Village Country Diary


Apples, Coughton Court


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trance to the next world. Apples can live to a great age for a small tree, often surviving even when the heart wood has gone and only the outer layer is left. This also adds to their mythical nature. No other tree has so many traditional songs sung


Old apple tree with mistletoe


Wild carrot


about it, mostly at the time of “wassailing” or blessing the apples. It grows really well throughout the coun- try, but especially in the Midlands and South. A good crop of apples meant fruit for the whole winter, not to mention plenty of cider. I can remember our farmhouse attic having apples laid out all across the floor during the winter, keeping cool, and it was a treat to still have them at Christmas, even if we did get fed up with them around October! Modern storage methods mean they can be kept fresh even longer, until spring. Wassailing was meant to encourage growth and


warm wet weather through the sympathetic magic of rousing the trees with noise and pouring cider and ale over them. Crab apples, our native ones, have lovely pink-and-


white blossom, and small green or yellow sour apples. The apples make wonderful jams and jellies, and were roasted with meat and in punch, so the tree was valued for its culinary uses. You can still find them around here (my nearest is


in Birches Lane), though many of the trees you see are “wildings”. These are cultivated apples from orchards, spread by birds or from discarded cores, and they can produce lovely free edible fruit. There is one by the dead arm of the canal and another at the start of Lodge Farm Lane, with many along the canal. Apple trees were also much planted in hedges, sometimes grafted on to crab apples. Apples were so important that there are phrases like


54 The Village September 2018


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