Cold and clear today in central Maine. At 6 AM Sean Turley and I packed his car with a few tools, the pole pruner, lunch and coffee and headed north. Up 95 through Bangor and straight north through Piscataquis County along Rte 11 and into Seedling Country - Aroostook County. THE COUNTY.
In Aroostook there are tens of thousands - maybe hundreds of thousands - of seedling apple trees. I’ve been up there many times looking for interesting seedlings to propagate and grow down here. Last fall Sean, Laura Sieger and I spent two days up there exploring the seedling forests and old trees. We tagged a number of trees with flagging tape in hopes of coming back. Today our goal was to collect scionwood from several of the best we discovered in 2025.
The sky was clear and crystal blue when we arrived at our first stop on a quiet road in Perham. When I opened the car door, I was hit by an intense blast of cold. It was 11F. That was a surprise. Well, what did I expect? We had just driven 212 miles due north. Glad I had tossed in my winter jacket, gloves and wool cap, almost as an afterthought. The air was cold enough to have its own distinct smell. Maybe the oxygen had been sucked out and was somewhere over near Mars (the planet, not Mars Hill the town).
We had come to find a small, tangled, bent-over, roadside tree on the edge of a several acre forest of seedlings. The apple is a green, late-ripening russet with cider and cooking potential. I had provisionally named it Green Bean. It’s not a large apple, but one worth an eight-hour drive. I picked up my hand pruners and a roll of tape, ready for action. I cut a few sticks, labeled the tape, hopped back in the warm car, and off we went to our next stop.
Westmanland. There we cut sticks from half a dozen selections Sean had made from a hillside of probably a thousand seedling trees. Apple trees everywhere.
“Sucker Punch” roadside apple tree, scionwood, one frozen fruit and Sean. Easton, Maine, March 28, 2026
We continued to bounce around The County. South and east. Presque Isle, Easton (near Mars Hill) and eventually Bridgewater. In all, about a dozen selections, all seedlings with one exception: a huge old grafted tree in the yard of an abandoned farm on the Parsons Road just outside Presque Isle. That’s one I’ve visited 3 or 4 times in the past few years. The fruit is large and yellow, resembling Alexander in size and shape but not color. We collected leaves last fall and sent them to WSU and are now awaiting DNA results. I suspect it’s a local cultivar. I’ll grow it out, and it will likely make it into the Maine Heritage Orchard someday.
By dinnertime we were back in Palermo. A long day of driving, with only a bag of twigs to show for it all. But what a bag!