23/04/2025
We've been neglecting our cider-making duties recently, spending too much time in orchards recording the blossom sequence of Gloucestershire's apple cultivars, about which not enough is known.
Apples are not self-fertile; flowers of one tree need to be pollinated with pollen from another tree, and for that to happen, both trees need to be in blossom at the same time.
It's generally accepted that there are 5 pollination groups, A (early to flower) to E (late to flower), and trees can be pollinated by another tree in the same or an adjacent group ... a tree in group B can help to pollinate trees in groups A, B, and C but not those in groups D or E.
First pic: Hunts Duke of Gloucester, of Gloucestershire varieties one of the earliest to blossom, putting on an early show, but whose flowers are already fading, so it may be too early for Yellow Styre, whose buds are still developing colour and are yet to open (2nd pic), and definitely way too early for Lodgemore Nonpareil (3rd pic), Stroud's very own apple, whose first leaves are only just emerging and it may be a week or more before the first blossom emerges on that tree. So, it really does make a difference which varieties you plant next to each other.
"Styre," by the way, is the name given to cider apples from the Forest of Dean.
