From the Living Museum
Granny Smith
- Origin
- Eastwood, near Ryde (now part of Sydney), New South Wales, Australia; chance seedling on Maria Ann Smith's orchard around 1868
- Era
- c. 1868
- Type / use
- Dessert · Fresh eating · Culinary
From the ArchiveFilm
Watch its story
Granny’s Seedling
A short narrated history of Granny Smith, told through the archive illustrations of our apple collection.
Illustrations: Mary Daisy Arnold (1933) and Royal Charles Steadman (1925), USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection, National Agricultural Library (public domain). Narrated with a synthetic voice.
Watch on YouTubeHistory & Stories
The world’s most widely grown apple. Bright green, crisp, tart flesh that sweetens somewhat in storage and ships extremely well. Unique for its global commercial dominance and the simple immigrant story of its discovery by a woman who was simply trying to grow fruit in a new country.
Folklore & Name
Discovered by Maria Ann Smith in Ryde, New South Wales, around 1868. The world’s most widely grown apple. Simple immigrant discovery story that became a global commercial giant.
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
Granny Smith began as a chance seedling on the orchard of Maria Ann Smith at Eastwood, near Ryde, in what is now Sydney, Australia. The Australian Dictionary of Biography says Maria (1799–1870) was a Sussex farm labourer's daughter who emigrated with her husband Thomas in 1838 1. The "earliest and most authoritative account" of the apple, by the orchardist Herbert Rumsey in 1924, drew on two growers who had known her. One remembered that in 1868 she invited him and his father to see "a seedling apple growing by a creek on her property," which she said had come from "the remains of some French crab-apples grown in Tasmania" 1.
The competing accounts
- Herbert Rumsey, 1924, as summarised by the Australian Dictionary of Biography 1: two growers who knew Maria Smith remembered that in 1868 she showed one of them a seedling by a creek on her land, grown from the remains of French crab apples from Tasmania.
- The same Dictionary entry 1: her descendants have sometimes disputed how the apple was discovered.
Most likely (our judgment, not a certainty): a chance seedling on the Smiths' Eastwood orchard around 1868. The Dictionary calls Rumsey's account the earliest and most authoritative. The French-crab parentage rests on one man's memory and is unproven.
What we think: stories & traditions
Granny's apple, Gallard's crop. Maria died in 1870, and the apple "was not a commercial variety in her lifetime." The local orchardist Edward Gallard, who bought part of the Smith farm, planted it widely and marketed a crop every year until his death in 1914. By 1891–92 "Granny Smith's seedlings" were winning prizes, and in 1895 the government planted them on a large scale and listed the variety as suitable for export 1.
Disputed details. The Dictionary notes that her descendants "have from time to time disputed the circumstances" of the discovery 1. The French-crab-apple story comes from one person's memory, half a century later.
Sources
- Megan Martin, "Smith, Maria Ann (1799–1870)," Australian Dictionary of Biography, Supplement (2005). adb.anu.edu.au/biography/smith-maria-ann-13199
Curious about Granny Smith?
Email us at drgoss@honeytreeorchard.com.