Airlie Red Flesh is one of the best-flavored and latest-ripening red-fleshed apples, now more properly known as Hidden Rose®.
The variety was first discovered in the 1960s growing as a seedling tree on land owned by Lucky and Audrey Newell near Airlie in Oregon (between Corvallis and Independence). They sent samples to Oregon State University, but the tree remained unknown to the wider world, and they eventually sold the property and moved away.
Nothing further happened until the 1980s when Louis Kimzey, the retired manager of a neighboring farm business, Thomas Paine Farms, re-discovered the tree. At the time Kimzey thought the tree was probably Pink Pearl, a well-known red-fleshed apple, but he showed local fruit expert Bill Schultz of Philomath, Oregon, and after a few seasons Bill felt confident this was a new variety.
Bill named the new variety Airlie Red Flesh, but this soon became corrupted to Aerlies Red Flesh.
During the 1990s some local nurseries started to propagate the variety, and for a time it was sometimes known as Schwartz Apple. Eventually Louis Kimzey asked Thomas Paine farms to help commercialize the new variety, and a new name was adopted - Hidden Rose. This name was trademarked in 2001 and henceforward the variety was marketed as Hidden Rose®, with an official cultivar name Newell-Kimzey.
For more details of this interesting red-fleshed variety, see Nigel Deacon's website.
The identification paintings in the USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection span the years 1886 to 1942.
Citation: U.S. Department of Agriculture Pomological Watercolor Collection. Rare and Special Collections, National Agricultural Library, Beltsville, MD 20705.
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The following orchards grow Airlie Red Flesh:
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