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'Surprise' is a pink-fleshed apple that is the ancestor of many of the present-day pink/red-fleshed apples bred by American growers. ==History== 'Surprise' is a smallish, round apple with a dull pale green or whitish-yellow skin and very tart red-tinged flesh. It is believed to be a descendant of ''Malus niedzwetskyana'', a deeply red-fleshed apple native to Siberia and the Caucasus.〔 Whereas other descendants of ''M. niedzwetskyana'' tend to have darkish-red flesh (such as a series of apples and crabapples developed by plant breeder Niels Ebbesen Hansen), Surprise and the cultivars based on it tend to have a brighter pinkish or light reddish flesh.〔 The red pigmentation of the flesh comes mainly from a class of flavonoids called anthocyanins. Surprise began to circulate in Europe sometime before 1831, when it was reported growing in the London Horticultural Society Gardens. It was first brought to the United States by German immigrants to the Ohio Valley around 1840 and quickly intrigued plant breeders because of its unusually colored flesh.〔 The horticulturist and landscape designer Andrew Jackson Downing and his brother Charles, a noted pomologist in his own right, had a tree of Surprise in their collection in Newburgh, New York. The Downings were not, in the end, very impressed with Surprise. In the 1890 edition of their book ''The Fruit and Fruit Trees of America'', the Downings wrote it off as a "small, round, whitish yellow apple of little or no value, but admired by some for its singularity, the flesh being stained with red."〔 As a teenager in the 1870s, the horticulturist Liberty Hyde Bailey grafted Surprise onto a tree in his father's orchard in South Haven, Michigan, using scion wood that had come from Charles Downing. Years later, in his 1928 book ''The Garden Lover'', he wrote:
As late as 1957, a single tree was said to be still standing on the site of the Bailey family orchard (which had since been replaced with a hospital). 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「Surprise (apple)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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