Gather round for the wild story of the divine origin, fantastic rise, and shameful fall of America's most delicious, and most despised, apple.
The Red Delicious https://twitter.com/mattwilcoxen/status/1309541189142577152

You know it well. The waxy, brilliant, disney-movie red of its skin, the crisp, dull, flavorless cardboard of its flesh. It sits in sadness at hotel breakfast counters and at the end tables of professional events.

But it was not always this way.

About 150 years ago, a sweet pioneering couple, Jesse and Rebecca Hiatt, arrived in Madison County, Iowa, with a wagon of fruit trees. They planted a beautiful orchard just north of the little town of Peru.

In 1872, a lightning storm struck Jesse's patch of yellow bellflower trees. Afterwards, Jesse discovered a strange little seedling that looked like no other apple seedling he had ever seen before. Considering it a weed, he cut it down.

But, year after year, the persistent tree kept raising its head each spring. Finally, Jesse sighed and said, in the quaker speech of the time, "If thee MUST grow, then thee may".

After about ten years, the little tree produced its first apple. He took a bite and exclaimed, "Well that's the best apple in the world!"

Marked with gold and strawberry stripes, rather than deep red, he named it the Hawkeye Apple.

Overwhelmed with evangelical zeal for this new apple, apparently gifted to him by God, Jesse roamed around the Midwest trying to get people to try this new fruit.

The honeycrisp is truly delightful, but it was squeezed out of nature by tinkering Minnesotan scientists. Hiatt had received in Iowa a new apple from the Heavens.

As persistent as his little apple tree, Hiatt entered his apple in the International New Fruit Fair, where it caught the eyes of Mr. Stark, America's leading fruit man. Taking a bite, he said to himself "My! That's Delicious!"

A year later, Stark tracked down Hiatt on his little orchard and asked to buy the rights to the Hawkeye Apple.

Hiatt agreed, happy to be assured that his apple would spread. He passed away not too long after.

In the hands of Mr. Stark, the apple took on a new life.

Starks breeders began shaping this resilient and colorful apple into something more reliable, selecting for a long-lasting and deep red apple, which appeared beautiful, even if it began to lack flavor.

Rebranded as the Red Delicious, this apple took over the world.

In our time, the Red Delicious and Golden Delicious account for some 60 percent of apple sales. But, the red delicious is also famous for being nobody's favorite apple.

Today, in Madison county, a large boulder marks the spot where that magnificent tree descended from on high in 1872.

Behind stands the granddaughter of the first Hawkeye tree, still blossoming with all the persistence of her ancestor.

You can still find the original hawkeye apple today from heirloom growers. Check it out.