Air Date: Week of September 19, 2025

The Light Between Apple Trees: Rediscovering the Wild Through a Beloved American Fruit, by Priyanka Kumar. (Photo: Courtesy of Island Press, Jacket design by Jordan Wannemacher)

As the air turns crisp in the northern U.S., many of us are heading out for the autumn tradition of apple picking. Priyanka Kumar, author of The Light Between Apple Trees: Rediscovering the Wild Through a Beloved American Fruit, joins Host Jenni Doering to share the fascinating and complex science and history behind the iconic apple and why apple trees have so captivated her since childhood.

Transcript

CURWOOD: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Steve Curwood.

DOERING: And I’m Jenni Doering.

As the air turns crisp in the northern U.S., many of us are heading out for the autumn tradition of apple picking. We’ll sample Honeycrisp and Ginger Gold, Blondee and Mcintosh, Cortland and Macoun and of course fresh, hot, apple cider donuts. But few of us know the fascinating and complex science and history behind the iconic apple. Priyanka Kumar is the author of The Light Between Apple Trees: Rediscovering the Wild Through a Beloved American Fruit, and she joins us now. Welcome to Living on Earth, Priyanka!

KUMAR: Thanks so much for having me here, Jenni!

DOERING: So throughout this book, you keep returning to some formative childhood experiences with apples and apple trees. Can you take me to the setting of your childhood and how did that environment shape who you are today?

KUMAR: Sure, I was incredibly fortunate to grow up in the foothills of the Himalayas, and these were beautiful, pristine areas that scientists now know are among the top 20 most valuable biodiversity hotspots on our planet. So I was living in the heart of the apple growing region there, and so I remember myself as a two-year-old child wandering among these mature apple trees, mother trees, and just feeling that they are these beings that are towering over me. And a little later, when I started walking to school every day, I would see these mountains that were streaked with snow, and strangely, I felt like they were my friends. I would have conversations with them. I mean, I would say that I didn't have a lot of toys to speak of, but in a sense, nature was my playground.

DOERING: I mean, it sounds like it was a place that was imbued with magic for you as a kid.

KUMAR: Yeah, and I think it really unlocked my imagination. I mean, for one, it made me a lifelong naturalist. I mean, certainly in this book, I circle back to a core formative memory. When I was about four years old, my dad took me to a magical apple orchard, and I spent the entire day weaving among the trees and experiencing the same connection that I did with the mountains. And I felt like these trees were living beings, and I could be with them and not be lonely. And then at the end of the day, we walked up to this little glass turret, I was sitting on my dad's lap, and the orchardist came up to us and offered us a yellow apple, and I took it and bit into it, and sitting up there in this glass turret, looking down at all those trees that I'd spent the whole day with, biting into this apple, I felt like the earth herself was giving me an apple-scented kiss. And I just felt very close to all the elements. And I felt like, this is it. I'm a child of all of these elements. I belong here, and I think in some way, I, that was the spark for the rest of my life.

DOERING: That's beautiful. So apple trees, fruit trees, have evolved and been cultivated over thousands of years. They appear in countless stories across cultures and religions. You write about this in your book, and here you are adding your own story to this tapestry. Why do you think the symbolism of the apple has endured for so long?

KUMAR: There's something powerful about fruit trees. I almost think sometimes that fruit trees are a symbol of love. I have a chapter in the book called, "Love Notes from Nature." I feel like a fruit tree is the ultimate love note from nature. It's giving you this shade. There's also this aroma, and you settle into yourself, you know, whether it's the blossoms or the ripening fruit, and then, you know, just the act of reaching up and grabbing the fruit, I feel like many of my joyous memories have to do with that. I mean, it's not always an apple tree, but sometimes it's like an apricot or a peach or a cherry tree, just this feeling of being supported by nature. I mean, I'm very interested, as a naturalist, in the inner workings of nature, but I think I'm also interested in all these fascinating ways in which nature supports us, and I think fruit tree is a very powerful symbol of that.

DOERING: Absolutely. And when you think about like, you know, it's love notes from nature, as you say, it's also all of the care that people have put into cultivating these varieties over time, there's a lot to be thankful for, I guess, when you reach for an apple in a tree.

KUMAR: I mean, the history of apple trees in America is mind blowing. And we've had apple trees here for over 400 years now. And if you go back and think about how the early settlers and the Jesuit priests brought, you know, they tucked apple seeds into their pockets, you know, when they were coming to America. And the first thing that they did, even before they started to, you know, make any kind of a one room dwelling, is they planted those seeds. That was, like the first act. It was so important.

DOERING: Yeah, you write about, you know, Quebec, when these Jesuit priests were coming to North America, they would plant apple trees there, and then also the Spanish in the southwest, where you are now.

KUMAR: Yeah. I mean, a lot of times we think about settlers from England bringing apple trees, or perhaps Ireland, and that is so true, but there's an equally rich history of French settlers and Spanish conquistadores bringing in little apple seeds, which they planted and nurtured with great care. So one of the things that really amazes me is there's a orchard here, Las Golondrinas. It's an old, old orchard, and they grow this apple that is called the Wolf River apple. And it's amazing to look into the history of this apple and to find that it was actually planted by French settlers in Quebec, way in the 1600s and then brought down to Wisconsin by a woodsman and planted there near the Wolf River, and then brought all the way down to New Mexico and planted here. It just increases your sense of connectivity.

DOERING: So where does the apple come from? I mean, everything that we eat and have domesticated at some point came from a wild plant. Where did the apple come from?

