Colorado's Lost Apples: Rediscovering
our Forgotten Legacy
Katharine
Suding, Ph.D., University of Colorado, Boulder
Join us to learn about the
Boulder Apple Tree Project, which strives to map, identify
and preserve the amazing biological and historical heritage of apples in Colorado.
In the mid-1800s, there were thousands of unique varieties of apples in the United
States, some of the most astounding diversity ever developed in a food crop. Later,
the apple industry narrowed their promotion to only a handful of varieties and the
rest were forgotten. These forgotten varieties became commercially extinct but not
biologically extinct; some trees remained near old homesteads and in abandoned orchards.
This story played out in many places such as Colorado, where remnants of old orchards
dot the landscape. Here, these abandoned trees represent cultivars that have resisted
disease and the environmental stress of a dry climate as well as the genetic diversity
absent from commercial apple production.
Professor Katharine Suding is a plant community ecologist, professor of environmental
biology and a fellow of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at University
of Colorado Boulder. She works at the interface of ecosystem, landscape and population
biology. Her goal is to apply cutting-edge 'usable' science to the challenges of restoration,
species invasion and environmental change.
Gates Hall, Wednesday February 20, 6:30-8 p.m.
Chenango Strawberry, watercolor by M. Palmer (The
Archives and Special Collections of Colorado State University Libraries)