From the Living Museum
Nero
- Origin
- Princeton, New Jersey; thought lost, then found by David Benscoter in an 1888 homestead orchard on Steptoe Butte, Washington (reported 2015)
- Era
- Early 20th c. (rediscovered)
- Type / use
- Dessert · Dual-purpose
History & Stories
Medium-to-large attractive red fruit with firm, crisp yellow flesh and good keeping quality. Unique as a genuine ‘lost and found’ American variety whose rediscovery adds to the ongoing recovery of vanished heirlooms.
Folklore & Name
New Jersey variety from Princeton 1 listed as extinct in some references and rediscovered around 2014 in Washington State by David Benscoter. Name of classical or personal origin. Genuine lost-and-found American heirloom.
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
Nero comes from New Jersey. S.A. Beach's The Apples of New York (1905) gives its origin as Princeton, New Jersey, says it was "regarded with favor in Central New Jersey," and notes it had spread "to a considerable extent in regions farther west and south." He placed it in the Minkler group: a red, firm, tough-skinned apple that "handles well and keeps late" 1.
Nero was later thought lost. In 2015 the Spokesman-Review reported that David Benscoter, a retired federal investigator turned "apple detective," had found it in the remains of the 1888 homestead orchard of Robert and Mecie Burns on Steptoe Butte in Whitman County, Washington. The Home Orchard Society confirmed the identification, and Washington State University scientists began propagating it 2.
What we think: stories & traditions
Detective work. Benscoter used plat maps and old nursery advertisements to show that Nero was sold in Whitman County, probably by the nearby Hanford Nursery, and that Burns likely planted it around 1894 2. It's a lovely example of how an East Coast apple travelled west with homesteaders and survived on an abandoned hillside for more than a century.
Sources
- S.A. Beach, The Apples of New York, Vol. 1 (Albany: J.B. Lyon, 1905), "Nero," p. 222. archive.org/details/applesofnewyork01beaciala/page/222
- Mike Prager, "'Apple detective' discovers long-lost fruit variety," Spokesman-Review (30 April 2015). www.spokesman.com/stories/2015/apr/30/apple-detective-discovers-long-lost-fruit-variety/
Curious about Nero?
Email us at drgoss@honeytreeorchard.com.