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It might be surprising to learn that the green thing in your kid’s lunchbox is one of the most successful agricultural exports in Australian history. Yep, we’re talking about the humble Granny Smith apple, also known as “Can I please have an LCM bar instead, mum?”
Granny Smith apples—a unique cultivar hybrid of ordinary Malus domestica and (we think) Malus sylvestris—are one of the most popular apple varieties in the world. Tart, acidic, cheek-puckeringly sour, green as a cartoon witch’s apple. Victoria itself grows about 27,000 tonnes of them a year, mostly from orchards in the Goulburn Valley and Yarra Valley.
Also Read: Australia’s Surprising History of Canning Boiled Rabbits
What most people don’t know is that Granny Smiths are an Aussie invention. They were first propagated by a little old lady in New South Wales in 1868.
The story goes like this. Maria Ann Smith (nee Sherwood) was born in Sussex, UK, in 1799. She moved to Australia with her husband Thomas in 1838 and bought two blocks of land in Eastwood, just north of Sydney. The plan was to grow a small orchard.
Returning from the market with some boxes one day, Maria (who, as the mother of eight kids, was known locally as Granny) noticed some rotting crab apples inside. Depending on the legend you believe, she either chucked these apple cores out her kitchen window, or scattered them down near the creek. Either way, she soon noticed some unusual saplings beginning to sprout. Smith decided to propagate the best of these, noting that the fruit they produced, despite having “all the appearances of a cooking apple”, was not tart, but instead “sweet and crisp to eat.”
Fun fact: there are more than 7,500 types of apple in the world today—and the vast majority of them are commercial failures. Too sweet, too tart, too soft, prone to disease, spoil easily, don’t transport well. Apples are notoriously hard to propagate because genetically speaking, they’re sort of a lucky dip: a seed taken from a Red Delicious, for example, will not necessarily produce a Red Delicious tree. Apples usually have to be propagated by grafting successful specimens onto the rootstock of other trees; a bit like citrus.
Also Read: The Best Places to Pick Fruit Near Melbourne
What sort of apple you get, along with its flavour and other characteristics, depends on zillions of factors, and certain apple ‘breeds’ are nurtured and cross-pollinated and carefully tweaked to produce very particular (i.e. commercially viable) fruit. And this is where Granny Smith really struck the genetic jackpot.
Smith’s new apple variety, thought to be a freak cross between ordinary apples and French crab apples, had a lot going for it. Granny Smiths were firm and good for cooking, but still sweet enough to snack on. They naturally produced low levels of ethylene, which meant they ripened and spoiled more slowly. Together with their tough skin, this made them ideal for international export. Their strong flesh and tart flavour were perfect for apple pies, apple strudel, stewed apple, and any other recipe that hinged on your apples not disintegrating into a gross, soggy mass.
Sadly, Smith died in 1870, just two years after discovering her new apple cultivar. But her work was picked up by another Sydney local, Edward Gallard, who began marketing the apples around New South Wales. By 1890, Granny Smiths were being exhibited at agricultural shows as ‘Smiths Seedling’, and in the early 1900s fruit merchants began shipping them overseas.
Granny Smiths are one of the few apples that can be picked in March and stored till November. With their excellent shelf life, they were a natural export trade, and sales boomed in the years following World War I. UK supermarkets began stocking Granny Smiths in the 1930s, and in the 1970s, the fruit cracked America.
By 1975, Granny Smiths comprised 40% of Australia’s entire apple crop. The Beatles used the fruit as the logo for their corporation, Apple Corps Limited, and one side of their vinyl albums famously featured a picture of a Granny Smith apple.
Today Granny Smiths are grown everywhere from France to California. According to the American Apple Association, whose job it is to keep track of stuff like this, Granny Smiths are one of the most successful apple cultivars in the United States. However, their popularity might be waning slightly in Australia, with a lot of growers moving away from the Granny’s tart, acidic flavour, towards sweeter varietals like Gala and Pink Lady. This might also have something to do with suspicious supermarket mark-ups.
Even so, if you’re baking an apple pie, you’re not reaching for a Red Delicious, are you? It’s Granny Smith all the way. Sharp, crisp, practically glowing green on the supermarket shelf, Granny Smiths will always be the Platonic ideal of what an apple looks like. They’re the ur-apple, the appliest of apples, and it’s unlikely they’ll be disappearing from lunchboxes any time soon. Sorry, kids.
