I’m interrupting my regularly scheduled hyper specific programming with a BRAT-MERGENCEY!
A few years ago I read “Uncultivated: Wild Apples, Real Cider, and the Complicated Art of Making a Living” by Andy Brennan, a pop science memoir through which I initially learned about the incredible genetic diversity of apples. Weeks after founding this new fixation, I started my graduate degree in Food Studies, where in my first semester I was enrolled in a course elective titled “Wine, Cider, and Mead,” during which I took a liking to a a certain unit in particular, cementing my impulse to share my fascination for apples with anyone who would listen.
All the while, I was, and continue to be, a fruity fan of Charli XCX, and like the rest of the world I am obsessed with Brat. While my favorite track changes by the minute, the apple obsession at my core has me turning again and again to the pomological masterpiece that is Track 11. This release has given resurgence to my awe in Malus domestica, and with a sense of urgency to reference BRAT in a fleeting world, here are some of my thoughts on how Apple teaches us about the nature of this amazing species and how humans commercialize it.
“Apple,” Charli XCX’s arguably greenest moment on Brat, an album that has ushered in ‘chartreuse summer,’ begins with,
“I guess the apple don't fall far from the tree
'Cause I've been looking at you so long
It is entirely clear what Charli is referencing in her use of the old adage. A part of life we all face whether we like it or not: turning into our parents. And yet this doesn’t change the fact that Charli’s sleeper hit, which has been steadily rising on the charts and surfacing on my TikTok for you page with great frequency, accompanied by totally pomme choreography (DC Kelley Heyer), perpetuates the misnomer that apples and their parent fruits are anything alike. In fact, genetically speaking, apples fall pretty far from the tree. One might say, girl, so confusing.
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Malus domestica, apples, contain a tremendous amount of genetic variety. Like most fruits, the body of an apple, scientifically dubbed the hypanthium, functions as a plump and protective carrier for seeds as they develop, and eventually, the destined-to-rot flesh serves as a seed dispersal unit. However, especially unique to apples is the bonanza game of punnett square roulette at play when a new apple tree grows directly from seed.
Indeed, like Brat, an album containing more than one song about parent feelings, apples, and their trees, contain multitudes. Literally, one apple bears five seeds that are each genetically unique to one another, and if planted, would sprout new trees growing a different tasting and looking fruit from its parent. Given this variety, an apple tree which bears thousands of individual fruit could technically bear tens of thousands of distinct trees. In comparison, the apple genome contains about twice as many genes as the human genome, so while humans aren’t necessarily born clones of their parents (despite it sometimes feeling that way) apples grown from seed are likely to have even way less in common than their parent fruit. These apple trees grown from seed – pippins, are all their own reference, baby.
Later in the song, Charli almost has it with the line,
“I guess the apple could turn yellow or green
I know there's lots of different nuances to you and to me”
but then continues…
"I wanna grow the apple, keep all the seeds”
You could keep and grow those extremely heterozygous seeds, but they’d likely produce a bad, bitter, and better for pressing into cider kind of apple, and after one bite, you might just want to throw it into the sky.
To control the types of apples we grow, ensuring that our grocery stores are always full of the apples we know we like, like Brat-green Granny Smiths or Red Delicious’, commercial orchardists grow “new” trees from grafts taken from the branches of already producing specimens. Honeycrisps, or any preferred apple variety that is continuously cloned and produced for market, spouts from a mother tree that some scientist - farmer, biologist, geneticist, or otherwise, hybridized to the preferences of a general human palette (or in service of creating an apple that is hardier or more disease resistant). To work it out for you in Charliguese, all grafted apple trees that follow are so Julia and being a consumer who opts for the remakes are so brat.
So, does Charli’s apple really not fall far from the tree? Not unless she’s a clone, which isn’t exactly how I would describe her, especially given that Charli herself credits so many different cultural touchstones for making her the person and artist she is today. That being said, she isn’t exactly a pippin, watered down of any context. I think we can conclude that she is simply so Charli, and as her angels, we should savor every bite.