Many apple varieties that have not been commercially available for decades have been lost to history, but there are people called “apple hunters” who go in search of once-popular apples to save them from extinction. My guest this week, Jude Schuenemeyer is an apple hunter who is here to share a success story: the rediscovery of the Colorado Orange apple.
Jude and his wife, Addie, are co-directors and founders of the Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project, or MORP, in Colorado. They look for old trees and old orchards, document them and collect grafts. They also use DNA testing to identify apple varieties that are not easy to recognize. They founded MORP in Cortez on the Colorado Plateau more than 20 years ago “to preserve Colorado’s fruit-growing heritage and restore an orchard culture and economy to the southwestern region.”
Addie and Jude Schuenemeyer are the co-directors and founders of the Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project. (Photo Courtesy Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project)
How Jude and Addie Schuenemeyer Became Apple Hunters
Jude and Addie worked on Hotshot crews, fighting wildfires.
“Hotshots is an incredible experience, but it’s not good for a long-term relationship,” Jude says, explaining their pivot to nursery owners.
They leased a little neighborhood nursery on a whim and inherited the customers who had been visiting that nursery for 50 years — multigenerational local members of the farming community.
“They realized we didn’t exactly know what we were doing, but they appreciated how hard we could work, and they became our teachers,” Jude says.
Their customers taught them about how to grow things at a high altitude and also shared the early fruit-growing history of the county.
“They gave us articles written by this person, Jasper Hall, the ‘fruit wizard of Montezuma County’ from the 1890s. They gave us copies of early Montezuma County Fair records from the early 1900s. They introduced us to the people that still had their grandparents’ orchards. They would tell us about their grandparents’ orchards and then introduce us to the people that owned the orchards at that time. These are relationships that we have to this day,” Jude says. “Many of the trees are still there, but so many of these people have now passed.”
When they started running the nursery, clients would ask if the nursery would be getting in old varieties they remembered from when they were kids. Aleen Glenn, who had started the nursery some 50 years before, was a seed saver who loves old varieties. “She had numerous, numerous tomato varieties that were really rare that she still had the seeds of,” Jude says.
Jude and Addie went looking for seed savers who had the old apple tree varieties their customers sought. This was pre-internet, so it was a tall order. They found the Fruit Nut Berry Index and compared it to old county fair records. Many of the varieties in the old records were no longer in the Fruit Nut Berry Index.
They realized that some of these cultivars that dropped off the index are probably still around in the old orchards of Montezuma County.
This apple variety is called Winter Banana. The banana-like flavor is faint but distinct. Originated in Indiana in 1870s. (Photo Courtesy Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project)
Montezuma County’s Fruit Growing Heritage
“We estimate there’s 10,000 trees here in southwest Colorado, mostly Montezuma County, that are 80 to 130, 140 years old,” Jude says. “It is an extraordinary collection of intact orchards or nearly intact orchards. There’s no place like it in the United States, and it was completely forgotten.”
Jude notes that there have been trends over time in the orchard world. “The early-1800s through the mid-1800s was the golden age of pomology, where we went from a hundred and something apple cultivars to, by 1900s, maybe 20,000 cultivars.”
In Montezuma County, it was common for an orchard to plant between 20 and 40 varieties. Then in the 1920s, with the influence of extension agents, the idea rose that an apple grower only needed to grow three or four outstanding varieties and get rid of the rest.
“They went monoculture. They were still on Malus domestica rootstock. So these are big trees — 25-, 30-foot spacing on them. It’s park-like,” Juda says. “It is like being in a park when you’re in these orchards, they’re gorgeous.”
Most orchards that stayed productive transitioned from wide-space monocultures to dwarf trees, trellises and hedgerows.
“A big difference between the old orchards and new orchards is that old orchards were meant when they were planted to be passed from generation to generation,” Jude says. “It was expected they would grow in value, that this is a gift you were giving.”
Meanwhile, new orchards tear everything out every 10 years and plant what they think consumers will want, he adds.
The Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project preserves growing heritage. (Photo Courtesy Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project)
Pioneering Fruit Grower Jesse Frazer
The earliest successful commercial orchard in Colorado was planted by Jesse Frazer in Florence, along the Arkansas River, south of Denver.
Frazer planted thousands of trees, and when thousands of trees died, he planted thousands more. “He was a person of enormous persistency,” Jude says.
At that time, no one thought an orchard would grow there. In fact, people thought the idea was crazy. Then in 1859, a person on Blake Street in Denver sold an apple for $1.25.
