Everything You Never Knew About Apples

Today, I'm going to explain every apple. Honeycrisp, Granny Smith, Red Delicious, and a few you've probably never thought twice about. Some of these aren't actually meant to be eaten. Some come from a forest most people have never heard of. And one part of the fruit can make you seriously sick if you eat enough of it. Honeycrisp. This one wasn't discovered. It was engineered. Researchers at the University of Minnesota spent over 30 years crossbreeding apple varieties before Honeycrisp was released in 1991. What makes it special isn't flavor. It's texture. The cells inside a Honeycrisp are unusually large. And they're packed loosely instead of tightly. When you bite down, those cells rupture explosively instead of just splitting. That's the crunch people pay extra for. And they do pay extra. Honeycrisp trees produce fewer apples per season. And the fruit bruises easily during shipping. Which is part of why it's consistently one of the most expensive apples in the grocery store. The university patented the variety and collected royalties for years before the patent expired in 2008. Granny Smith. Most people assume Granny Smith is a made-up, folksy brand name. It isn't. Maria Ann Smith was a real woman, living in Australia in the 1860s. She discovered a seedling growing near a creek on her property, likely from a discarded French crab apple, and started cultivating it. She died before it ever became famous. The apple's sharp tartness comes from unusually high malic acid content, which is also why it holds its shape so well in baking. Most sweeter apples turn to mush in the oven. Granny Smith doesn't. Red Delicious. Here's an uncomfortable truth about this one. It wasn't bred for taste at all. It was bred for looks. Farmers in the 20th century selected strains with the deepest red color and the most symmetrical shape, because that's what sold in stores. Over decades, the flavor and texture quietly got worse, while the skin got shinier. By the 2010s, Red Delicious sales had collapsed so badly that Washington State, its biggest producer, started ripping out entire orchards. It's a rare case of a product engineering itself into irrelevance by optimizing for the wrong thing. Golden Delicious. Despite the name, it has zero genetic relation to Red Delicious. It was discovered on a farm in Clay County, West Virginia, in the early 1900s, growing from an unknown seedling. What makes it genuinely important isn't how it tastes on its own. It's how many other apples exist because of it. Golden Delicious is one of the most common parent varieties used in modern apple breeding. Gala, Jonagold, Pink Lady, and dozens of others all have Golden Delicious somewhere in their family tree. Gala bred in New Zealand in the 1930s by crossing a Golden Delicious with another variety called Kids Orange Red. For decades, it stayed a regional favorite. Then, in the 1970s and 80s, it spread internationally, and today, it's one of the best-selling apples in the world. Gala ripens earlier than almost any other major variety, which is why it's usually the first new crop apple you see at the store each year, sometimes as early as late July. Fuji. Most people assume Fuji apples are named after Mount Fuji. They're actually named after Fujisaki, the town in Japan where they were developed in the 1930s and released commercially in the 1960s. It's a cross between a Red Delicious and an old American variety called Virginia Rawls Janae. Fuji apples have an unusually high sugar content, and they store exceptionally well. Under proper refrigeration, a Fuji apple can stay fresh for close to a year without losing much quality. Macintosh. Discovered by a farmer named John Macintosh in Ontario, Canada in 1811, growing wild on his property. He transplanted the seedlings and started grafting them, and the variety spread across eastern Canada and the northern United States. Here's the detail most people miss. When Steve Jobs was choosing a name for the computer that would become the Macintosh, one of the engineers on the project, Jeff Raskin, was a Macintosh apple fan. The spelling was changed slightly to avoid a trademark conflict with an audio equipment company. But the apple connection is real. Pink Lady, technically called Crips Pink, bred in Australia in the 1970s by crossing a Golden Delicious with a Lady Williams apple. Unlike most varieties, Pink Lady is trademarked, not just patented. Growers have to meet strict sugar and color standards before their fruit is even allowed to carry the Pink Lady name. If a batch doesn't hit the requirements, it gets sold under a different label entirely, even though it's genetically the same apple. If you want to keep learning about everyday things in a simple and clear way, hitting subscribe only takes a helps us make more videos like this one. It's free, and you can always change your mind later. Braeburn Another chance discovery, this time found growing wild near an orchard in New Zealand in 1952. Nobody