Tasty bite of Newtonian history
It may look like a humble apple tree, but its roots go back to the discovery of gravity.
Most science enthusiasts know the story about the apple that fell from a tree, inspiring Sir Isaac Newton to publish his work on gravity that would later catapult humanity to the stars.
So when Awarua Satellite Ground Station manager Robin McNeill asks visiting engineers what the world’s most famous apple is, it’s Newton’s apple that he’s talking about, before showing them a descendant from that very tree growing in his garden.
McNeill loves all things spacerelated, and spends a lot of time tracking satellites shot into space – which would not have been possible without Newton’s law of universal gravitation, he said. And what better housewarming gift for a space enthusiast than the tree that started it all.
The Malus pumila ‘‘Rosaceae’’, or Flower of Kent, now growing heartily on McNeill’s property, is one of a handful of scions, or cuttings, growing around New Zealand.
The original is still standing at Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire, England, where Newton escaped a bubonic plague outbreak for what historians call his Year of Wonders, owing to his contributions to optics, physics and calculus.
It was later propagated and planted in the grounds of England’s National Physical Laboratory.
In 1957, after the International Geophysical Year – an international scientific project to mark the end of the Cold War – the British Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) decided to share cuttings from Newton’s tree with scientific agencies around the world.
A scion was sent to New Zealand and planted at the DSIR Physics and Engineering Laboratory in Gracefield, Wellington.
Fast-forward a few more years to 2013, and the Gifford Observatory Trust considered selling cuttings to raise funds for new equipment.
It was then that the provenance of the trees growing in Lower Hutt was tested, and McNeill was gifted his branch.
It’s been growing ‘‘from strength to strength’’ he said, and although he has to fight the birds, the dog, and sometimes the wind for his share, McNeill said the bright green and red apples the tree produced were pretty tasty.
A graft has been added to the South Coast Environment Society’s heritage fruit trees collection.