“That’s over $50 for an apple adjusted for inflation,” Jude says. “So that made people realize that maybe you could grow fruit here.”
Frazer didn’t just grow and sell fruit, he also grafted and sold trees, having a foundational impact on Colorado’s orchards.
The Origin of the Colorado Orange Apple
On his orchard in the last 1860s, Frazer had grafted an apple seedling rootstock, and the graft, known as a scion, died, as was common. He left the rootstock in place, intending to graft it with a new scion the next year, but he never did. The seedling grew big and vigorous, and in 1872 it bore fruit.
“It was a healthy-looking tree,” Jude says. “So he left it in place to see what it would bear. When it bore fruit, he recognized it as a beautiful winter apple, orange-ish in color, and an exceptional keeper. Back in an age before refrigeration and controlled atmospheric storage, winter apples were really important.”
Though the rootstock had almost certainly come from either Iowa or Missouri, the newly discovered apple was given the name Colorado Orange.
Winter apples gave people a high-quality food source that they could store, Jude said, which is incredibly important. Winter apples are one of the most storable forms of vitamin C, he notes.
Every single apple from seed is unique, just like every person is unique, Jude points out. When an apple variety is desirable, apple breeders propagate it by cloning — they take a scion (a young shoot) and graft it to a proven rootstock.
A long time ago, seedlings were used as rootstock. Because they were grown from seed, each was unique, though almost always of the species Malus domestica. In modern agriculture, rootstock comes from root grafts.
Because the original Colorado Orange Apple came from a seedling that was allowed to mature without having anything grafted into it, it was unique.
There are other examples of orchards stumbling upon a high-quality apple variety that started as a mere rootstock that was never intended to produce fruit. This includes Purple Mountain Majesty, a purple-skinned apple.
An old apple tree at French Orchard.
(Photo Courtesy Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project)
The Colorado Orange Apple Takes Off
The Colorado Orange Apple was on the Stark Bro’s 100 Best Apples of All-Time list. It was used in several plant breeding programs, including at the University of Iowa and the University of Minnesota.
Dallas DeWeese, the founder of Iron Mountain Nurseries, was the first to talk to Frazer about growing out and getting the rights to propagate Colorado Orange. DeWeese wanted to name it Frazer Seedling, but Frazer didn’t want an apple named after him.
Summer Apples Versus Winter Apples
Jude explains that summer apples go from too tart, to ripe, to mealy. If you can eat them when they are ripe, it is an incredibly complex culinary experience, he says.
“Most winter apples, right off the tree, are not remarkably flavored,” he adds. “It’s not that they’re bad, but they haven’t had their flavor come out yet. Most winter apples start to get really good sometime around Christmas, early December to Christmas, and then they stay really good in storage.”
Some will keep in ordinary storage until April, May or June of the following year, and their flavor increases. “They’re high-sugar apples, and that flavor just crystallizes in them as they sit longer,” Jude explains.
Summer apples are their best for a short window. Eat them too early and they are tart. Wait too long and they become mealy.
(Photo Courtesy Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project)
Rediscovering the Colorado Orange Apple
The Colorado Orange apple was believed to be extinct. The first time Jude and Addie heard about it was in an orchard and county fair record in Lakeview, Colorado.
“We had never seen Colorado Orange listed before,” Jude said. “We had never seen it in anything else, and this was still early in our research and learning.”
They had heard of the orchard the cultivar had come from, John Dunning’s orchard. Dunning was the grandfather of the Montezuma County historian Miss June Head.
“We had been in that orchard before. So we knew where to go to look to see, but we had no idea,” Jude said. “There was no description of a Colorado Orange. So of course, we didn’t know what we were looking for.”
They later found it referenced in a Colorado State Board of Horticulture report from Fremont County.
“So we knew it was a cultivar that was not just for Montezuma County, that it had spread to Montezuma County, presumably from somewhere else,” Jude says.
They had at least one false lead on the Colorado Orange that was ruled out via DNA testing. But then they heard from Riley Diana, who reported he had a Colorado Orange.
Jude and Addie went to the Diana orchard, mapped it out, and took cuttings and leaf samples from the tree and sent it out for a DNA test. Well, that one came back as a Ben Davis apple. Riley was still confident that he had a Colorado Orange apple, so Jude and Addie returned to test another tree. Using a detailed orchard map, they knew that Riley did not bring them back to the same tree as before.
“We looked at the bark and right away we knew it wasn’t a Ben Davis — whole different bark type and bark pattern. So then we start looking up and there’s still some apples hanging. We look on the ground and there’s apples there in the grass and in the duff. And though it is December and other winter apples like the Ben Davis in that orchard were frozen to mush, these were still solid. They were still really firm, which tells you it’s a great long-keeping winter apple.”