knows its exact parentage for certain, though genetic testing suggests Granny Smith is somewhere in the mix. Braeburn became one of the first apple varieties to succeed commercially, based partly on its complex, almost spiced flavor rather than pure sweetness, which helped open the door for the wave of flavor-forward apples that came after it. Crab Apples The odd one out on this entire list. Botanically, Crab Apples and Regular Apples are extremely close relatives, both part of the genus Malus. But Crab Apples are defined by size, not species. Any apple under about 2 inches in diameter technically counts as a Crab Apple. Most are intensely sour or bitter straight off the tree, which is why they're almost never eaten fresh. Historically, they were cooked down into jellies and preserves, since their high pectin content makes them set almost automatically. Wild Apple The wild ancestor of every apple you've ever eaten still grows in one specific place. A mountain forest region in Kazakhstan, called the Tian Shan Range, is home to Malus sieversii, the wild apple species that all domesticated apples descended from. The forests there contain wild trees with an enormous range of size, color, and flavor, essentially the entire genetic library modern apples were selected from. Some botanists consider it one of the most important and least visited ecological sites in the world. Apple Seeds Here's the detail that surprises almost everyone. Apple seeds contain a compound called amygdalin, which breaks down into hydrogen cyanide when digested. Eating the seeds from one or two apples won't hurt you. Your body can process small amounts without issue, but the seeds are bitter for a reason. They evolve that way specifically to discourage animals from chewing them up, while the sweet flesh around them evolved to get eaten and spread the seeds elsewhere. It's the same plant strategy behind a lot of fruit—sweet on the outside, protected on the inside. Envy This one is a genetically deliberate cross between Braeburn and Royal Gala, developed in New Zealand in the 1980s and released commercially in the 2000s. Growers specifically bred it to solve a single problem—browning. Cut an Envy apple open and leave it on the counter, and it stays white for hours longer than almost any other variety because of unusually low levels of the enzyme that triggers oxidation. That's not marketing spin, it's actual chemistry, and it's why Envy slices show up prepackaged in lunch kits more than almost any other apple. Jazz Another New Zealand cross, this time between Gala and Braeburn, bred in the 1980s but kept secret and unreleased for over a decade while growers perfected it. It's dense, unusually heavy for its size, and that density is deliberate. Breeders selected for cell structure that resists bruising during long-distance shipping, since Jazz was designed from the start to be exported worldwide, not sold locally. Empire Bred at Cornell University in the 1960s by crossing Macintosh with Red Delicious. It was meant to combine Macintosh's soft, aromatic flavor with Red Delicious's crisp texture and good looks. New York State adopted it almost as an unofficial mascot. It's one of the few apples with an entire county fair built partly around its harvest. Cortland Also bred at Cornell, decades earlier, in 1898. It's a cross of Ben Davis and Macintosh, and it shares a strange trait with Envy—unusually slow browning once cut. That made it a favorite for fruit salads and pie fillings for most of the 20th century, long before no-brown apples became a marketing category. Ambrosia Discovered entirely by accident in British Columbia, Canada, in the 1980s. An orchardist named Wilfred Mennell noticed a single, unlabeled tree growing among his jonagolds that produced unusually sweet, low-acid fruit. Nobody planted it on purpose. It was likely a natural cross from stray pollen. He propagated it anyway, and it's now grown commercially across North America, all traced back to that one accidental tree. Opal A cross between Golden Delicious and a Russian variety called Topaz, bred in the Czech Republic in the 1990s. Like Envy, it was specifically engineered to resist browning, and it's naturally yellow—no waxing or dye involved, which surprises people who assume all yellow produce is artificially colored. Cosmic Crisp One of the newest major varieties, released commercially in 2019 after more than 20 years of development at Washington State University. It's a cross between Enterprise and Honeycrisp, combining Honeycrisp's texture with a longer shelf life. Washington State spent tens of millions of dollars marketing its launch, making it one of the most expensive apple releases in history before a single one reached store shelves. That's every apple. If you had to rank them by sheer strangeness, Wild Kazakh Apples take the top spot. Best Texture—Honeycrisp Wildest Origin Story—Macintosh Which one surprised you most? And which apple do you think is the most overrated? Drop it in the comments!