Over the past two decades, apple preservationists Jude and Addie Schuenemeyer have identified more than a 1,000 apple varieties that once grew in Colorado’s orchards and backyards.
But pinpointing one very rare and possibly extinct apple had eluded them until this year.
“We are 98% sure, give or take 3%, we have found the elusive Colorado Orange apple,” Addie Schuenemeyer wrote in an announcement from the nonprofit Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project, which she and her husband started to preserve old apple varieties in the southwest corner of the state.
The announcement came after a visit to Colorado State University where they matched a suspected Colorado Orange apple to a wax cast of that variety made more than a century ago.
The Colorado Orange was a popular apple in the late 1800s. It was more oval in shape than many other apples and had a yellow peel with an orange blush. In taste, it had a bit of a citrus note. It kept longer than many apples.
But, like so many other historic varieties, the Colorado Orange had disappeared.
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