Epicure apple

USDA identification images for Epicure

The identification paintings in the USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection span the years 1886 to 1942.

Citation: U.S. Department of Agriculture Pomological Watercolor Collection. Rare and Special Collections, National Agricultural Library, Beltsville, MD 20705.

Visitor reviews

• 30 Oct 2017  NY, United States

  I hope to have 5 scion coming the spring 0f 2018 of this cultivar. Grafting it onto G890 Root stock and hoping that they take off. Never done any grafting before but I've got to start sometime.
• 18 Aug 2017  United Kingdom

  We think our tree is probably an Epicure. Certainly looks like the picture and is ripe now, on a smallish tree. It has a boring insect (?) problem. Many of the fruit are so infected and, turning much redder, fall off early, leaving the non infected, yellowish green ones with slight mottled red linear patterns to ripen fully on the tree.
• 20 Oct 2011  CAMBRIDGESHIRE, United Kingdom

  Fruits on my tree have been ripening slightly later than many claim and, rather than being "early", it is more like "early-mid" - for example, in my climate Beauty of Bath is ready in late July, Discovery is ready in early August and Epicure is not ready until late August. Fruit quality is quite good for an early(ish) variety but Epicure fruits absolutely must to be left on the tree to ripen for as long as possible - even better if they drop, which signals that they are ready. They must be allowed to change colour to yellow background with some orage stripes. Unripe windfalls may be able to be ripened in the sun for several days. Fortunately, when it comes to ripening on the tree - unlike many other earlies which get eaten by wasps and other insects - Epicure apples seem much less prone to pest damage than other earlies, so can be left on the tree for longer, to ripen more fully, without as much worry of heavy losses to insects which are usually sustained by the likes of Discovery. The tree itself is about medium vigour but also very precocious (and apparently quite fertile) which could easily reduce final tree size if allowed to fruit early in life. Even before a spur system is built-up, a young Epicure (even on vigorous roots) will often fruit on the tips of unpruned one-year-old shoots. One notable feature of this tree is its unusually large leaves. The tree has slightly above average overall resistance to diseases and I do not spray. If it has a weakness, it might be canker, which is not so much of a problem in my relatively low-rainfall climate (although my low-fertility soil reduces plant health and reduces their disease resistance).

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References

• Apples of England (1948)
  Author: Taylor
• Fruit Expert
  Author: Hessayon