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The Apple That Time Forgot: A 17th-Century Fruit Returns to Cape Town
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2 hrs agoA rare piece of agricultural history has quietly returned to Cape Town, reviving a story that stretches back more than 360 years to the earliest days of European settlement at the Cape. The apple variety in question—linked to the Witte Wijnappel (White Wine Apple)—is believed to be the same type first recorded by Dutch colonial administrator Jan van Riebeeck in 1662, when he noted the picking of the first apples in the Company’s Garden.
What makes this moment remarkable is not just its age, but its recovery. For centuries, the original cultivar was thought to be lost, surviving only in historical records and horticultural research. Through painstaking work by heritage and agricultural experts, a living specimen has been identified, revived, and replanted in Cape Town, allowing a fruit once tied to colonial survival gardens to grow again on South African soil.
This apple is more than just produce—it is a living archive. It represents the beginning of organized fruit cultivation in the region and the roots of what is now a major global apple-export industry. Today’s orchards in the Western Cape trace part of their lineage back to that first experimental planting.
Its return also highlights how modern science and historical research can reconnect ecosystems with their past. In a world of rapid agricultural change, a single apple tree now stands as a quiet reminder that history can still take root—and grow again.