Dessert · 21 trees planted · confidence medium
A famous late-season Arkansas keeper and one of the darkest apples grown, turning nearly black on the sun side as it ripens. Its hard, fine-grained flesh is too tart at harvest and needs roughly 90 days of storage to mellow into aromatic sweetness, holding firm texture for months. Cidermakers use it as a firm, aromatic late sharp/dessert component rather than a tannin source, and the pollen sterility is the main orchard-design constraint.
Disease: Strong resistance to powdery mildew and fireblight, moderate resistance to canker and cedar-apple rust, but susceptible to apple scab. Critical planting caveat: as a triploid it produces sterile pollen and cannot pollinate anything, so it needs two compatible diploid pollenizers with overlapping bloom.
Discrepancies: Absent from WSU's cider cultivar database, so no climate-local data and typical_sg left null. Ploidy: pomiferous and multiple pollination charts state triploid with sterile pollen, while some nursery listings describe it as diploid - recommended triploid because the triploid claim is specific, repeated and consequential, but verify locally before counting it as a pollenizer. Long Ashton class has never been established for this variety, so it is recorded as dessert rather than forced into a cider class.