No fruit in world history has as much historical and religious symbolism, as perhaps the apple does. From the beginning, apples have been associated with love, beauty, health, comfort, sensuality, sexuality, fertility and wisdom.

Perhaps the earliest tree to be cultivated, apples have been around for more than 4000 years now, and has thousands of varieties throughout the world. The word ‘apple’ comes from the Old English ‘aeppel’. Apples have been around since the Iron Age. In the 1st century AD, Pliny the Elder in Rome listed out 36 varieties of apples. Alexander the Great is credited with discovering dwarfed apples in Asia Minor circa 300 BC.  Apples were brought to the United States by the Pilgrims in 1620. One of America's fondest legends is that of Johnny Appleseed. Close in the lines of this legend is a true story of a man named John Chapman, born in Leominster, Massachusetts in 1774, who is credited with planting over 10,000 square miles of orchards. 

Captain Aemilius Simmons is said to have brought apple seeds to Fort Vancouver in Washington, which is now the highest producer of apples in the US, in the year 1824. Two men from Idaho, Henderson Luelling and William Meek, began the commercialization of the apple industry in Northwestern US.

CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE OF APPLES

Apples occur in many religious traditions, often as a forbidden or mystical fruit. The word ‘apple’, is said to have been used as a generic term for all foreign berries, fruits and nuts, till as late as the 17th century.

In Greek mythology, the Greek goddess of discord, Eris, became disgruntled after she was excluded from the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. In retaliation, she tossed a golden apple inscribed Καλλίστη (Kalliste), into the wedding party. Three goddesses claimed the apple: Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. Paris of Troy was appointed to select the recipient. After being bribed by both Hera and Athena, Aphrodite tempted him with the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Sparta. He awarded the apple to Aphrodite, thus indirectly causing the Trojan War.

In Christianity, though the forbidden fruit in the Book of Genesis is not identified, popular Christian tradition has held that it was an apple that Eve coaxed Adam to share with her. The apple thus became a symbol for knowledge, immortality, temptation, the fall of man into sin, and sin itself. In Latin, the words for ‘apple’ and ‘evil’ are similar (singular: malus-apple, malum-evil) and identical in the plural (mala). This may also have influenced the apple becoming interpreted as the biblical ‘forbidden fruit’. The larynx in the human throat has been called Adam's apple because of a notion that it was caused by the forbidden fruit sticking in the throat of Adam.

Besides such significant historical and religious connotations, the apple also has references in the histories of many other countries and their cultures.

OTHER HISTORICAL CONNOTATIONS AND TRIVIA ABOUT APPLES 

•    According to an ancient Chinese text called ‘The Precious Book of Enrichment’, written around 5000 B.C, Feng Li, a Chinese diplomat, gave up his position when he becomes consumed by grafting peaches, almonds, persimmons, pears and apples as a commercial venture.

•    A tablet found in northern Mesopotamia recorded the sale of an apple orchard by Tupkitilla, an Assyrian from Nuzi, for the significant sum of 3 prized breeder sheep, circa 1500 B.C.

•    In the Greek epic ‘Odyssey’, written around 800 B.C.,  Homer recounts the memory of his fruit orchard to his aging father, and later speaks about how King Tantalus was "tantalized" by the unreachable "fruit over his head: pears, pomegranates, sweet figs, apples and juicy olives".

•    In 323 B.C., Theophrastos describes 6 varieties of apples and discusses why budding, grafting, and general tree care is required for optimum production.

•    In 100 B.C, Roman poet Horace notes that Italy has nearly become one big fruit orchard and the perfect meal begins with eggs and ends with apples.

•    Cicero, author, statesman and philosopher, urges his Roman countrymen to save their apple seeds from dessert to develop new cultivars, in 50 B.C.

•    Noted Greek physicians living in Rome, Galen and later Hippocrates, recommend sweet apples with meals as aids to digestion and sour apples only for fainting and constipation, circa 200 AD.

•    In 900 AD, a sacred Shiite drama is written by a secret society of Muslim purists featuring the death of Mohammed in which he inhales eternal life by inhaling the scent of an apple an angel had brought him. Many centuries before, a similar Greek myth spoke about Aristoteles, who was supposed to have kept death away by holding an apple and inhaling its life sustaining fragrance.

•    In 1618, William Lawson of Yorkshire, writes A New Orchard and Garden, the first book in the English language about the practical aspects of apple growing.

•    In 1665, Sir Isaac Newton watches an apple fall to the ground and, wondering why it fell in a straight line, is inspired to discover the laws of gravitation and motion.

•    And finally, in 1904, probably the most famous saying mentioning an apple, ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away’ is proclaimed J.T. Stinson in an address to the St. Louis Expositon.