Wild, Tamed, Lost, Revived: The Surprising Story of Apples in the South

Diane Flynt's book is a celebration of heirloom apples. Part memoir and part history, Flynt draws on her own experience as an orchardist and cider maker to place southern apples in a historic context. When Flynt opened Foggy Ridge Ciders in 1997, many of the historic cider apples that had once been used to produce complex beverages were lost to time. Flynt wanted to create ciders that were connected to the land and its history, which sent her on a search for lost varieties and their stories.The first section of the book, “Wild,” focuses on the introduction of apples to the South and their cultivation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Apples are heterozygous, meaning that apple seeds are highly variable, producing plants that have different characteristics from the parent plant. This led to the proliferation of apple varieties across the South. Southern farmers took grafts from favored trees and kept diverse orchards with varieties suited to cider making, drying, baking, and eating fresh. As Flynt notes, many orchards were cultivated by Native Americans, enslaved people, and women. Specific information about the labor of these groups is often lost to history, but hints remain in the names of varieties, such as the Junaluska apple, named after the Cherokee leader.In the “Tamed” section, Flynt turns her attention to the ways in which apples were domesticated in the nineteenth century. Southern nurserymen cultivated apples that were suited to southern tastes and the southern climate. US Department of Agriculture scientists began documenting apple varieties just when many varieties started to disappear. Flynt notes that by 1930, nearly 50 percent of apples recorded in 1880 were extinct (116). As apples became tamed, a convergence of factors led to varieties being lost, as the author explores in the third section of the book. As southern orchardists focused on profitable varieties for commercial purposes, the number of varieties declined. Many people left the farm, losing connections with family heirloom varieties. The development of commercial apple production in western states depressed the market for southern apples. Combined, these factors severely reduced the number of orchards and variety of apples in the South.In the final section of the book, entitled “Revived,” Flynt discusses the efforts of southern orchardists and cideries to revive heirloom varieties. She draws on her own experiences and interviews with other southern producers who are working to preserve the South's rich apple history through agritourism and cider production. Flynt's case for reviving heirloom apples goes beyond the usual arguments about preserving genetic diversity or finding trees that can survive climate change. She argues that reviving heirloom apples is important because they provide a link with the past. They are part of our shared history. To lose history is to lose who we are.Flynt is not a historian. Early chapters on the colonial and nineteenth-century South are largely summaries of other scholarship. Serious scholars will find little new information in these sections. Chapters are organized thematically within each section. Overall, the thematic organization is effective and allows Flynt to focus on individual stories; however, there is some repetition in the “Wild” and “Tamed” sections. For example, in several chapters, Flynt mentions the role of Native Americans, enslaved peoples, and women in the cultivation of southern apple varieties without offering additional information. In some chapters, historical exposition is minimal.While Flynt's book is somewhat lacking as a history, it shines as a memoir. Her writing is vivid and poetic; one can almost smell and taste the apples. Her passion for orchards and heirloom apples is infectious. She paints a captivating picture of her journey as an orchardist and cider maker. In this context, the historical sections of the book root her story in the deep legacy of southern apple culture. In tracing these roots, Flynt invites the reader to meditate on the importance of the past and reminds us that we can only truly be rooted in a place when we know its history.