In the beginning, there was an apple tree. It had been standing there for centuries, and it was the first of its kind, and also the last of its kind. Or was it? The details are a bit fuzzy, so let’s rewind!
In the beginning, there was the calm, cool morning of a peaceful day of rest. It was Sunday, the day when everyone’s allowed to sleep in a little bit longer.
This, of course, is true only when you don’t have a boss that insists you wake up early on a Sunday. In my case, that boss is a dog who doesn’t get the concept of Sundays. So, seven days a week, my alarm clock is a well-loved and rather chewed up ball being pushed into my face to remind me that it is time for my dog Oreo’s breakfast.
As I walk into the kitchen to prepare his breakfast, I am reminded of the fact that I have to make my own breakfast as well. I sigh, vaguely remembering that as a child I couldn’t wait to grow up and eat whatever I want, whenever I want. I glance around, dreaming of something deliciously indulgent, but alas, my post-workout grocery shopping meant my choices are limited to only ‘healthy’ options. My gaze wanders until it lands on something red – an apple. Now, as an adult I am burdened with the knowledge that all that freedom also means sometimes eating an apple.
As I hold this apple in my hand, my brain offers up a proverb, because of course.
It’s the one that goes ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’. This, in turn, leads to its own spiral with a series of interesting metaphysical questions. Given that I am a doctor (at least technically), am I currently being kept away from myself because of these apples? How does that even work? Am I just using this as an excuse to order something instead of eating the fruit in front of me? Ah. Questions.
As I stare at the apple, wondering whether I should cut it, grate it or eat it whole, I let myself slide further into thought. Whenever I look at any object, my brain has the habit of showing me all the interesting titbits it has collected over the years on the topic, like an eager friend who’s been asked about something they know far too much about and simply can’t stop talking about.
Come, let’s talk about apples.
Apples are fascinating, delicious and quite abundant. There are so many varieties of them – there are the really small Kashmiri apples, the almost purple red Kinnaur apples, the bright red royal apples and even the almost yellow golden apples. These are just the varieties grown in Himachal Pradesh. If we look across the world, we have the deliciously sour Granny Smith apples, the extremely sweet honeycrisps or the pink lady apples that to me evoke the image of a cartoon woman in a pink ball gown handing out candied apples.
Apples are a huge part of our collective imagination, from the poisoned apple of Snow White to the Biblical apple of Eden from the Tree of Knowledge,1 or the famed apple falling on Newton’s head, causing him to discover gravity.
For me personally, apples evoke memories of my childhood car rides through Himachal, where orchards lined the road – I can smell them even now. Whenever I remember walking in an apple orchard with trees laden with fruit, I understand why so many poems, stories and myths feature the fruit.
To delve further, let’s enter the land of imagination. Here, the unexpected often happens, allowing us to see things we might not see in our everyday lives.
Come, let’s walk through an apple orchard. I walk up to the nearest tree and wonder, ‘Does this tree have a name?’
The tree turns to me and says, ‘Hello. I’m Komal.’ I’m startled until I remember that this is the land of imagination after all, where trees can talk. So I say hello to Komal the Tree, and walk over to the next tree.
‘Hello, what’s your name?’ I ask.
The tree looks at me and replies, ‘Hello. I’m Komal!’
Bewildered, I ask another tree, and it also says, ‘Hello. I’m Komal.’
Confused?
Well, so would I be – if I didn’t know that these are apple trees. Which means that all of these trees are, in fact, clones! So, what does it mean that all these trees are clones? Is this a sci-fi story set in the distant future where we have for some reason cloned … apples?
Not really! It is a story about clones, but it’s set very much in our time and, indeed, part of our history as a species that evolved from being hunter-gatherers and became farmers. These trees – and in fact all trees that bear a certain variety of apple – are clones of a single ancestral tree that initially grew that kind of apple. The same tree has been grown and regrown over and over again for centuries, clones producing the exact same fruit!
Indeed, in the beginning, there was an apple tree, and it seems it is still here!
This brings us to even more questions. Why are all these trees clones? What does it mean when we say a plant is a clone? Can we not just grow apples out of seeds? As I think of all these things, I discover I’m not actually eating the apple in front of me.
Well, since I’m not eating it anyway, let me fully commit. Come, sit with me under the shade of this lovely apple tree of our imagination as I tell you all about apples, and much more. This is a story about how humans should not have been able to domesticate apples, and how – spoiler alert – we did it anyway.