Malus domestica ‘Stewart Seedling’

Malus domestica ‘Stewart Seedling’

Also called Ballarat Seedling. Found at Ballarat, Victoria, in the 1870s in the garden of Mrs Stewart. Known in the early 1900s. Fruits have coarse, hard flesh with a sub-acid flavour.

The apple trees in the Park have been planted to honour the association between Francis Moss and fruit tree production. It has been noted that Moss's Leongatha nursery on the banks of the Ruby Creek, produced 120,000 apple trees for sale each season. (Leongatha Sun 21 January 1903).

Francis Moss developed a great talent for budding and grafting fruit trees, after all imported stock suffered blight. He experimented with apple stocks, and with the help of Thomas Lang of Ballarat, developed a blight-free stock. Hence the Stewart's Seedling, or Ballarat Seedling, named by Francis Moss in the 1870s. A Mrs Stewart of Golden Point, Ballarat, showed the apple from a seedling, and Francis distributed it. It was a snow white apple, very acidic. Henry Bull, who was a gardener in Buninyong in the 1860s and 1870s, and who lived in Somerville St. very close to Moss’s nursery, probably worked for Moss, and according to descendants was responsible for the introduction of the Ballarat apple into New Zealand, when he moved there later in the 1870s.BUNINYONG AND DISTRICT HISTORICAL SOCIETY Newsletter June 2013.