Plate VII. 
BLENHEIM ORANGE. 
[Syn : Blenheim Pippin ; Kempster s Pippin; Woodstock Pippin; Northwick PippinP\ 
This valuable apple was first discovered at Woodstock, in Oxfordshire, and received its name 
from Blenheim, the seat of the Duke of Marlborough, which is in the immediate neighbourhood. 
The exact date of its origin is not known. It is not noticed in any of the nursery catalogues of the 
last century, nor was it cultivated in the London nurseries until about the year 1818. 
The following interesting account of this favourite variety appeared some years ago in the 
“ Gardener s Chronicle ” :—“ In a somewhat dilapidated corner of the decaying borough of ancient 
Woodstock, within ten yards of the wall of Blenheim Park stands all that remains of the original 
stump of that beautiful and justly celebrated apple, the Blenheim Orange. It is now entirely dead 
and rapidly falling to decay, being a mere shell about ten feet high, loose in the ground, and having 
a large hole in the centre ; till within the last three years, it occasionally sent up long, thin, wiry 
twigs, but this last sign of vitality has ceased, and what remains will soon be the portion of the 
wood-louse and the worm. Old Grimmett, the basket maker, against the corner of whose garden 
wall the venerable relic is supported, has sat looking on it from his workshop window, and while he 
wove the pliant osier, has meditated for more than fifty successive summers on the mutability of all 
sublunary substances ; on juice, and core, and vegetable as well as animal, and flesh, and blood. He 
can remember the time when fifty years ago he was a boy, and the tree a fine full bearing stem, full 
of bud and blossom and fruit, and thousands thronged from all parts to gaze on its ruddy ripening 
orange burden : then gardeners came in the spring time to collect the much coveted scions, and to 
hear the tale of his horticultural child and sapling, from the lips of the son of the whitehaired 
Kempster. But nearly a century has elapsed since Kempster fell like a ripened fruit and was 
