Early Apple Blossom on a young tree

Image: © P Flannagan Taken: 25 Apr 2009

Taken early this year, in April 2009, which marks the two-hundredth anniversary of the venerable British Bramley apple. In 1809, a little girl, named Mary Ann Brailsford, planted some pips in the back garden of the cottage where she lived in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, England. The pips grew into the first Bramley apple tree. Although the tree did not fruit until many years later, it did not take long for the apples' outstanding cooking potential to be realised by the new owner of the cottage, Matthew Bramley (the apple's namesake) and Henry Merryweather, the nurseryman who first grew the Bramley trees commercially. Two hundred years later, Bramleys have become Britain's favourite cooking apple. Today, some twenty-five thousand tonnes of fresh Bramleys are sold on supermarkets shelves and fifty-eight thousand tonnes used commercially in everything from sausages to cider. There are events running throughout the year to celebrate the anniversary. For more information on the events near you please visit www.bramleyapples.co.uk.

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