Annie Elizabeth - Confused!

[boundtothesoil]

I would still treat Annie with caution.
She is reputed to come from a triploid - Blenheim Orange. This puts Annie at high risk of having an abnormal chromosome number.
It is possible that she is aneuploid and the Defra genetic probes were chromosome-specific and only looking for certain chromosomes.

I noticed the question of Annie Elizabeth's diploid/triploid nature mentioned again in the current 'best apple show thread'. In my opinion there is definitely something unusual about the ploidy of this variety.

I have recently finished variety crossing for this year, and yesterday scored the crossed female flowers that have/have not set fruit after hand pollination. This is my fourth year and my technique has improved so that I would expect at least two thirds of my crosses to have initially set fruit. I was keen to use Annie Elizabeth as one of the parents. However, none of the crosses I performed with this variety set any fruitlets, whether using Annie as female or male parent. These failed crosses were:-

Annie Elizabeth (female) x Ellison's Orange (6 flowers pollinated)
Annie Elizabeth (female) x James Grieve (3 flowers pollinated)

Bramley's (female) x Annie Elizabeth (6 flowers pollinated)
Grenadier (female) x Annie Elizabeth (3 fowers Pollinated)

In contrast, crosses between Bramley's (female) and Cox's Pomona, Emneth Early and Grenadier, pollinating three flowers in each case, have each set three fruitlets (100% success, subject to June drop).

This 100% failure rate with Annie Elizabeth (admittedly with a very small sample) seems unusual and was unexpected by me, particularly as the pollen on the Annie Elizabeth flowers I used as male parents appeared so profuse compared with many other varieties, and the weather was good during the pollination period.

If Annie Elizabeth is a diploid, I would have expected a good success rate when using either James Grieve or Ellison's Orange as pollen donors -these varieties have usually performed well as male parents for me, irrespective of the variety chosen as the female parent. Needless to say, my Annie Elizabeth tree has set a reasonable looking crop.

I have found that proven triploids like Ashmead's Kernel tend not to be very successful when used as female parents, but unlike Annie Elizabeth, I've not had complete failure with them. I'll try again next year with a larger number of flowers!

[FB.]

...the pollen on the Annie Elizabeth flowers I used as male parents appeared so profuse compared with many other varieties...

Triploids produce normal quantities of pollen (which keeps bees happy!).....but unfortunately almost all of the pollen from a triploid is genetically abnormal and fails to germinate properly on the receiving flower.
A very small proportion of the pollen from a triploid may be normal by lucky chance. If you must use a triploid as a pollinator, try using extra doses of pollen and inoculating several times more flowers with the pollen, in the hope that even though 99% of the pollen may be infertile there might just be enough of the 1% "normal" grains manage to pollinate the flower and create a fruit.

[mothhawk]

Slinfold - welcome to the vine

So many coincidences in your post - I looked at it 'cos my mother spent some of her childhood years in the twenties living in Slinfold with her cousin and aunt. Plus my grandmother's name was Annie. Goggled "Annie Elizabeth" - what a surprise, in my teenage years I lived in the next road to where this tree was bred in Leicester.

I've been wanting an apple tree for a while, if I can shoehorn one into my small garden, and as there are crab apples in the hedges not too far away, I think this is the one I must have

[FB.]

"...if I can shoehorn one into my small garden.....I think this is the one I must have..."

If it's on a suitable rootstock, it can be kept surprisingly small.
The soil and climate around Leicester - from what I've seen and from speaking to others - is often quite good for fruit trees.
There's a link to a fruit tree size estimator in my signature.
In the absence of knowing the details of your soil and micro-climate, I'd guess:
Your soil quality is "average".
Your rainfall is "normal".
Your growing season length is "normal"
Your scion variety vigour is "slightly large".

You're most likely to be able to find trees on M27, M9, M26, M116, MM106, MM111 or M25 and the tree size estimator will give an idea of which rootstock will help you achieve a tree of roughly the required size.

[mothhawk]

Thanks for the info FB. We do seem to do well in Leics climate-wise, always missing the worst of the weather, be it cold or rain. The soil in my garden is clay below about 16 inches, but above that is well worked with lots of organic matter and H/M compost worked in and the pH was bang on 6.5 last time I tested it.

The fruit tree size estimator is very useful. I think an M26 rootstock would do and I then could keep the height to seven or eight feet, and as it is in group 4, if I understand correctly (never grown apples before) that means it flowers later in the season, so should miss most of the the frosts.

[FB.]

I think an M26 rootstock would do and I then could keep the height to seven or eight feet, and as it is in group 4, if I understand correctly (never grown apples before) that means it flowers later in the season, so should miss most of the the frosts.

If in doubt, M26 is a good choice.
It is about twice the vigour of the really dwarf M27 and is about half the vigour of the really vigorous M25. It has quite good resistance to root-rot diseases, is probably the most winter-hardy of the British rootstocks, and has about average drought tolerance. The only thing missing is resistance to woolly aphid. However, the rootstocks with resistance to woolly aphid - M116, MM106 and MM111 - are all significantly more vigorous than M26 and in your soil/climate they would be more suited to larger tree forms with long trunks and large canopies.

So M26 is a nice "semi-dwarf" which can be used for just about anything other than long-stemmed trees (its semi-dwarf roots aren't strong enough to support a high-up heavy canopy which rocks the tree in the wind).
I recommend planting M26 with as little of the rootstock stem out of the ground as possible because it encourages a deeper root system and better anchorage, albeit at the expense of the tree taking a little longer to establish while it grows a new upper layer of roots.
Don't worry about "the books" which say you must plant at the same level as in the nursery; it doesn't matter for M26.
Studies have suggested that the length of rootstock stem (i.e. the height of the graft) out of the ground influences tree vigour. The higher the graft above ground, the greater the influence of the rootstock and the less the influence of the scion on tree vigour. The closer to the ground the graft, the less the influence of the rootstock and the greater the influence of the scion on tree vigour.

M26 is good for stepovers, cordons, small-to-medium bushes, small-to-medium fans/espaliers and for containers. Obviously if you stick a monster like Bramley on M26 it's going to be as big as an average variety on MM106!

As you note: Annie flowers a few days after the middle of apple flowering season which gives it a chance to miss late frosts and gives a chance for bees to have picked up pollen from the numerous mid-season apple trees in the day or two before Annie flowers. Pollen can be carried on the hairs of bumblebees for a few days after they visit a flower, so Annie is well-placed to be pollinated by the mid-season apples.

Regarding tree size: although in theory Annie/M26 may well reach 10ft in your conditions, I normally work on the basis that good pruning can keep it about half to two-thirds the size, while "letting it go" and only performing minimal pruning - or pruning to invigorate - can make it slightly larger.

[mothhawk]

M26 it is then, and that's really interesting about the graft height - a useful thing to know! Now just one more question - in your opinion, which is better, container grown (that I could get now), or bare root that I will have to be patient and wait for?