Mapping new apple occurrences in 2019
Map of the apple trees visited in 2019 in Boulder County, over 80 new trees were documented.
Our second Apple Blitz was a great success this year! We had over 40 volunteers and tagged over 40 new trees on City of Boulder, City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks, and Boulder County Open Space lands.
We also revisited some trees from 2017-2018. Many of the trees that had been spotted in 2017 were no longer present, providing further motivation for us to document the old historic trees before they pass with old age!
Half of the students in our Urban Ecology class chose to continue mapping about 80 more new tree locations and inspecting for symptoms of fire blight, a bacterial disease affecting trees in the Rose family. We found trees on public land as well as private residences with the help of our partner organization Community Fruit Rescue.
Fruit production in Boulder County was overall quite a bit lower this year compared to last fall’s bumper crop. We saw a late freeze this spring that likely damaged many fruit tree blossoms. Our volunteers enjoyed tasting the unique apples we did find, and in some cases the bears had tasted them all before we got there!
Read more about the 2018 Apple Blitz here. Join us next year, date TBA in September 2020, for our third annual Apple Blitz!
Deidre Jaeger, Boulder Apple Tree Project Team member and instructor for EBIO 1250-12 Urban Ecology
Student experience feature: Mary Tubbs
The Boulder Apple blitz was a good experience. I was a team leader and this took me out of my comfort zone in a good way. Our team first discussed our experience with the Apple Blitz and introduced one another to become familiar with one another. From there, we appointed a person to take down all the data. We all took turns measuring, sampling and collecting data.
The field sites were off the trail and we had a hard time locating some of the old trees on our list. All three of us used our phones to try and input the GPS locations to no success, but I assured them there were many new trees we could still add to the project.
We hope to have a better understanding of the historical cultivars in Boulder. It would be wonderful to locate some of the older cultivars that have been lost. We found some large older looking trees that we were able to tag. Hopefully those trees we tagged were a lost variety now found.
Mary Tubbs, CU Boulder student in EBIO 1250-012 Urban Ecology CURE course and Apple Blitz team leader
A few other reflections from students who led tree mapping efforts in 2019 :
“The most rewarding part about surveying a tree on campus is the fact that it's a tree that you can probably encounter on a daily basis and observe when your walking to class. The most challenging part about surveying a mature tree on campus is the distraction of having a lot of people around you. It can also get crowded around the trees sometimes or there could be people sitting under it.”
“The most challenging part of last weeks surveys was dealing with the rain and mud. The most rewarding part was finding some cool on campus trees and making some interesting observations about them. Especially the quick surveys on similar trees and discovering how all 4 trees had different tasting fruit even though they were only a few feet apart. Our most interesting tree visit was at the Andrews arboretum. The tree was massive! There was a bush that was hallowed out with trash inside that looked like someone's home. Not to make light or diminish homelessness in Boulder, we just weren't expecting the tree to be in this environment.”
“The weather was a challenge that we encountered in surveying. Due to the rain, most surfaces were wet so it was difficult to find a place to cut apples for the dot sheet and set up for a fire blight test. Having the opportunity to tag three trees that were not on the list was very rewarding and made the experience feel more personal.”
“[A challenge was] getting stung by bees. Finishing a third of the trees we needed for the month was the most rewarding.”
“ The weather was blustery and rainy, but we both had warm jackets so it was not a big deal. It was fun to survey trees that I've walked past before. We visited a tree about two weeks ago that had very large, very delicious fruit. Since most of the trees we have surveyed up until that point had smaller, less edible fruit, this tree with good, organic fruit was very fun to survey.”
“The most rewarding part was being able to taste the apples and find out that they were surprisingly good! The most interesting tree I visited was definitely the one I went to during to my community fruit rescue! It had the biggest fruit I had seen and it was delicious too! It also seemed like it had been well taken care of because it was in really great shape.”
“The most challenging part of surveying a mature tree on campus was finding the trees, and some were already tagged by another group. The coordinates helped a lot to find the tree. The most rewarding part was getting to eat apples from the trees. The most memorable tree was the the West tree in the Ekeley building courtyard because it had the best tasting apples, and the first tree my partner and I tagged together.”
Next year our urban ecology class will continue to visit and revisit apple trees on public land and on private land via Community Fruit Rescue harvests. If you have an apple tree producing more fruit than you will need next fall, then get in touch with Community Fruit Rescue and consider giving permission for one of our student teams to study the biology of your tree!
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Apple blitz volunteer Roya Conocchioli tags a new historic apple tree as part of the 2019 Apple Blitz