Apple

Get to know it

The apple is the crisp fruit of a tree in the rose family, and it comes in more than 7,500 varieties. Bite a Honeycrisp and it crunches, sweet and tart at once. For 2025/26, the world apple crop was forecast at around 82 million tonnes, including 47 million in China.

What it is

Botanists call the apple a pome, and it ripens in late summer or autumn. Depending on the variety it measures 2.5 to 12 cm (1 to 5 in) across, and its skin is green, yellow or red, plain, striped or blushed.

The varieties taste very different. Gala is crisp, sweet and fragrant. Fuji is intensely sweet with a dense, crisp bite. Cortland has white flesh and a hint of tartness that makes it a good baking apple. Honeycrisp is known for its crunch and its balance of sweet and tart.

Where it comes from

Apples come from Central Asia. They began in Kazakhstan and spread west along the Silk Road thousands of years ago. Today's apple is mostly a cross between its wild Central Asian ancestor, Malus sieversii, and Europe's wild crab apple, Malus sylvestris.

The 2025/26 world crop was forecast at 81.7 million tonnes, including 47.0 million in China and about 5 million in the United States, with Washington its top exporter and Michigan its second-biggest grower. In Japan, Aomori grows about 60% of the country's apples.

How it's eaten where it grows

In Lamotte-Beuvron, a little town in France, the tarte Tatin already had a following when the Tatin sisters opened their hotel in 1894, and it became the house speciality. The tarte Tatin bakes caramelised apples under a lid of pastry, then is flipped out onto a plate. Austria's apfelstrudel wraps apples and raisins in dough stretched paper-thin; the oldest known strudel recipe, handwritten in 1697, is kept at the city's Wienbibliothek im Rathaus.

In Normandy and the West of England, apples are pressed for cider, and Normandy distills its cider into Calvados, an apple brandy. The first record of distilling in Normandy dates from 1553. In the US a whole apple dipped in hot caramel and left to set is a caramel apple; in Britain it's a toffee apple.

How it's grown

Apples grow on deciduous trees that reach up to 30 feet (9 m) from seed. A seed doesn't grow the same variety, so every Gala or Honeycrisp orchard is an orchard of clones: buds from a good tree are grafted onto roots. On a dwarfing rootstock, a tree stays 8 to 10 feet (2.4 to 3 m) tall and fruits 2 to 3 years after planting; a standard tree can take up to 8 years.

Varieties need different amounts of winter cold. Most fruit only with pollen from another variety, carried by bees and flies. Apples are picked with the stem on, so they keep longer.

When and where you'll find it

US supermarkets sell apples all year. Most US apples come from Washington, New York and Michigan, picked in the fall; in Michigan the harvest usually runs from mid-to-late August through October. Rooms kept cold, with oxygen cut from 21% of the air to 1 to 3%, hold apples for months, so an apple bought in March was likely picked months before.

From the Southern Hemisphere, New Zealand's harvest usually runs from January to June, peaking from March to May, and its apples ship to Asia, the US and the UK. In the Tsugaru region of Aomori, Japan, many orchards let visitors pick their own.

Get it near Detroit

What it tastes like

Crisper than a grape, as sweet as a plum≈

Not sweetlemonSweet

MildbananalemonSour

SoftbananapearCrisp

More about the taste

Apple texture and sweetness depend on the variety: Honeycrisp is sweet and crisp, Granny Smith is tart and hard, and Cortland is tart and spicy.

Honeycrisp is sweet and crisp, Granny Smith is tart and hard, and Cortland is tart and spicy.

A tasting invitation

Taste a piece with its skin, then a peeled piece. Describe the snap, juiciness and finish before reaching for a familiar flavor comparison. Repeat with another variety — the interesting discovery is often texture rather than sweetness alone.

Choose, ripen, store, eat

1ChooseFirm
Look for
Firm
No bruising or soft patches
Choose firm fruit without bruising, soft patches or mealiness, then match the variety to how you want to eat or cook it.
2RipenRipens after picking
Ripens after picking
For eating now, buy apples with the flavor and texture you want. Mature, hard apples can improve in storage, but immature fruit can stay sour, tough and poorly flavored.
3StoreFridge, apples
1. FridgeApplesPerforated bag in the fruit drawer
Keep apples in the refrigerator's fruit drawer in a perforated bag. Check for deterioration and rinse just before eating.
4EatSkin, Flesh · not core
Eat
SkinFlesh
Not eaten
Core
Eat the washed skin and flesh, or peel for a smoother cooked texture. For the selected bakes, remove the core as the recipes direct.

More tips

A useful detail The same apple isn't best for every purpose — some varieties suit eating fresh, others suit sauce, so it helps to shop by variety rather than by one universal ranking.

Worth knowing

Honeycrisp flavor varies from one orchard lot to the next.
Ask about picking maturity as well as picking date; the first available batch isn't automatically the best tasting.
Ask the seller whether a lot was picked for eating now or for storage, not just when.

Detroit, Michigan

When it’s good here

Grown hereAt their best

Ships from other statesAll year

90 growing areas, 25 countries

Antalya
Aomori +1
Araucanía
Aydın
Baden-Württemberg +6
Balochistan
Cáceres
California
Chihuahua
East Java
Eastern Cape
Espírito Santo
Florida
Fujian
Gelderland
Granada
Hawaii
Herefordshire
Ica
La Libertad
Málaga
Mendoza +1
New South Wales
Otago
Pernambuco
Shaanxi
South Africa
South Australia
Washington +1
Yunnan
You

Grows hereIn season nowOther monthsYou

28 of 40 areas · October

1468

Growing areas by country

United States14
Spain9
Australia6
New Zealand6
Brazil5
China5
South Africa5
Argentina4

and 20 more countriesand 17 more countries

2,358 varieties

See all 2,358 varieties

21 names in 12 languages

Cook it

How to serve it first

For an easy first comparison, cut two named varieties into wedges and serve alongside plain yogurt or a little sharp cheese. Keep the pieces separate so each fruit's sweetness, acidity and crunch remain easy to notice.

Recipes 5

15 apple festivals

Fiesta Nacional de la ManzanaFebGeneral Roca, Río Negro, Argentina · Organiser ↗Feb

Stanthorpe Apple and Grape Harvest FestivalFeb–MarStanthorpe, Queensland, Australia · Organiser ↗Feb–Mar

Baumblütenfest WerderApr–MayWerder (Havel), Brandenburg, Germany · Organiser ↗Apr–May

Washington State Apple Blossom FestivalApr–MayWenatchee, Washington, United States · Organiser ↗Apr–May

Altländer ApfelfestSepSteinkirchen, Lower Saxony, Germany · Organiser ↗Sep

North Carolina Apple FestivalSepHendersonville, North Carolina, United States · Organiser ↗Sep

Festivals this month →

Strange but true

If you like Apple

Tastes alike

Close relatives

Crabapple≈softer

Nutrition, sources

Nutrition

Apples, raw, without skin · per 100 g

Energy48kcal · 200 kJ

Carbohydrate: 13 g
Fiber: 1.3 g
Sugars: 10 g
Protein: 0.3 g
Fat: 0.1 g
Vitamin C: 4 mg
Potassium: 90 mg

Sources

Apple · Fruitopia · checked Sep 21, 2026