Welcome to Orange Pippin

If you are interested in apple varieties, pears, cherries or plums, or orchards where these fruits are grown, you have come to the right place.

Our website is named after England's most famous apple variety - Cox's Orange Pippin - widely regarded as the finest of all dessert apples. 'Pippin' is an old English word derived from the French word for 'seedling', and like many old apple varieties Cox's Orange Pippin was discovered as a chance seedling.

Recent variety reviews

You can add your own comments on any variety page.

• Apple - Honeycrisp

  06 Jan 2020  Ardeth Carlson,  CO, United States

  I loved this apple variety when I first discovered it about 3 or 4 years ago. Since then I am usually very disappointed in the taste; it seems very bland and sometimes almost sour. I now purchase Fuji almost exclusively.

• Pear - Clapp Favorite

  06 Jan 2020  c Coleman,  CAMBS, United Kingdom

  My family inherited this pear tree when we moved to a small holding near Wisbech in the UK. This year I had the tree DNA and found it is a Clapps Favourite a variety I had not heard of. It was planted about 1910 in an orchard containing conference, william and comice pears. Amazing how it got here! It suffers badly from black spot, has split and needs strapping otherwise crops profusely every year. Big tree.

• Apple - Rome Beauty

  06 Jan 2020  Marri Champie,  ID, United States

  Romes are my favorite apple for cooking. I first purchased them in the grocery store in Hawaii, because they were brought in from New Zealand. They are good to eat only right after they are picked, but will get dry and mealy soon after. As a cooking apple, their flavor is like roses and they are solid and non-juicy, so pies and baked goods don't become soggy. I especially like the ones that have a lot of red veining inside; they will turn a pie pink. They are fairly easy to grow, or must be since they grow here, and nothing else does. They are a late bloomer, which makes them one of the only trees in my orchard to ever produce fruit. I have had frosts as late as June 6th out here on the prairie. Unfortunately, they seem to only have a crop every other year. They will keep in a cool garage until March. They tend to over set, and so, to get large apples, they must be thinned A LOT. I would suspect leaving just the king apple would be the bestplan, but I usually leave the king, and another. They red up nicely if allowed to stay on the tree into late October. They seem to tolerate light fall frosts well. I had one tree with a lot of red-tinted fruit, but it was the one that died back. I would like to try other late blooming apples, but none of the trees I planted other than the Romes survived out here on the Idaho prairie.

• Apple - Cosmic Crisp

  05 Jan 2020  Patricia,  OR, United States

  Wonderful apple. Will make this my usual eating apple (previous was Honeycrisp). I usually only eat 1/2 at a time and put the uneaten have in a vacuum bag in the refrigerator. After about a week I went for the saved half. The vacuum bag had failed and the apple had been exposed to air. Absolutely no discoloration, blemishes, softness or loss of texture or flavor.

• Apple - Envy

  04 Jan 2020  Bill,  KS, United States

  This one of my favorite apples. Sweet, crisp, and the skin not too thick so no need for removal.