From the Living Museum
Ashmead Kernel
- Origin
- Gloucester, England, raised by Dr. Ashmead around 1700
- Era
- c. 1700
- Type / use
- Dessert
History & Stories
Medium, irregular fruit covered in heavy russet with orange flush. The flesh is crisp, juicy, and intensely aromatic — complex notes of pear, orange, and spice. Frequently ranked among the very finest of all dessert apples by English connoisseurs. Unique for the sheer depth and complexity of its flavor; a true connoisseur’s apple. Triploid, scab-susceptible, but unmatched when well-grown.
Folklore & Name
Raised by Dr. Ashmead of Gloucester around 1700. Frequently ranked by English connoisseurs as one of the very finest dessert apples ever grown. The name simply commemorates its raiser.
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
Ashmead's Kernel was raised in Gloucester. The UK National Fruit Collection says it was raised in about 1700 by Dr Ashmead 1. Robert Hogg's Fruit Manual (1884) adds that "this delightful apple was raised at Gloucester, about the beginning of last century, by Dr. Ashmead, an eminent physician of that city." The original tree stood in what had been the doctor's garden until the ground was needed for building, on "the spot now occupied by Clarence Street" 2.
Hogg pieced together its early history: a Tewkesbury orchardist told him he first saw the fruit in 1796, from a tree in Mr. Wheeler's Gloucester nursery that had been grafted from the original and was then "upwards of thirty years old." Hogg also found it in London's Brompton Park Nursery in 1780. He called it "a dessert apple of the very first quality, possessing all the richness of the Nonpareil, but with a more sugary juice" 2. In 1981, nearly three centuries after it was raised, the Royal Horticultural Society honoured it with its top award for fruit, a First Class Certificate 1.
The competing accounts
- UK National Fruit Collection 1: raised by Dr Ashmead in Gloucester in about 1700.
- Robert Hogg, 1884 2: agrees on Gloucester and Dr Ashmead, "about the beginning of last century," but the earliest dated sightings he could find were 1780 (Brompton Park Nursery, London) and 1796 (a Gloucester nursery).
Most likely (our judgment, not a certainty): raised in Gloucester by Dr Ashmead early in the 1700s. Both sources agree, although the firm dated records start only in 1780. The botanist Lindley's idea that it is a Nonpareil seedling 2 remains a guess.
What we think: stories & traditions
A doctor's seedling. The word "kernel" in old apple names usually meant a tree grown from a pip rather than a graft. Picture an 18th-century physician planting seeds in his town garden and getting, by pure luck, one of the finest apples England would ever know.
A Nonpareil child? (theory) Hogg reports that the botanist Lindley believed it was a seedling of the Nonpareil, judging by its leaves and shoots 2. That is an educated guess, not a recorded pedigree.
Sources
- UK National Fruit Collection, "Ashmead's Kernel." www.nationalfruitcollection.org.uk/full2.php?id=230&fruit=apple
- Robert Hogg, The Fruit Manual, 5th ed. (London, 1884), "Ashmead's Kernel." archive.org/details/fruitmanualguide00hoggrich/mode/2up?q=Ashmead
Curious about Ashmead Kernel?
Email us at drgoss@honeytreeorchard.com.