Little Api Apple

Malus apiola - Red Api Apple

The Red Api Apple is among the jewels of French pomology. Small in size but immense in its renown, this apple was long the emblem of refined tables and ceremonial fruit baskets.

Its name alone evokes the elegance of 19th-century orchards, where it was carefully cultivated for its beauty as much as for its taste qualities.

Poiteau describes it with admiration: “This pretty apple begins to ripen in December and sometimes keeps until May,” highlighting its remarkable ability to defy time.

The Apis form a distinct botanical group, recognizable by their small to medium-sized trees, bushy and upright, which gardeners easily shaped to their desires.

The Red Api Apple is distinguished by its fruit, approximately 40 millimeters in diameter, with a smooth, shiny skin, a vibrant bright red on the side exposed to the sun, contrasting with a very light white or yellow background in the shade.

Its flesh is very fine, white, firm and crunchy, without pulp or odor, and its water is sweet, fresh, and pleasant.

The oblong leaves, narrowed at the base, are bordered with sharp teeth, while the flowers, 5 centimeters wide, display petals unevenly washed with pink.

Resisting the first frosts better than any other apple, it was left on the tree until November, thus gaining in redness, crunch, and flavor on somewhat dry soils.

This plate is taken from the Traité des Arbres Fruitiers by Pierre-Antoine Poiteau and Pierre Jean François Turpin, a botanical encyclopedia published between 1807 and 1835, a major reference in 19th-century naturalistic illustration.

It combines the rigor of scientific drawing with a rare artistic sensitivity, characteristic of the great plates of the golden age of illustrated botany.