Cultivar 247: Trail

Trail is a small prairie apple or apple crab. Older prairie literature usually treats it as a crabapple. It was bred from Northern Queen x Rideau at Ottawa.[S1][S2][S6][S7] It was one of William Saunders' notable second cross prairie apples, part of the effort to move past the first Siberian crab hybrids toward better dessert and kitchen fruit for cold regions.[S1] Sources place its introduction in 1911 or 1913.[S2][S3][S6][S7]

The historical record links Trail to Dr. W. M. Saunders and the Central Experimental Farm or Dominion Experimental Farm Service at Ottawa.[S3][S6][S7] Prairie reference works continued to list it among suggested apple crabs for the more favorable zones of the Prairie Provinces, though later writers already treated it as an older cultivar from an earlier phase of prairie fruit breeding.[S2][S6][S8]

Descriptions of the fruit are unusually consistent. Trail bears fruit about 3.7 to 4 cm across, or roughly 1 1/2 inches. The fruit is oblate to roundish, pale yellow, and washed, splashed, or striped with orange red.[S1][S2][S6][S7] The flesh is described as yellowish to white, firm, crisp, breaking, very juicy, and sweet to sweetly sub acid, with good dessert quality and excellent or useful cooking quality.[S6][S7][S8] Several sources say it is good for fresh eating and cooking, but not good for canning.[S1][S6]

Trail ripens from late August, though one older source extends its season into mid October.[S2][S7] Some prairie tables place it in the medium late season.[S3] It bruises easily, and one Saskatchewan table did not test its storage life at Saskatoon.[S1][S6][S8] Older prairie notes describe yield and quality as good, with fair vigor. A 1946 bulletin describes the tree as hardy, productive, and roundish.[S1][S6][S7]

Hardiness is where the sources differ most. Saskatchewan hardiness tables rate Trail as moderately hardy.[S4][S9] A later Saskatchewan note is less favorable and says it lacks enough hardiness except in the extreme southern part of the province.[S6][S8] That split helps explain why it was recommended for the more favorable prairie zones and why one source says it is late for some prairie districts.[S1][S2]

Trail also mattered as breeding material. Prairie breeding tables show it was later used as a parent, including Trail x McIntosh selections made at Brooks and Morden. A parent frequency table records it once as a female and twice as a male among 51 prairie fruit selections.[S5] That later breeding use is separate from its own direct parentage, but it shows that Trail was valued enough to carry forward into the next generation of prairie apple work.[S5]

One memorable verdict survives from Coutts: Trail was "a good crab in the 1930s."[S1][S6] That seems like the right historical scale for the cultivar. It was not the final answer to prairie apple breeding, but it was a real step in the long search for fruit that could look good, taste good, and still earn a place on the northern plains.[S1][S6]

Summary source basis

• S1: Edible Apples in Prairie Canada
• S2: Tree fruit production for the Prairie Provinces
• S3: An index of fruit cultivars tested or developed on the Canadian prairies.
• S4: HortFactsAppleCultivars CStushnoff 1985
• S5: PrairieFruitBreedingDoc
• S6: Trail
• S7: TreeFruitsGrownInPrairieOrchards WRLeslie 1946 HQ
• S8: hortfacts_1976_3.pdf

This summary currently draws chiefly from Edible Apples in Prairie Canada, with 7 additional supporting sources linked below.

Featured source descriptions

“Trail is named as one of the most notable offspring of Saunders' second crosses.”
— ^[1]

“It is presented as a notable second-cross prairie apple selection.”
— ^[1]

“Bruises easily.”
— ^[1]

“Yield and quality good; vigor fair.”
— ^[1]

Direct parent cultivars

• No direct linked parent cultivars promoted yet.

Parentage claim text

• Northern Queen x Rideau cross.
• Northern Queen x Rideau.
• 'Northern Queen' x 'Rideau'.
• Lineage: Northern Queen x Rideau.
• Experimental Farm, Ottawa, 1911, Northern Queen X Rideau.
• Parentage given as Northern Queen x Rideau.

Derived or downstream cultivar links

• Osman (lineage link)
• Macintosh (lineage link)

Source-story quotations

• Trail (Northern Queen X Rideau) Saunders 1905 cross. CEF (1923) CREdible Apples in Prairie Canada, p70
• Trail (Northern Queen X Rideau) Saunders 1905 cross. CEF (1923) CREdible Apples in Prairie Canada, p70
• Trail (Northern Queen X Rideau) Saunders 1905 cross. CEF (1923) CREdible Apples in Prairie Canada, p70
• Trail (Northern Queen X Rideau) Saunders 1905 cross. CEF (1923) CREdible Apples in Prairie Canada, p70

Taxonomy context: No family-tree context surfaced yet.

Related cultivars mentioned in source context