The apples were orange rather than red and oblate rather than round. They were also hard-ribbed and beautiful looking.
Riley had taken over the orchard from his father-in-law, and his father-in-law’s family were Steinmeyers, an old Canyon City fruit-growing family. Based on where in the orchard the tree was growing, it would have been planted around the right time for a Colorado Orange, and it was five or 10 miles away from Frazer’s nursery.
Jude and Addie worked with the Historic Fruit Tree Working Group of North America, which consists of groups like the Lost Apple Project in Idaho and Washington and various individuals, to DNA test and confirm they had found the Colorado Orange apple. Because they knew how old the cultivar is, they could rule out candidates with the DNA of newer varieties. In fact, the Colorado Orange apple had no DNA-matched relatives recorded in the United States.
To get definite proof, they needed a horticultural specimen, but this was impossible because the Colorado Orange was thought to be extinct. However, there was a wax cast made of it.
Miriam Palmer, who taught at the Colorado Agricultural College (now Colorado State University), was an entomologist and scientific illustrator. She went to county fairs and did watercolors of apple specimens as well as wax casts that she hand painted.
Palmer’s art and cast of the Colorado Orange, kept in the CSU archives, matched what Jude and Addie found at Riley Diana’s orchard. It was the closest they could get to comparing apples to apples.
“The Miriam Palmer waxed apple collection is every bit as important as finding the Colorado Orange,” Jude says. “She is somebody that was almost completely forgotten, mostly because she was a woman. She was one of the first female professors up there, battled them out and did not give up.”
An unnamed old apple variety with the parents Jonathan x Ben Davis. (Photo Courtesy Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project)
Apple Preservation
So many cultivars have gone extinct because they were not continuously propagated by grafting. “If people don’t graft, if people don’t realize the value of these cultivars, they go away,” Jude says.
Clones can’t be put in a museum, he says. They have to be propagated to stay alive.
When Jude and Addie saw Riley’s Colorado Orange tree, it was down to a limb. They collected what cuttings they could, which was fortunate because that tree died not long after. They were able to yield 13 successful grafts from the cuttings.
They grew out those cuttings and were able to get 50 grafts. They shared grafts with others. “Our feeling was that if this is going to be saved, you can’t have it in one place,” Jude says. “It can’t be about you, it’s got to be about the cultivar.”
Judge and Addie continue to propagate more. This year they grafted 100 Colorado Oranges that they will eventually offer for sale.
“Our greatest desire is to see these cultivars back out growing again, that they don’t go extinct, that multiple people are growing them, selling them, enjoying them,” Jude says. “Whether it’s farmer’s market or home use or small-scale commercial. Any of that is fine with us, but it’s to get these out to as many different places so that they do not go extinct. And I think that’s one of the most important things with the Colorado Orange. It is still close to extinction. It is by no means saved in the bigger picture. It is still an extraordinarily rare apple.”
He says that of all the apples they grow, Colorado Orange probably has the best chance of being successful again. “Having the name Colorado in it helps from a marketing standpoint,” he adds.
Much of the work they do in apple hunting and preservation is foundational, he says. “A lot of this we aren’t going to understand probably in our lifetime. It’s about passing it forward. It’s about taking these opportunities and making them available for other people. If these cultivars go extinct, if they die off, if you’re down to the last tree and that tree dies, no one will have the opportunities with those trees ever again. No one will ever know those fruit again. So it’s not about us figuring out what it is. It’s about us being able to pass something forward.
The Old Fort Orchard. To keep old apple varieties going, they must be propagated.
(Photo Courtesy Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project)
If you haven’t listened to my conversation with Jude Schuenemeyer on the Colorado Orange apple, you can do so now by clicking the Play button on the green bar near the top of this post.
Do you have a favorite long-lost apple? Let us know your experience in the comments below.
Links & Resources
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Episode 096: Tips for Fruit Growing Success: Selection, Maintenance & Advice, with Dr. Lee Reich
Episode 138: Why Pruning Matters: Principles, Recommendations and Tips from the Pruner’s Bible
Episode 215: Roots Demystified: The Amazing Unseen Things Roots Do
Episode 246: Growing Figs Anywhere, Even in Cold Climates, with Lee Reich
Episode 344: Grow Fruit Trees Successfully
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“Colorado’s Fruit Growing History: Historic Context of Orchards” by Jude & Adalyn Schuenemeyer
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