Apples - a rare chimera: Gala

I was contacted recently by John Caesar, who lives near Lincoln. He sent some fascinating pictures of an apple chimera he found in a pack of Gala apples from a supermarket, which are shown below.









A chimera is a plant with regions characteristic of both parents. Famous chimeras are broom-laburnam, hawthorn-medlar, and many ornamental variegated plants, but chimeras in apple fruits are rare; this is the first one I've seen. It obviously represents a mistake in growth by the plant.

The parents of Gala are Kidd's Orange Red and Golden Delicious. The non-Gala part of the apple looks very like Kidd's Orange:




To my surprise I found some chimeras from my Allens Everlasting tree - most of the apples are entirely russet, but a few of them are half russet, half not. The russet halves have the best flavour; the smooth parts are rather watery.

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There's quite a good article on chimeras in Wikipedia, and there is a discussion about chimeras in potatoes (Golden Wonder / Langworthy) on this site. Click on the link Potatoes and Dragons to see this.

You'll find a few more pictures if you type the words

Brogdale chimera

into a search engine.

compiled by Nigel Deacon / Diversity website

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