Excellent fresh eating, great sauce and sharp cider apple. Alas, however, not a pie apple—turns to soup. The 1865 Department of Agriculture yearbook sums it up: “Flesh remarkably white, tender, juicy…deliciously pleasant, with a slight perfume… No orchard in the north can be counted as complete without this variety… It is just so good that everybody likes to eat of it; and when cooked, it is white, puffy, and delicious.” Famous in Maine for well over 200 years.

Medium-small roundish ruby-red thin-skinned fruit. Keeps until late December. As one of the few apples that comes relatively true-to-type from seed, occasional “variations on a Fameuse theme” can be found in old orchards. Thought to be a parent of McIntosh. Recent discoveries suggest that it could be one of the oldest varieties in North America. (For more details, you’ll have to check out John Bunker’s book: Apples and the Art of Detection!)

Productive long-lived tree. Susceptible to scab. Blooms mid-late. Z3. Maine Grown. BACK! (Standard: 3–6' bare-root trees)