Marvellous Pips

 And I don't want to hear a pip from you!

How sweet? To keep a fond farewell as a pip in time. The end may yet be just a new beginning opportunely bearing a possible fruition for your endeavors. The pip, an end and a chance to grow on. I'm a fan of the Pippin varieties, pocket sized, sweet, and there's a few different types which makes for an interesting dessert fruit bowl. The Cox's Orange is perhaps the most well known and is accepted as a mainstay to a cheese board platter. Generally a mid-season fruiter the sweet fruits are edible straight from the tree. For over 190 years the Cox's Orange has been the most well known of the Pippins, originating from Buckinghamshire in 1825 it won numerous RHS Awards for many years. The self-fertile version developed in Kent released in 1994. Before that the Ribston Pippin essentially had the flavour favour introduced in 1707 from North Yorkshire near Knaresborough the year that England became known as Great Britain. The "Age of Enlightenment' a good Cider and desert Apple to find in the kitchen garden and the parent of the Cox's Orange that does show different qualities. In the year 2000 a new Pippin grew from a core that was thrown to the roadside in rural Somerset, 11 years later a passer-by found the tree and heralded a new variety, the Christmas Pippin! With unknown parentage the Christmas Pippin fruits are mature in October and can be stored right up to December. Another good lesser known Pippin is the Sturmer Pippin - a late dessert apple tree that's fruits can stay hanging well into January, and may be upon the tree in the January making apple picking in the snow a sweet design for the traditional old English Christmas Card! Looking forward to the New Year! From Suffolk around 1831, a Victorian garden variety that gives a hard/sharp taste upon picking that sweetens a month or so into storage for a nice valentine's cheese board. Malus domestica, Pippin's are botanically an heirloom winter variety belonging to the Rosaceae family. "A Rose by any other name would smell as sweet", determining to what matters is what something is, greater than what it is called. 

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