1. Description

2. Uses

3. Cultivation

4. References

5. External links

The Northern Spy, also called 'Spy' and 'King', is a cultivar of domesticated apple that originated in East Bloomfield, New York in about 1800.^[1][2] It is popular in upstate New York.

The Northern Spy was one of four apples honored by the United States Postal Service in a 2013 set of four 33¢ stamps commemorating historic strains, joined by Baldwin, Golden Delicious, and Granny Smith.^[3]

Description

Northern Spy produces fairly late in the season (late October and beyond). Skin color is a green ground, flushed with red stripes where not shaded. The white flesh is juicy, crisp and mildly sweet with a rich, aromatic subacid flavor, noted for high vitamin C content. Its characteristic flavor is tarter than most popular varieties, and its flesh is harder/crunchier than most, with a thin skin.

Uses

Northern Spy is commonly used for desserts and pies, as well as juice and cider. It is an excellent apple for storage, tending to last long due to late maturation.

Cultivation

The Northern Spy was discovered around 1800 in East Bloomfield, New York, south of Rochester, New York, as surviving sprouts of a seedling cultivated from stock brought in from Connecticut that had failed. The Wagener apple is believed to be one of its forebearers. It fell somewhat out of favor due to its dull coloration, irregular shape, tendency of the thin skin to allow bruising, and lack of disease resistance, specifically to bitter pit and blossom fireblight, but resistant to woolly aphid and somewhat to scab. It is not widely available at retail outside its growing regions but still serves as an important processing apple in those areas.The Northern Spy is known for taking as much as a decade to bear fruit, unless grafted to a non-standard rootstock. In spite of this it makes an excellent root stock for grafting other varieties to become standard size trees.

A Northern Spy apple tree figures in the poem "Conrad Siever" in Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, and in the poetry of Chase Twichell, whose first book "Northern Spy" was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1981.

References

External links

• Apple Use
• USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection

• Mississippi Gulf Coast National Heritage Area
• Mississippi hawthorn
• Mississippi Heritage Trust
• Mississippi Highway 10
• Mississippi Highway 11
• Mississippi Highway 13W
• Mississippi Highway 161
• Mississippi Highway 161 (Coahoma County, Mississippi)
• Mississippi Highway 178
• Mississippi Highway 198
• Mississippi Highway 20
• Mississippi Highway 278
• Mississippi Highway 301
• Mississippi Highway 306
• Mississippi Highway 309
• Mississippi Highway 315
• Mississippi Highway 332
• Mississippi Highway 35W
• Mississippi Highway 366
• Mississippi Highway 366 (Tishomingo County)
• Mississippi Highway 444
• Mississippi Highway 45
• Mississippi Highway 454
• Mississippi Highway 45W
• Mississippi Highway 465