HOW MANY APPLE TREES?

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23269, 11 February 1939, Page 9 (Supplement)

HOW MANY APPLE TREES?

WHO could guess how many apple trees there are in the world? Tho British Imperial Economic Committee put the total at 450 millions, which should supply more than an apple a day. The total number of applo trees known to exist in cultivation is immense, but if we could by any means estimate the number of such trees that have been grown only to pass away in bad weather and hard winters, we might find that the number of failures far exceeds the surviving successes. Last century a famous American grower planted apple trees of 30 varieties and continued his planting for nine years, also sowing pips enough to produce a thousand trees a year. At the end of ten years he had one tree remaining ; the severe winters of his Minnesota orchards had killed the others.

Happily, the one survivor was hardy and prolific, and proved a source of wealth to him and to all the other farmers to whom he gave seeds or cuttings. They called it the Wealthy Apple. Last year was a bad one for apples in both Europe and America. The American crop is about 40 per cent less than the fine 1937 output of over four million tons, but Canadian production is again heavy. The biggest fruit importer is Britain; the second Germany. Apart from variations due to weather, the world's fruit output steadily advances, and what were once luxuries are now sold on street barrows. Grape fruits are becoming as cheap as oranges. Spain, unfortunately, has now more to think of than growing oranges, and her crop has become poor, which has had an effect on price. Fortunately, other nations hare produced more.