Owner's comments
This tree was retrieved from the riverbank of the Hawea river at Wanaka, it grew as a root sport from its parent tree, the original stem was about 1.5 meters tall but seriously damaged (almost ringbarked) by opossums or rabbits and as there was a new shoot sprouting from below the damaged section the damaged trunk was cut off and the shoot encouraged to grow, it was trained as it did so. It took seven years fot the new trunk to produce fruit, one apple that first year and has had improving crops each year since. I had no idea what the tree was when I retrieved it from the river bank but I liked the taste of the fruit from the parent tree, but I have found out its variety since. It intriges me about the old apple trees that grow beside river or lake beds and roadsides in our country and I come to the conclusion that they may have come about as feed snacks for hungry work horses in our pioneering days.
