Rhode Island Greening Apple

Rhode Island Greening traces to the mid-1600s, originating near a place called Green's End, close to Newport, Rhode Island, where a tavern keeper known simply as Mr. Green reportedly raised the original seedling and gave away cuttings freely to visitors passing through. The apple became known first as the "Green's Inn apple" or "apple from Green's Inn" before eventually taking on its more formal name. According to a genuinely persistent piece of local lore, so many people took scions from the original tree over the years that it eventually died from the cumulative stress of being repeatedly cut for propagation material — a fittingly ironic fate for a variety whose entire popularity was built on its cuttings being shared so freely. This makes Rhode Island Greening, alongside the similarly aged Roxbury Russet, one of the two oldest documented American apple varieties still in cultivation today. It became one of the most widely planted apples in 19th-century New York and New England, and it was even exported to Europe in the early 1800s, where it picked up a variety of new regional names, including Louis XVIII and Belle de Dubois. The fruit has a bright green skin maturing to yellow-green, occasionally developing a faint russet or brownish blush, with firm, tart, crisp flesh. It is genuinely better suited to cooking than fresh eating — many longtime growers and cooks consider it one of the finest pie apples in American culinary tradition, prized specifically for how its tartness and firm texture hold up and develop real depth of flavor once baked.