From the Living Museum
Hidden Rose
- Origin
- Airlie, Oregon, USA: a tree on Lucky Newell's farm after 1959, named Hidden Rose by Louis Kimzey in the 1980s (also sold as Airlie Red Flesh and Mountain Rose)
- Era
- 20th c.
- Type / use
- Dessert · Fresh eating · Novelty
History & Stories
Yellow-green fruit with pink blush and pink-to-red stained flesh. Sweet flesh with distinct berry or strawberry notes. Unique as one of the more approachable and pleasant-tasting modern red-fleshed apples, with attractive pink blossoms as a bonus.
Folklore & Name
Modern Pacific Northwest red-fleshed selection (also marketed as Airlie Red Flesh etc.). Name refers to the pink-red stained flesh that is ‘hidden’ until the fruit is cut. Popular novelty and dessert variety.
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
Hidden Rose is a red-fleshed apple from Airlie, Oregon, a hamlet north of Corvallis. Portland Monthly reports that the cowboy Lucky Newell bought 80 acres there in 1959 and found the tree growing near a well. His daughter Sandy Revell remembered him biting into an apple while out riding: "It was red inside. I remember him saying, 'It's just as red as your lips, honey'" 1. Newell sold the farm in 1966 and left the tree behind 1.
In the 1980s Louis Kimzey found the same tree, by then mature. He first took it for Pink Pearl, then realised it was something different. He grafted it in his nursery, named it Hidden Rose, and shared it with growers including Eric Schwartz, who planted it in his orchard in 1994 and trademarked the name in 2001 1. It is also sold as Mountain Rose and Airlie Red Flesh 1.
What we think: stories & traditions
Many names, many claimants. Schwartz told Portland Monthly, "Everyone wants to claim it, no one did any work on it" 1. The tangle of names reflects that dispute rather than different apples. Its parents are unknown.
It's a classic chance-seedling story: a tree nobody planted on purpose, noticed twice, twenty years apart, by people who happened to take a bite.
Sources
- "The Curious Case of the Hidden Rose," Portland Monthly (October 2016). www.pdxmonthly.com/travel-and-outdoors/2016/10/the-curious-case-of-the-hidden-rose
Curious about Hidden Rose?
Email us at drgoss@honeytreeorchard.com.