Applevariety
Melba
A dessert apple with white flesh and whitish-yellow skin, flat-round in shape, raised in 1898 and introduced in 1909; sweet, mildly tart, wine-like and juicy. Picked in mid-August.
Origin · Central Experimental Farm, Ottawa, Canada
Released 1909
Taste & texture
- Sweetness
- sweet
- Acidity
- subacid
- Firmness
- firm
- Bite
- crisp
- Juiciness
- juicy
- Flavour
- subacid, sweet
- Used for
- Dessert apple
How to spot it
- Skin
- Surface colour pinkish stripes and flecksSkin texture white bloomBackground colour pale yellow
- Flesh
- very white
- Shape
- flat to intermediate, rectangular to truncate-conic, convex
- Size
- mediumFruit width 57-63 mmFruit height 44-51 mm
- Appearance
- Surface ridges ribbed on body and at eye
Origin & family
Where Melba began
Recorded origin
Central Experimental Farm, Ottawa
Canada
- Released
- 1909
Melba’s family
11 varieties · 10 recorded linksArrows follow parents → children
This variety
Melba
Central Experimental Farm, Ottawa, Canada
Photo: National Fruit Collection, Brogdale · UK Open Government Licence v2.0
Drag to explore. Select a variety for its recorded relationships.
Field notes
Original source notes
Fruit & tree
- sports
- Red Melba Hunter Melba
- flavour
- subacid, sweet
- ribbing
- ribbed on body and at eye
- father to
- Ranger Pirja
- mother to
- Caravel Silva Jamba 69 Beverly Hills
- parentage
- McIntosh x Unknown
- fruit size
- medium
- fruit shape
- flat to intermediate, rectangular to truncate-conic, convex
- fruit width
- 57-63 mm
- over colour
- pinkish stripes and flecks
- flesh colour
- very white
- fruit height
- 44-51 mm
- skin texture
- white bloom
- flesh texture
- firm, crisp
- ground colour
- pale yellow
Photos
National Fruit Collection, BrogdaleUK Open Government Licence v2.0 Whole and cut, from the UK National Fruit Collection.