hearing

varieties began as chance seedlings. But chance seedlings do not reach our supermarkets as a matter of course.

Apples frequently produce chance seedlings. But for a chance seedling to be put into production and become known as a variety, many factors are involved, not least people who recognise distinctive apples that will have value in their contemporary context.

Only a select few chance seedlings are ever turned into varieties with impact in the orchard industry. For that to happen, there need to be people who make the necessary investment of care, time or funding – just as Maud did.

In its inconvenient location, the unfamiliar apple tree was almost cut down many a time, but it survived thanks to Maud’s protection and care. On one occasion when he almost destroyed it, Bob recalled getting a severe telling-off from his mum, who “stood it up again, bandaged it up and it took off again”.

Reflecting Maud’s importance in the creation of this new variety, the apple was given the name Lady Williams. This was the name that the little girl, Lynette Green, who lived on a neighbouring farm, used for Maud.

Maud’s recognition of the qualities of the fruit from this tree, and her initiatives to protect it, were about to enable a remarkable new phase of the Australian apple industry.

Lady Williams apples were intro - duced commercially in 1968, the same year Maud died. By the early ‘70s, the Lady Williams was the subject of attention at the WA Department of Agriculture and its new apple-breeding program. There, a team led by the horticulturalist John Cripps was experimenting with combinations of Lady Williams and Golden Delicious.

In an interview conducted as part of the Apples and Pears Oral History Project in 2010, Cripps reflected that the cross-breeding process involved intensive manual labour, high degrees of dexterity and immense patience, a set of qualities Cripps identified in women technicians.

In 1984, one of the more than 100,000 experimental seedlings produced an attractive fruit; it was bright pink, crisp, flavoursome and long-storing. Cripps had a hand in both its names: the Cripps Pink, and its commercial name, Pink Lady. It was the first apple variety ever to be trademarked. From the same breeding program emerged the Sundowner and more recently, in 1992, the Bravo.

All the world’s Lady Williams, Pink Lady, Sundowner and Bravo trees share DNA with the original tree Maud Williams had nurtured many years before.

Susan Broomhall, is director, Gender and Women’s History Research Centre, Australian Catholic University. Republished from The Conversation.