From the Living Museum
Api Etoile
- Origin
- France; member of the ancient Api (Lady Apple) family
- Era
- Old French (Api group)
- Type / use
- Dessert · Fresh (Lady type)
History & Stories
The fruit is small and, when viewed from the blossom end, shows a distinctive star-shaped or angular outline — hence ‘Étoile’. Yellow ground with red flush, crisp aromatic flesh, and outstanding late storage. Unique visual character and membership in one of the oldest named apple groups still in cultivation.
Folklore & Name
Member of the ancient Api (Lady Apple) family. ‘Étoile’ = star, referring to the angular, star-like shape when viewed from the blossom end. The Api group is among the oldest named European dessert apples still in cultivation.
Digging into the History
Below my own notes, here is what the old fruit books and today’s collections record about this apple, kept apart from the stories people tell.
What we know
Api Étoilé, the "star apple," is a five-cornered member of the Api family. André Leroy (1867) traced it to the French naturalist Jean Bauhin, physician to the dukes of Württemberg-Montbéliard, who died in 1613. In his Historia plantarum universalis (published 1650), Bauhin described a "Pentagon Apple" that "the most illustrious Duchess of Württemberg" had sent him with other rare plants. She also had grafts sent for her garden at Montbéliard, which he managed. Locals there called the fruit "Square Apples" because of its corners: "almost always pentagonal, sometimes hexagonal, and even heptagonal" 1 (our translation).
What we think: stories & traditions
About 1605, and nearly lost. Because Bauhin did not mention the apple in a book he published in 1598, and saw the grafted trees bear fruit before he died in 1613, Leroy concluded that it reached Montbéliard "around 1605" 1. The Carthusian monks of Paris spread it from 1720. By 1830 "it seemed lost," until the pomologist Poiteau found it at Meudon, in an old annex of the Carthusians' nurseries, and gave grafts to the leading Paris growers 1.
A curiosity, admired for its shape. Picture a duchess sending a star-shaped apple to her gardener as a rarity. It's still one of the most striking apples to cut open.
Sources
- André Leroy, Dictionnaire de pomologie, Vol. 3 (Pommes, A–F) (Paris/Angers, 1867), "Api étoilé," pp. 70–71. archive.org/details/dictionnairedepo03lero/mode/2up?q=Pentagone
Curious about Api Etoile?
Email us at drgoss@honeytreeorchard.com.