Everything about Malus Sieversii totally explained
Malus sieversii is a
wild apple native to the mountains of
Central Asia in southern
Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, and
Xinjiang,
China. It has recently been shown to be the sole ancestor of most
cultivars of the domesticated
apple (
Malus domestica). It was first described (as
Pyrus sieversii) in 1833 by
Carl Friedrich von Ledebour, a German naturalist who saw them growing in the
Altay Mountains.
For many years, there was a debate about whether
M. domestica evolved from chance hybridization among various wild species. Recent DNA analysis by Barrie Juniper, Emeritus Fellow in the Department of Plant Sciences at
Oxford University and others, has indicated, however, that the hybridization theory is probably false. Instead, it appears that a single species still growing in the
Ili Valley, on the northern slopes of the
Tien Shan mountains at the border of northwest
China and
Kazakhstan, is the progenitor of the apples we eat today. Leaves taken from trees in this area were analyzed for DNA composition, which showed them all to belong to the species
M. sieversii, with some genetic sequences common to
M. domestica.
It is a
deciduous tree growing to 5-12 m tall, very similar in appearance to the domestic apple. Its
fruit is the largest of any species of
Malus, up to 7 cm diameter, equal in size to many modern
apple cultivars.
This plant has recently been cultivated by the
United States Agricultural Research Service, in hopes of finding genetic information of value in the breeding of the modern apple plant. Some, but not all, of the resulting trees show unusual disease resistance. The variation in their response to disease on an individual basis is, itself, a sign of how much more genetically diverse they're than their domesticated descendants.
It is named
alma in Kazakhstan; the region in Kazakhstan thought to have the oldest such plants includes the city of
Alma-ata, or "Grandfather of Apples".
Image:Malus sieversii tree.jpg|Tree
Image:96apple.jpg|Fruit
Further Information
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