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The Imperiia Project: a spatial history of the Russian Empire

Apple varieties

From the moment Catherine II annexed the Crimean Khanate, naturalists began assembling lists of the apple varieties of the peninsula. There were short lists and long lists, from a list of 13 local varieties compiled in 1818 to a list of 294 compiled at the Nikita Botanical Garden in 1847.

(The fact that so many apples grew wild in the forest made it difficult for pomologists to keep them straight. At the 1888 Tavrida Province agricultural exhibition 111 varieties were on display.)

Here are the varieties identified as growing in Crimea according to the 1906 Atlas of Fruits.

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Botanical lithograph of a variety that likely originated in the southern coast of the Black Sea (at Sinop) and thrived in Crimea. With the Saint Germaine pear the "alpha and omega" of Crimean orchardry. The Sary Sinop is considered a first-class market fruit, appealing for eating and cooking. Candied fruit factories use it exclusively. Yield is high, which explains why it plays a crucial role in the Crimean economy despite fetching 1 ruble 50 kopeks per pood (half the price of many reinette varieties). This is the calling-card apple of Karasubazar.
An English pear identified in 1800. At an 1894 international exposition there were 33 Golden Winter Pearmain entries, including from the western provinces, the Baltics, Crimea, Kherson, Yekaterinoslav, Poltava, Tersk and Kuban. The fruit ripens in October. This is a case of beauty over longevity though, thus the Golden Winter is best dried or made into cider. Atlas correspondents wrote in to add that the Golden Winter Pearmain stood up well to rain but could fall victim to moths and geese.
Atlas notes: In Russia the apple comes from the gardens of the sugar merchant and gardener Platon Fyodorovich Simirenko, who brought it in from Belgium. It has received increased attention among cultivators since 1887 and can be found in the provinces of Kiev, Poltava, Kharkov, Kherson, Podolsk, Chernigov, and in Crimea. Despite its many charms, explain the editors, it has not taken the market by storm because it is largely unknown and because there is another, well-established, green apple in Crimea.
The Reinette d'Orleans ripened in November (earlier in Crimea) and lasted several months after harvest. A first-class table apple - the most flavorful and aromatic of all renets - that fetched good prices. The Moscow markets relied on fruit from Bahcesaray, Karasubazar, and Simferopol, with the best fruit coming, as it so often did, from the Kacha River orchards. Kapustin describes it as "a dessert apple of highest quality that will never go out of fashion."