Facts for Kids

Controlled atmosphere storage helps apples last a long time. In big cold rooms the air has less oxygen and is kept cool, so apples breathe more slowly and stay firm for months. Fruit also makes a tiny gas called ethylene that speeds ripening; storage rooms try to limit this so apples do not soften too fast.

At home, most apples keep about three weeks in a kitchen pantry and four to six weeks in the refrigerator. Some kinds, like Granny Smith and Fuji, can last much longer. Growers sometimes pick certain apples a bit early if they want them to keep well for many months.

Nutrition means the healthy things food gives to your body. Apples are mostly water and natural sugars, and they give fiber and vitamin C. The fiber helps your tummy work well and keeps you feeling full. Apples are low in fat and easy to carry as a snack.

People eat apples fresh, cook them into pies or sauces, and press them into juice or cider. Different varieties taste sweeter or more tart, so you can pick the kind you like for eating raw, cooking, or making drinks.

An apple is a type of fruit called a pome. It usually ripens in late summer or autumn. Inside the apple’s core are the true fruits called carpels; there are most often five of these little chambers and each one can hold one or two seeds. The soft, juicy part we eat grows from the base of the apple flower, not the carpels themselves.

Apples come in many sizes from small to quite large and in many shapes like round, tall, or squat. The skin can be green, yellow, red, or a mix, and the flesh is usually pale yellowish-white but sometimes has pink or green shades.

Apple is the round, sweet or tart fruit that grows on apple trees. Most apples people eat come from a tree called Malus domestica. Apples have been grown for thousands of years in parts of Europe and Asia, and later came to North America with European settlers long ago. Because apples are tasty and easy to store, they became important food in many places. Apples also appear in stories and traditions from different cultures, so people often think of them as special in myths and religion as well.

Greek myths often use apples as special objects. In one famous tale, a golden apple was thrown into a party with the words “for the fairest,” and three goddesses all wanted it. This led to a story called the Judgment of Paris, where a choice about who should get the apple started a long quarrel among gods and people. The story shows how a simple object can cause big problems when people argue over it.

In other Greek stories, apples can stand for love, beauty, or even a kind of magic. Writers used apples as simple symbols that listeners could understand—an apple could be a gift, a test, or a clue about someone’s character. These ideas helped the myths feel familiar and memorable to people long ago and today.

Apples are mostly water, about 86%, and have about 14% carbohydrates. That means a small apple gives you a little energy—about 52 calories per 100 grams—and some dietary fiber to help your tummy feel full. They have almost no fat or protein, and they do not give large amounts of vitamins by themselves, so apples are best as part of a mixed, healthy snack or meal.

Because they hold water and stay crisp, apples are great to eat raw or to cook. Kids often enjoy sliced apples in salads, spread with nut butter, or baked with a sprinkle of cinnamon. Apples also become applesauce, juice, dried apple chips, and pie filling. Different varieties are sweeter or tarter, and some are crunchy while others are softer, so people pick the type that works best for the recipe.

Cultivar is a word for a particular variety of apple people have chosen and grown. There are thousands of cultivars. Plant breeders and fruit farms try to make apples that are crisp, colorful, tasty, easy to ship, and able to store well. They also work to make trees give many apples and resist diseases.

Some new varieties, such as Honeycrisp, became very popular because they are extra crunchy and juicy. Older, local kinds can have special flavors but sometimes do not store or ship well, so they are often kept by home growers and small markets.

Ripen means when a fruit is ready to eat. Apples ripen at different times: some are ready in summer (for example Sweet Bough and Duchess), many in the fall (for example Blenheim), and some keep ripening into winter (for example King and Tolman Sweet). Because of these differences, orchards have apples to pick across many months.

Farmers and families pick apples by hand. Trees that are not cut back can grow very tall and make a lot of fruit, but picking becomes harder. Small or dwarf trees are easier to harvest and still give useful amounts of apples. On farms people often use special three-point ladders that fit between branches so pickers can reach fruit safely.

Apple trees are self-incompatible, which means a single tree usually cannot make full fruit on its own. To make apples, pollen must move from the flowers of one compatible tree to the flowers of another tree. Bees, especially honey bees, are the main helpers that carry pollen. Orchard mason bees are also used on farms to help pollinate.

Apple types are grouped by when they bloom, so farmers plant kinds that bloom at the same time or in nearby groups. For example, a tree in group A can usually be pollinated by another tree in A or the next group B, but not by trees that bloom much earlier or later.

Domestication means people began to grow and choose plants for farm use, and apples were domesticated a very long time ago. Scientists think this started in the Tian Shan mountains of Central Asia maybe four thousand to ten thousand years ago, and apple trees spread west along trade routes like the Silk Road. Over time, people mixed wild apple trees with trees they planted, which changed the fruit.

Grafting—joining cuttings from one tree onto the roots of another—became important for growing reliable kinds of apples. Apples were brought to North America by colonists in the 1600s and later became a big crop in some regions.