This summer I visited Crailing Community Orchard, near Jedburgh in the Scottish Borders, and wrote a set of short poems about the apple and pear trees it contains. Each poem has the tree name as a title, and a verse of 3 lines. The poems were engraved on botanical labels (white text on a black background) by Sheen Botanical Labels, and the photos below were taken at Harestanes Countryside Visitor Centre, when the poems sat alongside their fruit as part of Apple Day in early October. Soon they will be attached to trees in the orchard, serving in part as practical identity labels, while also articulating something of the tree’s particularities.

CATHERINE is an apple first grown in Combs, Suffolk, outside a pub called Live and Let Live. — CATILLAC is an old pear variety which has been given many different names, including Monstreuse de Landes, Grand Monarque and Grand Mogol. Its current English name derives from the place-name Cadillac in the Gironde area of France.

DISCOVERY was raised c.1949 by a Mr Dummer of Essex, who raised several seedlings from Worcester Pearmain pips and decided to plant the best one in front garden. Having only one arm he needed his wife’s help, but she slipped and broke her ankle, so the unplanted tree remained outdoors during frosts. It survived, indeed thrived, and was later popularised by a Mr Matthews of Suffolk. — HESSLE is named for the Yorkshire village where it was first found. “It [succeeds] in almost every situation and part… the Hessle pear trees in Herefordshire were laden with fruit in the year 1880, when almost all other varieties failed.” (Herefordshire Pomona)

WHITE MELROSE was probably introduced to Scotland by the monks of Melrose Abbey, who as Cistercians wore white robes, to distinguish themselves from the black-robed Benedictines.

The poems were also printed as a set of cards, designed by Lise Bratton.

GLOUCESTER MORCEAU is a pear originally raised by Abbé Nicolas Hardenpont in Wallonia in the 18^th century, and named after him Beurré d’Hardenpont. However “in the environs of Mons… [it] was more often called the Glout Morceau, converted afterwards by the French, when M. Noisette brought it from Belgium in 1806, into Goulu Morceau. The word ‘glout’ in Walloon signifies dainty or delicate and thus ‘glou morceau’ means daintybit : ‘goulu’ on the contrary, signifies greedy, or great eater; the the Beurré d’Hardenpont has become, through this starnge alteration in name by the Fench, a gluttonous eater, instead of a fruit worthy of being eaten.” (HP) Presumably ‘Gloucester’ derives from a similar ‘translation’ of sound rather than meaning. — RED DEVIL is an apple variety which failed at Crailing.

I drew much of the poems’s content from information found in The New Book of Apples (ed. Richards and Morgan,1993), A Handbook of Hardy Fruits: Apples and Pears (EA Bunyard, 1920), and Herefordshire Pomona (Hogg and Bull,1876–85).