Thanks Guys. I appreciate the feedback. There are varying reports on the growing zone of Golden Delicious with some sellers saying zone 4 and others zone 5. This is an interesting quote from Wikipedia about the tree;
"This cultivar is a
chance seedling, possibly a hybrid of '
Grimes Golden'
[4][5] and '
Golden Reinette'.
[6] The original tree was found on the Mullins' family farm in
Clay County, West Virginia, United States, and was locally known as Mullin's Yellow Seedling and Annit apple. Anderson Mullins sold the tree and propagation rights to
Stark Brothers Nurseries for $5000, which first marketed it as a companion of their
Red Delicious in 1914.
[7]
In 2010, an Italian-led consortium announced they had decoded the complete genome of the 'Golden Delicious' apple.
[8] It had the highest number of genes (57,000) of any plant genome studied to date.
'Golden Delicious' was designated the official state fruit of
West Virginia by a Senate resolution on February 20, 1995.
[9] Clay County has hosted an annual Golden Delicious Festival since 1972.
Other West Virginia apples include '
Grimes Golden', and '
Guyandotte', which is believed extinct."
The Purdue disease resistance chart shows the Golden Delicious to be susceptible to all four major apple diseases yet this particular tree thought to be a Golden Delicious looks quite healthy and at twenty-Five years old it has stood the test of time. Could it be there are a couple of look alikes here confusing things? A rake from the original owner (Bob) still hangs from the branches of this tree is noteworthy as it is said that Bob used to go out every day thru the winter and knock down apples for the deer. Scions from the tree in question have been grafted onto standard rootstock and we'll see how it produces on this property. In any case the GOLDEN DELICIOUS is an apple that I for one overlooked based on the Purdue report. Chummer and I will both plant each apple side by side and see if we have each "discovered" the same apple but from different sources.
