Sweet · 1 trees planted · confidence medium
Correctly Black Oxford, found as a seedling on the Valentine farm in Paris, Maine around 1790. Medium, round, deep purple-black fruit with greenish-white flesh, dense and balanced in sugar and acid, hard off the tree but sweetening in storage and improving through winter. Used fresh, for pies and sauce, and notably for late-season cider.
Disease: Good general disease and insect resistance; reported resistant to apple scab and fireblight with strong cedar-apple rust resistance. Hardy to zone 4.
Discrepancies: Bloom: Fedco describes early-to-midseason bloom, Cummins assigns bloom group 4 (mid-late). Recommend 4 because it is an explicit rating on a defined scale rather than prose, but treat as uncertain. Not present in the WSU database (77 cultivars), so there is no PNW trial data on bloom, harvest or juice chemistry; the sweet cider classification comes from a nursery catalog only and the apple is better described as dual-purpose.