Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
—from “A Psalm of Life” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The year is 1235 A.D. A young boy and his grandfather spend a sunny afternoon gathering wild apples from the tree that grows near their home on the bank of the Kali Gandaki in Nepal. Generations of their family have enjoyed the sweet-tart fruit of these trees (later known as Malus baccata) that grow in the valley, their tender buds and branches sheltered from the fierce Himalayan winds by a long, white ridge.
The boy and his grandfather pick all the fruits they can reach and then use a long stick to shake the branches. A shower of bright red fruit falls around them, the little apples making a satisfying thud as they hit the ground. A bird takes advantage of their hard work, pecking hungrily at a fallen fruit before winging away, the seeds of a new tree in its belly.
* * *
The year is 1897 A.D. Niels Ebbesen Hansen, a botanist and professor at South Dakota Agricultural College, is working in his greenhouse. He has recently returned from a research trip to St. Petersburg in Russia, where he spent a good deal of time exploring the cold-hardy plants that thrive there, despite the short summers and long winters of this northern city.
Niels opens a small, white envelope that contains seeds of Malus robusta, a hybrid of Malus baccata and Malus prunifolia that he encountered at the Imperial Botanical Gardens in St. Petersburg. He carefully places each seed in a bit of soil, hoping to propagate some new and interesting specimens from this Siberian crabapple lineage. In twenty years’ time, a cultivar grown from these seeds will be given the Russian name ‘Dolgo’ for its long, bright red fruit.
* * *
It is 1988 A.D. Richard Wilson is sitting at his kitchen table, browsing a Raintree Nursery catalog. He’s on the hunt for more interesting plants to add to the landscape of the home he and his wife built just a few years before—a red oak, post-and-beam saltbox, the first of its kind built in Keene, NH in many, many years.
Despite its young age, the Wilson home already feels like a part of history. Its suburban yard is also unusual for its recently-planted collection of carefully curated plants, many of which have names—like medlar and mulberry—that hint at an even more distant past. Others are vibrant natives that will provide food and shelter for the local wildlife. Richard turns the page of the catalog, and his eye is drawn to an illustration of a beautiful crabapple cultivar with bright red fruit. He places his order, and the ‘Dolgo’ arrives just in time for spring planting.
* * *
It is 2026 A.D. The Wilson family is hard at work harvesting crabapples on a sunny afternoon in August. The tree has done very well this year, despite frequent attacks by woodpeckers and many years of growing in the shade of the larger oaks that line the driveway.
While Richard and his wife pick from the lower branches, their grandson, Zane—the young man they couldn’t have imagined when they planted the ‘Dolgo’ nearly forty years ago—uses the long-handled picking basket to shake the limbs of the tree. As the bright red fruit rains down, I gather it from the ground and add it to the communal harvest basket. I can’t wait to enjoy all the yummy treats I’m going to make with the mountain of apples we’ve collected. Right now, my whole house is filled with their sweet-tart scent.
