A Viking queen was buried with a bucket of these wild apples. Now researchers worry that their special genetic makeup will disappear
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- 16 Aug 2022
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“Crab apples are completely safe to eat. But you will hardly think that it tastes good if you put your teeth in one. The taste is sour and bitter,” says Kjersti Fjellstad, who works with European crab apples at the Norwegian Genetic Resource Centre at NIBIO in Ås.
The European crab apples that grow in the wild are completely different from the apples we tend to grow in our own gardens.
They have been here since long before the Vikings.
And they were clearly of some importance to the Vikings, as the queen buried in the Oseberg Viking ship was sent to the afterlife with an entire bucket full of them.
Can become hybrid apples
Many people probably do not know that we have our very own apple species in Norway. And that we have had it since long before the apples we plant in our gardens came here from Asia.
But now Fjellstad and her colleagues fear that our wild crab apples will become hybrid apples – apples that are a cross between different species. These will have a different genetic makeup.
“We cannot exactly deny people the ability to grow apples in their garden,” Fjellstad tells sciencenorway.no.
She would still like to strike a blow for the preservation of the original Norwegian apple.
The concern is first and foremost the threat of reforestation, as well as the threat of interference from garden apple genes. Read More…
