I'm looking at an apple on my desk. A peculiar green apple - its freelance shape and surface texture are a supermarketing nightmare. The stem points east, the shoulders point west, the front is flat, and the back is round. A slight lumpiness pervades the skin which is slicked over with a waxy film - nature's way of protecting the fruit from water loss.
This Greasy Pippin - for that is its lovely name - is an old Irish apple, once common in orchards in Fermanagh, and sometimes grown in Tyrone too. But this particular fruit was plucked in Dublin, in a special orchard where the Lamb-Clarke collection of historic Irish apple cultivars grows. Named after two noted pomologists, Dr E.J. Clarke and Dr J.G.D. Lamb, the collection now numbers about 180 varieties. It resides - along with about 200 other European and American apple cultivars - at UCD's orchard, a three-hectare plot of prime south Co Dublin land. It's "the most expensive orchard in Ireland", jokes Michael Hennerty, Professor of Horticulture.
Hennerty heads the UCD branch of an historic apple project that is run jointly with the Irish Seed Saver Association in Co Clare and the Armagh Orchard Trust, and is part-funded by the Department of Agriculture. He loves apples. He eats two - "they're small" - in the space of 10 minutes. "They're my favourite fruits." And not just his: they're also the most popular fruits in the world (where there is a choice), he says.
The Irish project aims to replace and expand an earlier collection of domestic apples assembled about 50 years ago by J.G.D. Lamb. That orchard - on the site of DCU in Glasnevin - met a sad end at the maw of a bulldozer. The less said about that incident, the better. Moving right on, the current project on apples - together with similar projects involving Galway sheep and Kerry cattle - is part of this country's endeavour to protect ancient agricultural breeds, as undertaken at the Rio Convention in the early 1990s.
The core of the UCD apple collection was recruited from Britain's National Fruit Collection at the Brogdale Horticultural Trust - which fortunately held samples of many of the apples originally collected by J.G.D. Lamb. Other varieties came from the Irish Seed Savers and the Armagh Orchard Trust. And last year, one old cultivar, the Munster Tulip, "an ugly apple with a curiously sunken eye," according to Lamb's thesis, was discovered among the hundreds of fruits sent to UCD after an article appeared in The Farmer's Journal. It was successfully propagated by Kevin Kenny, a senior technician and wizard grafter who in some cases has had only an inch of usable material from which to make new plants.
But if you're reading this and have possession of an interesting, old and unnamed apple, please do not pop it in a bag and post it to the people at UCD. Each year they are bombarded with anonymous apples in search of an identity. Most turn out to be English varieties such as Charles Ross, Laxton's Superb and Allington Pippin. These were given free to farmers between 1901 and 1903 as part of an apple-planting scheme run by the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. However, if you know the whereabouts of the following named varieties: Abraham (a cider variety not seen in 200 years), Dunkitt, Holland Pippin of the Blackwater, Leixlip Pippin, Red Kane, Striped Sax, Tom Chestnut, Tommy and Valentine - then Donall Flanagan (a research student who is testing the collection for apple viruses) or Prof Hennerty or will be delighted to hear from you. And, "this is just the beginning," says Hennerty. "Then we move onto pears. And there may be plums also. We didn't know we had apples until someone started collecting them."
Apples have been favourite fruits in this country for centuries: apple seeds were found in the Viking latrines at Wood Quay, and an apple found in Haughey's Fort in Armagh has been carbon-dated to 3,000 years. DNA tests will show whether it is a crab apple or a cultivated apple. If it is the latter, it will mean that Armagh is the oldest proven apple-producing county in Europe.
An apple identification service is available at Brogdale Horticultural Trust, Brogdale Road, Faversham, Kent, ME13 8XZ, England. Tel: 0044-1795- 535286/535462; fax: 531710. Send two or three examples of each variety to be identified, packed carefully to avoid bruising. There is a stg£10 charge for each variety. McNamara Nurseries, Midleton, Co Cork, holds a collection of old Irish apples (on M26 rootstock) which have been propagated from graftwood obtained from Britain's National Fruit Collection at the Brogdale Horticultural Trust. Tel: 021- 613733; fax: 021-613666.