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The Granny Smith is a tip-bearing apple cultivar, which originated in Australia in 1868.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Smith, Maria Ann (1799–1870) in the Australian Dictionary of Biography )〕 It is named after Maria Ann Smith, who propagated the cultivar from a chance seedling. The tree is thought to be a hybrid of ''Malus sylvestris'', the European Wild Apple, with the domestic apple ''M. domestica'' as the polleniser. The fruit has hard, light green skin and a crisp, juicy flesh. They go from being completely green to turning yellow when overripe. The acidity mellows significantly on ripening, and it takes on a balanced flavour. ==History== The Granny Smith cultivar originated in Eastwood, New South Wales, Australia (now a suburb of Sydney) in 1868. Its discoverer, Maria Ann Smith, had emigrated to the district from Beckley, East Sussex in 1839 with her husband Thomas. They purchased a small orchard in the area in 1855-1856 and began cultivating fruit, for which the area was a well known centre in colonial Australia. Smith had numerous children and was a prominent figure in the district, earning the nickname "Granny" Smith in her advanced years.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Granny Smith )〕 The origin of the Granny Smith apple is definitively documented, and the first description was not published until 1924. In that year, ''Farmer and Settler'' published the account of a local historian who had interviewed two men who had known Maria. One of those interviewed recalled that in 1868 he (then twelve years old) and his father had been invited to Smith's farm to inspect a chance seedling that had sprung near a creek. Smith had dumped there among the ferns the remains of French crab-apples that had been grown in Tasmania. Another story recounted that Smith had been testing French crab-apples for cooking, and throwing the apple cores out her window as she worked, found that the new cultivar sprung up underneath her kitchen windowsill. Whatever the case, Smith took it upon herself to propagate the new cultivar on her property, finding the apples good for cooking and for general consumption. Having "all the appearances of a cooking apple", they were not tart but instead were "sweet and crisp to eat".〔 She took a stall at Sydney's George Street market, where the apples stored "exceptionally well and became popular" and "once a week sold her produce there."〔 Smith died only a couple of years after her discovery (in 1870), but her work had been noticed by other local planters. Edward Gallard was one such planter, who extensively planted Granny Smith trees on his property and bought the Smith farm when Thomas died in 1876. Gallard was successful in marketing the apple locally, but it did not receive widespread attention until 1890. In that year, it was exhibited as "Smith's Seedling" at the Castle Hill Agricultural and Horticultural Show, and the following year it won the prize for cooking apples under the name "Granny Smith's Seedling". The apple was successful and the following year many were exhibiting Granny Smith apples at horticultural shows.〔 In 1895 the New South Wales Department of Agriculture recognised the cultivar and had begun growing the trees at the Government Experimental Station in Bathurst, New South Wales, recommending the gazette its properties as a late-picking cooking apple for potential export. Over the following years the government actively promoted the apple, leading to its widespread adoption.〔 Its worldwide fame grew from the fact that it could be picked from March and stored until November. Enterprising fruit merchants in 1890s and 1900s experimented with methods to transport the apples overseas in cold storage. Because of its excellent shelf life the Granny Smith could be exported long distances and most times of the year, at a time when Australian food exports were growing dramatically on the back of international demand. Granny Smiths were exported in enormous quantities after the First World War, and by 1975, 40 percent of Australia's apple crop was Granny Smith.〔 By this time it was being grown intensely elsewhere in the Southern Hemisphere, as well as in France and the United States. However, apples are genetic hybrids that produce new genetic variations in their seedlings. Because the Granny Smith is a chance (and rare) mutation, the seeds of the apple, when grown, tend to produce a tart green apple with a much less appealing taste. To preserve the exact genetic variation cutting and grafting are required. Thus, like the navel orange and the Cavendish banana, all the Granny Smith apples grown today are cuttings from the original Smith tree in Sydney. The advent of the Granny Smith Apple is now celebrated annually in Eastwood with the Granny Smith Festival. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Granny Smith」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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