421 
The name of the apple 
D.J. Mabberley, C.E. Jarvis and B.E. Juniper 
Abstract 
Mabberley, D.J. (Nationaal Herbarium Nederland, University of Leiden, The Netherlands, and Royal 
Botanic Cardens Sydney, Mrs Mactpiaries Road, Sydney, NSW, Australia 2000), Jarvis, C.E. (Department 
of Botany, The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, UK), and Juniper, B.E. 
(Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OXl 3RB, UK) 2001. 
The name of the apple. Telopea 9(2): 421-430. It is shown that the correct name to be applied to orchard 
apples (if Mains is to be maintained as a distinct genus) is, once again. Mains pumila Mill.: cultivars 
should be written as, e.g., Mains pumila 'Granny Smith'. Names used for apples by Linnaeus are 
typified (five neotypifications). The native apple of northern Europe is Malus sylvestris (L.) Mill., 
though many 'wild' apples there are derived from cultivated forms of the Asiatic M. pumila. 
Introduction 
In preparing an account of the watercolour drawings of Arthur Harry Church 
(Mabberley 2000), the first author was confronted with the fact that there is no 
consensus on the Latin binomial to be applied to the common apple. Despite apples 
being the most important temperate fruit crop, not only in Australia, but worldwide 
(Zohary & Hopf 1988:151), this seemingly simple matter has not been resolved. 
For some 70 or 80 years, apples have been referred to the genus Malus Mill. (Rosaceae), 
though Church, the Edwardian botanist and artist, like most of his contemporaries, 
worldwide, referred to it as Pyrus malus L. 
Apples in Australia 
No Malus (or Pyrus) species is native in Australia but, since early colonial times, apples 
have become naturalised and some cultivars of world importance have been raised 
here. The most famous is, perhaps, 'Granny Smith'. By 1924, Herbert Rumsey, a 
Dundas orchardist and local historian (Rumsey 1924, also Sydney Morning Herald 
6 Nov 1936 [see Tucker & Co. [1938]]) could write that the 'Granny Smith' apple was 
"the most valuable of all apples grown in Australia". However its origin was even by 
then anecdotal, according to those who could remember the first grower, Maria Ann 
Smith (1799-1870), nee Sherwood, of Peasmarsh, Sussex, UK, who had arrived in 
Australia in November 1838 (Spurway n.d.). Her husband, Thomas, bought land in 
what is now Eastwood, a suburb of Sydney, in 1855 and 1856. According to the story 
related to Rumsey, Mrs Smith returned from the Sydney Markets with some gin crates, 
which had contained the rotting remains of some 'French Crab' apples from Tasmania. 
She tipped the mess into a creek on her land and, by 1868, she was able to show 
visitors the resulting tree from which all 'Granny Smith' apple trees have been derived. 
Until recently, 'Granny Smith', like all orchard apples, was thought to have had a 
complex hybrid ancestry involving a number of species native in Central Asia, 
M. sieversii (Ledeb.) M. Roem. being important in the lineage. DNA studies and 
fieldwork (Robinson et al., 2001) have shown on the one hand that there is no evidence 
from nuclear ITS and chloroplast matK sequence analysis to support the view that 
