The apple of all eyes

Motherhood and apple pie are unarguable benefits but both would be diminished without the original Bramley apple tree. It was planted by the young Mary Ann Brailsford in 1809 from a pip in a pie being made by her mother Elizabeth, who wisely resisted grubbing up the unpropitious seedling before it fruited. The tree, in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, is the mother of the thousands of tons of Bramleys cooked each year. Nottingham Trent University means to buy the cottage garden where the mother tree grows, now alarmingly stricken with fungus. Next to it, a cloned offspring thrives, said to have a branchiness lost by grafted descendants. In Southwell Minster, the Bramley is celebrated in stained glass. No wonder, for if Eden’s apple gave the world sorrow, Southwell’s brought it only wholesome delight.