Thank you for asking about the wild apple trees Native. It’s a long post but the story spans over 150 years! The apple trees are dear to my heart. Wild apple trees have been important in every stage of my life. As kids in Connecticut we hung out at various wild apple trees which were seemingly everywhere then, later we hunted pheasants under those same trees. Wild apple trees are a gift that was present on nearly every New York property I have been on. Thirty years ago when I arrived here In New York even in the far reaches of even the largest timber areas on dry knolls were apple stands galore, trees with DBH’s up to 15inches! Still today it would be easy to count 50 to 100 wild apple trees while driving to town for coffee for someone that can see them. But in the woods away from the protection of openings the areas wild apple trees are disappearing at an alarming accelerated rate. Forest succession has taken them over.
Many properties still have many apple stands left but most are down to twenty percent of what they were only ten years ago. Not twenty percent in production of apples but twenty percent in apple trees still living. Many area trees are just hanging on so over shadowed by taller trees that they produce zero or close to zero apples. I feel like I’ve screamed as loud as possible but few hear me. The loss of wild apple trees on even a single property affects everyone in the area that favors wildlife equal to or over timber values. People have always thought me strange to be releasing wild apple trees every day. I remember a conversation in the local watering hole one night. I mentioned how I could not understand how people could let succession kill off their apple trees. The response was sobering. “Most people around here come home after working hard for twelve hours each day trying to scratch a living. Releasing apple trees isn’t even a blip on their radar.” So now I quietly continue the quest of releasing every apple tree on this property.
Here is an apple tree we released over twenty years ago. It's DBH exceeds two feet. The second picture shows it in full bloom.
Ok SO WHERE DID ALL THESE APPLES COME FROM? Since you posted your question I have queried every person I ran into as where did all these apples come from. It was amazing that nearly everyone felt that aren’t wild apples everywhere! So this is my best conclusion based on a particular book now gone from the library and from asking around. First one needs to recognize this is a huge though likely unheard of Agricultural area. People have mostly survived here by working the ground. I am a new comer having been here for only thirty years. The natives here are like the deer; they have survived and even thrived in the absolute most difficult of weather conditions imaginable.
During the period of 1870 until 1915 apples were the main agricultural crop. Sure everybody had cows but with no roads to move the milk; it was mostly subsistence farming. Apples were turned into cider, usually hard cider. That meant the seeds were not destroyed or consumed but were likely spread onto the apple groves and the cow pastures or at least tossed over the bank. Some may have been fed to the hogs for people that had hogs. Can you imagine the thousands of apple tree seeds that were inadvertently spread over the area during the hard cider years?
Roads capable of transporting milk began being built around 1915. Cheese plants in the area modernized as the farmers had a way to travel some with their milk to get it to the cheese plants. Still hard cider was a mainstay of almost every house. Today the Great Lakes Cheese factory uses a lot of milk to make cheese under their name as well as for many other cheese “makers”. And according to the NY apple assoc. Ny is today the largest producer of cider in the US.
Men didn’t go the coffee shop for a morning coffee but rather to local gathering places where cider was consumed like water. Winters were long and hard and the cider helped pass the time. The entire area was likely pasture and/or apple orchards. On our property the age of timber trees cut runs from 39 years old to 57 years old. Thus it is safe to assume that apples and pastures ruled 39 to 57 years ago and before for some time. And some people have told me they remember the apple groves and pastures where timber trees now prevail.
Down the street from us is a quilt shop in the Old Creamery. There between 1870 and maybe 1913 farmers brought their milk presumably in cans where it was made into cheese. Legend has it that the creamery had burned down about three times and had to be rebuilt; apparently drinking cider like water can cause fires. Also down the street was located one of the areas large cider presses. And today lots of people still press their own apples some with homemade presses and others with more modern hobby size ones to make the tasty ciders like long ago.
