Northern Spy also called Spy and King, is a cultivar of domesticated apple that originated on the farm of Oliver Chapin in East Bloomfield, New York, in about 1840.[Robert Hogg, The Fruit Manual, 1875]
The Northern Spy was one of four apples honored by the United States Postal Service in a 2013 set of four 33ยข stamps commemorating historic strains, joined by Baldwin, Golden Delicious, and Granny Smith.
Description
Northern Spy produces fairly late in the season (late October and beyond). Skin color is a green ground, flushed with red stripes where not shaded. The white flesh is juicy, crisp and mildly sweet with a rich, aromatic subacid flavor, noted for high vitamin C content. Its characteristic flavor is tarter than most popular varieties, and its flesh is harder or crunchier than most, with a thin skin.
Uses
Northern Spy is commonly used for desserts and pies, as well as juice and
cider. It is an excellent apple for storage, tending to last long due to late maturation.
Cultivation and history
The Northern Spy was discovered around 1800 in East Bloomfield, New York, south of Rochester, New York, as surviving sprouts of a seedling cultivated from stock brought in from
Connecticut that had failed. The Wagener apple is believed to be one of its forebears. It fell somewhat out of favor due to its dull coloration, irregular shape, tendency of the thin skin to allow bruising, and lack of disease resistance, specifically to
bitter pit and blossom
fireblight, but resistant to
woolly aphid and somewhat to
Apple scab. It is not widely available at retail outside its growing regions but still serves as an important processing apple in those areas. The Northern Spy is known for taking as much as a decade to bear fruit, unless grafted to a non-standard
rootstock. In spite of this, it makes an excellent root stock for grafting other varieties to become standard-size trees.
A Northern Spy apple tree figures in the poem "Conrad Siever" in Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, and in the poetry of Chase Twichell, whose first book Northern Spy was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1981.
A box of Northern Spies was sent to Senator Joseph McCarthy by the news staff of the Toronto Globe and Mail in 1953 as a joke.
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