom Burford of Burford Bros. orchards in Amherst County verified successful grafting of buds from Colaw's special tree, he told of one more hurdle the apple must jump. ``The next step is to get with Conley and Connie to press, to see how the apples press, to collect all the data, to be as positive about what we are doing as possible,'' Burford said.
Dr. Connie Anderson is a neighbor of Colaw's actively involved in perpetuating old apple types. The apple began its journey back to Jefferson's orchard when she shipped it and others to Burford for identification last fall. He said no data he encountered barred the apple's certification as the Taliaferro.
This spring, Mother Nature tossed the apple scholars a curve on the tree's return trip to Jefferson's garden, delaying the anticipated cider pressing until next year.
``The caterpillars ate the leaves off it early in the spring,'' Colaw said. ``It had a full bloom, but they all fell off. I don't know if they froze or what, but they all fell off.
``It's coming out in bloom now. All the blooms fell off. No apples in this orchard at all; 40 trees in this orchard, and all the blooms fell off.''
Colaw said although the tree was full of apples every year since he purchased his great-grandfather Anderson Colaw's farm, this year it produced only six apples. What did he do with the meager crop? ``Ate them,'' Colaw said. ``They were good. They don't keep very well.''
The various Colaw families living on the farm since 1857 never used the apples from this tree to make cider, Colaw said. ``These apples come on it early, and people here didn't make cider that early. They come on mid-August, Sept. 1. That's too warm. Turns hard too quickly. [Jefferson] had a big cellar that kept cider cool. We didn't have a place to keep it cool.''
Burford cautioned that the apple still needs to be proofed - proved genetically stable - and that can take years. While most grafts reproduce as near-clones of the mother tree, some - those with weak genetics - can produce astonishingly different fruit. Rather than the expected fruit, that difference can produce a ripe group of angry tree purchasers.
by CNB