The apple falls far away from the tree

What you didn't know is that the 5 seeds in every apple, grow an entirely different and distinct tree than the one it comes from. In other words, a Granny Smith does not spawn more Granny Smith apple trees. There was only ONE in existence found in Australia in 1868.

For every apple thats been given a house hold name, there existed ONE tree that produced that original fruit and flavor.

Every Red Delicious (Iowa, 1880) Golden Delicious (West Virginia, 1891) McIntosh Red (Ontario, 1811) has been cloned since it's conception by means of "grafting". Discovered by the Chinese (sometime before 2000 BC) a piece of apple tree bark is inserted into some other random tree, producing a clone of the other desired apple tree.

When you bite into an apple, you are tasting the one and only of it's kind in all apple bearing history.

Those five seeds I mentioned, if you planted them, would be called wildlings. Producing an entirely new sect of apple, in taste, color, and size.

In the United States it was John Chapman who propagated wildlings across the new frontier. A man known to run bare foot, live in the wild, corresponding peacefully between Native Americans and his own kin. There's quite a bit of mysticism surrounding Johnny Appleseed as well as a little controversy.

Grapes had a terrible survival rate in North America (at that time) so wine was very hard to get ahold of. So most alcohol was produced from apples. Apple juice fermented into cider (it wasn't till much later that you could keep apple juice from fermenting), and cider could be turned into brandy. Other methods were used to produce a stronger alcohol content... otherwise corn was often used to produce moonshine or whiskey.

In other words, the drifter John Chapman, was financially wealthy. Selling small wildlings and herbs to those conquering the west. Today there are over 2,000 known varieties of apples in the United States.