Handbook of Nature Study Lesson #184: Apples

October 11, 2022

Handbook of Nature Study Lesson #184: Apples

"The apple is a nutritious fruit, wholesome and easily digested. The varieties of apple differ in shape, color, size, color, texture and flavor. A perfect apple has no bruise upon it and no wormholes in it."
-Handbook of Nature Study, page 669

The Apple Orchard Tradition, 2010

We are fortunate enough to have an apple tree in our backyard, so our study of the apple and its tree began in 2008 with picking the apples off the tree. We looked at the apple's shape and determined that it was neither round, nor egg-shaped, but something in between; a little heart-shaped, but not exactly. Then we looked at it's color. We talked about how some apples are red, some yellow and some are green. Our apples are an interesting blend of all three colors with lots of streaks and freckles, and we talked about how that probably meant that the tree had been a graft of more than one tree to create this blend. The stem is long and woody. and the depression when the stem grow is deep.

We looked at the bottom of the apple and noted that you could see five "scales." We had studied the Rose family and learned that the Apple tree is in the Rose family and that the fruit from these plants form beneath the flowers. The five pointed star at the base of these fruits is formed by the sepals that used to be around the blossom.

We cut open the apples and noted that the carpels, or the cells that hold the seeds (5, of course) form a 5-pointed star when cut across in half. When cut along the core, the carpels remain in tact and you can see that the case is smooth and shiny and that they each hold the seeds pointing toward the stem. The whole system is so precisely organized and consistent.

It is amazing that you can see something like an apple a million times in your life and never notice these details until you really look at them.

I had never noticed before myself that the flesh part of the inner apple has a division between the inner core and the outer core. The inner core is "marked off from the rest of the pulp by the core lines, fain in some varieties but distinct in others." You really can see these lines that surround the core of the apple and branch out vertically to divide the apple into two parts. These lines almost look like twinkle lines around the inner star. It is amazing that you can see something like an apple a million times in your life and never notice these details until you really look at them. We decided to make apple prints to put in their nature notebooks. We took our cut apples and dipped them in white paint and printed them on various apple-colored papers. We will let these dry, cut them out and add the various parts of the apple later on in the week, using real seeds and markers.

Going to the orchard to pick apples has been a bit of a tradition in our house even though we have an apple tree in the backyard. There is something very festive about it. I remember the first time we went. It was one of my oldest student's first activities when we started homeschooling. The next oldest child was still a baby in the stroller. The orchard had just gotten in Fuji apples and we tried them for the first time. Oh, they were so good! This year we went to an orchard very close to home.

Apple Orchard, 2010

We decided this year to revisit the apple for nature study and that we would compare and contrast different types of apples this time.

I cut a Golden Delicious, Gala, Honeycrisp and Winesap apple in half, left half on the plate so they could compare the outside look of the apple, and cut the other apple into quarters so they each could try a piece of each apple.

We compared them inside and out, their scent, their shape, their color, and of course, their taste. I tried to get them to use as descriptive words as possible and I asked them to rank them according to how much they liked them

We discussed how color, texture and taste could affect their desirability.

And then, I invited them to make pastel pictures of the apple of their choice.