Ribston Pippin
Ribston Pippin is a triploid cultivar of apple.
Synonyms
Essex Pippin, Beautiful Pippin, Formosa, Glory of York, Ribstone, Rockhill's Russet and Travers.
Origin
This apple was grown in 1708 from one of three apple pips (seeds) sent from Normandy to Sir Henry Goodricke of Ribston Hall at Knaresborough, Yorkshire, and the original trunk did not die until 1835. It then sent up a new shoot and, on the same root, lived until 1928.
Ribston is one of the possible parents of the Cox's Orange Pippin.
Description
The apple skin is a yellow, flushed orange, and streaked red with russet at the base and apex.
The yellow flesh is firm, fine-grained, and sweet with a pear taste.
Irregularly shaped and sometimes lopsided, the apple is usually round to conical in shape and flattened at the base with distinct ribbing. Weather conditions during ripening cause a marbling or water coring of the flesh, and in very hot weather, the fruit will ripen prematurely.
Culture
A vigorous tree with upright growth, its medium-sized ovate to oval shaped leaves are a deep green color and distinctly folded with sharp, regular and shallow serrations. The surface of the leaf is smooth and dull with a heavy pubescence.
It is very slow to begin bearing, and the proper pollinators will increase the fruitfulness. Lord Lambourne has been recommended for a pollinator, as well as Adam's Pearmain, James Grieve and Egremont Russet.
Ribston Pippin has one of the highest vitamin C contents; 30 mg/100g.[citation needed]
In literature
The apple appears in a verse by Hilaire Belloc called The False Heart:
| “ | I said to Heart, "How goes it?" Heart replied: "Right as a Ribstone Pippin!" But it lied.[1] |
” |
Also in Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native. Second book chapter two: 'Now a few russets, Tamsin. He used to like those as well as ribstones.'
And in one Sherlock Holmes story (The Adventure of Black Peter in The Return of Sherlock Holmes) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle an incidental character is described as a "a little Ribston pippin of a man, with ruddy cheeks and fluffy side-whiskers".
In "Pickwick Papers" by Charles Dickens, "A little hard-headed, Ribston-pippin-faced man was conversing with a fat old gentleman in one corner..." in Manor Farm at the beginning of Chapter 6.
Irish writer Helen Wykham's first novel was titled Ribstone Pippins and had Belloc's poem as its epigraph.[2]
Notes
- ↑ A Belloc Sampler at time.com
- ↑ Helen Wykham, Ribstone Pippins. Dublin: Allen Figgis & Co., 1974.
External links
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