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THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2019
Apple detectives comb Northwest for ‘lost’ varieties
By GILLIAN FLACCUS
Associated Press
PULLMAN, Wash. —
The apple tree stands alone
near the top of a steep hill,
wind whipping through its
branches as a perfect sun-
set paints its leaves a vibrant
gold.
It has been there for more
than a century, and there is no
hint that the tree or its apples
are anything out of the ordi-
nary. But this scraggly spec-
imen produces the Arkansas
Beauty, a so-called heritage
fruit long believed to be
extinct until amateur bota-
nists in the Pacifi c Northwest
tracked it down three years
ago.
It’s one of 13 long-lost
apple varieties rediscovered
by a pair of retirees in the
remote canyons, wind-swept
fi elds and hidden ravines of
what was once the Oregon
Territory.
E.J. Brandt and David
Benscoter, who together form
the nonprofi t Lost Apple Proj-
ect, log countless hours and
hundreds of miles in trucks,
on all-terrain vehicles and on
foot to fi nd orchards planted
by settlers as they pushed
west more than a century ago.
The two are racing
against time to preserve a
slice of homesteader his-
tory: The apple trees are old,
and many are dying. Oth-
ers are being ripped out for
more wheat fi elds or housing
developments for a growing
population.
“To me, this area is a gold-
mine,” said Brandt, who has
found two lost varieties in
the Idaho panhandle. “I don’t
want it lost in time. I want to
give back to the people so
that they can enjoy what our
forefathers did.”
Brandt and Benscoter
Ted S. Warren/AP Photo
Amateur botanist David Benscoter, of The Lost Apple Project,
picks an apple that may be of the Clarke variety in an orchard
near Pullman.
scour old county fair records,
newspaper clippings and
nursery sales ledgers to fi gure
out which varieties existed
in the area. Then they hunt
them down, matching writ-
ten records with old prop-
erty maps, land deeds and
sometimes the memories of
the pioneers’ great-grand-
children. They also get leads
from people who live near
old orchards.
The task is huge. North
America once had 17,000
named varieties of domesti-
cated apples, but only about
4,000 remain. The Lost
Apple Project believes set-
tlers planted a few hundred
varieties in their corner of the
Pacifi c Northwest alone.
The Homestead Act of
1862 gave 160 acres to fam-
ilies who would improve the
land and pay a small fee, and
these newcomers planted
orchards with enough variety
to get them through the long
winter, with apples that rip-
ened from early spring until
the fi rst frosts. Then, as now,
trees planted for eating apples
were not raised from seeds;
cuttings taken from exist-
ing trees were grafted onto a
generic root stock and raised
to maturity. These cloned
trees remove the genetic vari-
ation that often makes “wild”
apples inedible — so-called
“spitters.”
Benscoter, who retired in
2006 after a career as an FBI
agent and an IRS criminal
investigator, pursues leads
on lost apples with the same
zeal he applied to his crimi-
nal cases.
In one instance, he found
county fair records that listed
winners for every apple vari-
ety growing in Whitman
County, Washington, from
1900 to 1910 — an invalu-
able treasure map. In another,
he located a descendant of a
homesteader with a gigantic
orchard by fi nding a family
history she posted online.
Once he discovers a for-
gotten orchard, Benscoter
spends hours mapping it. He
has pages of diagrams with a
tiny circle denoting each tree,
with GPS coordinates along-
side each dot. A lengthy com-
puter database lists apples
including the Shackleford,
the Flushing Spitzenburg and
the Dickinson— all varieties
rediscovered by the project.
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