The core of the issue

SLOWING down in traffic on the A34 near Oxford, an apple core thrown from the car ahead describes a perfect arc before landing on the verge. In a few years’ time, the resulting seedlings will join the growing numbers of ‘wildings’ thriving on the country’s roadsides. A recent study conducted in Scotland and the North of England has shown that these domestic trees from forgotten lunches are in danger of destroying Britain’s last wild apple.

, literally ‘forest apple’, is the ancestor of all cultivated apples from which some 6,000 named varieties have been bred, but it is now reduced to a scarce species of old hedgerows and ancient woodland. Unlike the roadside wildings, the