Early White Reinette Apple

Malus canicularis - Early White Reinette Apple

In the heart of the Versailles kitchen garden, this apple was long known as "True Golden Cloth" before Poiteau restored its true identity. For although its skin changes from green to Calville white and then to tender yellow, it never reaches the "matte golden yellow" that characterizes other varieties.

This Reinette stands out for its early ripeness and delicacy: it ripens from mid-August, while its cousins await autumn. A short-season fruit, it does not wrinkle like other Reinettes but should be eaten quickly, before its flesh becomes mealy.

The tree is vigorous and straight, forming beautiful open-grown stems. Its robust buds, slightly reddish and powdered with gray, bear oval, dark green leaves, downy on the underside.

The flowers are born in clusters of six, pink and concave, carried on cottony peduncles.

The fruit, elongated and narrower at the top than at the base, measures 6 to 9 centimeters in height. The eye rests in a vast flared cavity, remarkably regular. The thin, smooth skin, dotted with small greenish spots, remains immaculate except sometimes near the stem.

The white flesh, with a very fine grain, first releases a strongly acidic water that gradually sweetens to offer a very pleasant flavor. An excellent summer fruit, this Reinette can be stored until the end of October but must be eaten at optimal ripeness.

This plate is taken from Pierre-Antoine Poiteau and Pierre Jean François Turpin's Traité des Arbres Fruitiers (Treatise on Fruit Trees), a botanical encyclopedia published between 1807 and 1835, a major reference in 19th-century naturalist illustration.

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