KUMAR: That's a great question. So it turns out that the origins of the apple are wilder than we ever imagined. So for a long time, scientists believed that the primary ancestor of the cultivar apple, this is Malus domestica, the apple that we eat today, was the wild apple, the wild Kazakh apple that grows on the flanks of the Tian Shan mountains in Kazakhstan. Well, it turns out the story is much more complicated than that.

DOERING: Yeah?

KUMAR: It’s only in the last 20 years that genetic science has gotten us closer to understanding the true origins of the apple. It's true that they were growing and they still do grow in the Tian Shan mountains, but they were soon traveling along the Silk Route and traveling through parts of Europe where the apple, the wild apple, hybridized with the wild European crab apple, and then made its way to America. So now we know that the apple is this world traveler, a truly transnational fruit. So you know, when you hold an apple in your hand today, I mean, there's a sense of adventure there thinking about its roots.

DOERING: Yeah, and I love it as a metaphor for you know, when you're thinking about apples in America and this country as a melting pot of so many different traditions and cultures and ethnicities, like the apple itself is sort of woven together from different strands of ancient species.

KUMAR: Absolutely, I think, for those reasons you put it so well, Jenni, the apple truly is an American fruit because it, like America itself, the apple has been put together with all these strands, and some of those strands actually go back into deep time, where it comes from this ancient flowering rose that started growing on planet earth about 80 million years back.

DOERING: Wow, that's pretty deep roots.

KUMAR: That's pretty deep roots.

DOERING: So now is a perilous time in the apple's history. What are the climate threats facing apple trees today, both in New Mexico, where you live, and elsewhere?

KUMAR: So scientists have come up with six climate metrics that can negatively impact apple trees, and they mostly have to do with exposure to severe heat, fewer chill hours. Apples tend to need about 500 to 1000 chill hours for proper development of the flower and eventually the fruit. We're in the southwest. We've been in a mega drought for the last 22 years, and it turns out that the apples in Yakima County, a lot of our apples come from Yakima County, and Oh, yeah. So, so the apples there have already been adversely impacted by five of these six metrics. So when it comes to climate change, it's not something that is going to happen five years from now. It's already happening. We're in the throes of it right now. And for me, it certainly came home when one of the orchards where I spent time, and I know the orchardist well, John Trujillo, told me that because of global warming, which had killed off essentially all of his cherry trees, he told me that it's just too hard. He's not going to plant fruit trees anymore. And for me, it was, it was a devastating moment. It really broke my heart, because John is a third-generation orchardist. You see how it's changing lives right in front of you, so it's no longer abstract numbers that you're dealing with but, but you're face to face with the people who are up against it.

DOERING: What can be done for apple trees amid these threats, and how might those actions also help the wider ecosystem to thrive?

KUMAR: You know, back when America had a love affair with apples, I mean, I think we still love apples, but I think we really had a, we celebrated apples more and we were more connected to them. We were growing more than 10,000 varieties of apples in this country. I mean, that's--

DOERING: Wow. Incredible.

KUMAR: That's amazing. You know, there's, there's more than 16,000 named apple varieties, and today only about less than a fifth of those varieties are accessible to us. So one of the things that's happened with this distancing from nature, with this industrialization of apple growing, is that we have far fewer varieties, so that richness is gone. And so what happens in a changing climate, because apples are susceptible to disease, you know, viruses, fungal issues, when you have industrial apple growing with a monoculture of apples, a certain apple variety is hit, and then you lose all of those apple trees, you lose that variety. So I think if we were all growing different varieties, we would be more resilient to climate change.

DOERING: Priyanka, your book isn't just about the history and science of apples, although that is fascinating. It's also about connecting with people. How can apples and food in general build community in today's world?

KUMAR: That's a great question. So I come from a culture where hospitality is a very important value, and one of the things that I missed a lot during the pandemic is, I couldn't have people over, and so I started doing these apple tastings out on my porch, and I would bring all kinds of apple varieties, and have friends and neighbors and strangers waft through, and and I felt like I made a lot of lovely "apple friendships" through that. And then later, when I was in places like Charlottesville, for instance, I found that, you know, I would run into people where maybe we thought a little bit differently about some political issues, but we could always get excited about the same apple varieties, and we could talk about apple history. I would tell people about these wonderful apple stories. One of the most inspiring figures for me is John Adams, who was very hands on with his apple growing. I mean, he was putting seaweed into his compost pile and spreading it along on his meadow and growing his own apple trees and make, and he and his wife, Abigail, making their own cider.

DOERING: And he wasn't using slave labor like Jefferson was.

KUMAR: Yeah, I mean that was the inspiring part. He was, you know, the only one of that group that wasn't using slaves. So, so it felt good to tell people some of these stories about how dedicated he was to having a gill of cider every morning. He thought it was a health-giving habit, and he was right. It was his dream that his grandchildren would one day eat an apple from an apple tree planted by his own hand. And for me, that's profoundly moving. It's the ultimate act of generosity to plant these trees and, and care for them and just trust that this is going to be your legacy. I know this was my dad's legacy to me, and so I feel like I want to have that be my legacy, not just for my own children, but for a cohort of children.

DOERING: Priyanka Kumar is the author of The Light Between Apple Trees: Rediscovering the Wild Through a Beloved American Fruit. Thank you so much, Priyanka.

KUMAR: It's my pleasure. Thank you, Jenni.

 

Links

Find a copy of The Light Between Apple Trees (Affiliate link helps donate to LOE and local independent bookstores)

Learn more about Priyanka Kumar