Know your apples

Apples are officially divided into seven groups, determined by when they produce their blossom. In practice this can be reduced to five, as very few fall into the first or last groups. But an apple in Group 2, such as ‘Egremont Russet’ or ‘Ribston Pippin’, may finish flowering before one in Group 5, like ‘Newton Wonder’ or ‘Mother, will have opened the first bud. So trees from these groups are unlikely to act as a pollinator for each other. So you can have two perfectly healthy trees, both flowering

freely yet producing little or no fruit.

A few varieties, such as ‘James Grieve’, ‘Charles Ross’ and ‘Worcester Pearmain’, are to some extent self-pollinating and will produce fruit without any other apple nearby. But if you have varieties from the same group or adjacent groups then the chances of pollination are very high. So, ‘Blenheim Orange’ (Group 3) can cross-pollinate with both ‘Gala’ (Group 4) and ‘Lord Lambourne’ (Group 2), as well as any of the dozens of varieties also in Group 3. It follows that two trees of the same variety will be excellent pollinators for each other.