BRAMLEY APPLE SCHOOLS PROJECT

1. Schools Project Student Work Sheets ‘From Bud to Beaker’ The Worshipful Company of Fruiterers ______________________________ BRAMLEY APPLE SCHOOLS PROJECT

2. TRADITIONAL ORCHARDS Traditional orchards are a unique feature in the local landscape. They can be recognised by the wide planting distance of very large old trees and often rare varieties. Old traditional orchards are those which could be at least fifty years old and often consist of apple, pear, cherry, plum, damson and cob nuts. These orchards provide valuable surroundings for plants and animals also known as flora and fauna e.g. beetles woodpeckers , wild flowers and often supporting rare types of insects. Now the true value of these abandoned traditional orchards as a landscape feature is just being realised, bringing about the restoration of those surviving traditional orchards which will help to protect our local heritage and look after the rare plants and animals. Traditional grazing by sheep encourages a more widespread wild flower population than that found in modern commercial orchards.

3. MODERN COMMERCIAL ORCHARDS Commercial production of fruit has changed dramatically over the last fifty years with the mass grubbing of traditional orchards, which were not making the farmer any money, leaving just a few scattered throughout the countryside. The characteristics of a modern commercial orchard are small trees planted very close together managed intensively. In these orchards you will not see sheep grazing beneath the boughs because they will damage the trees by eating the bark of the trunks and eating the branches. In both the traditional and commercial orchards you will find bees and bee hives and these are required for pollination of the flowers to produce the fruit.

4. THE COMMUNITY ORCHARD Visit fruit trees in your school garden or your Community orchard in your village. 1. How old are the trees in your community orchard? To find out how old are the trees in the orchard count the tree rings on a cut through trunk of a tree like the picture opposite if you can find one. Many of the old traditional community orchards are at least 50 – 70 years old. The tree opposite is at least 21 years old. 2. Are they big trees, how tall do you think they are? 3. How far apart are they growing? Count the number of your strides paced between two trees. Measure the length of your stride. Multiply the number of strides by the length of your stride. Number of strides Length of stride in metres Distance between trees in metres = X

5. Bramley Apple Cherry Pear Plum Cob nut Traditional trees are usually planted between 8 metres to 12 metres apart. 4. Is your community orchard a traditional or commercial orchard? 5. What type of fruit grows on them? 6. Do all of the fruit look the same in the orchard? If the fruit are all apple but they look different for example some are green dark red and some are or even orange in colour, this means that there are probably several varieties in theorchard. 7. Guess how many different varieties there maybe in the orchard?

6. 8. Why do you think so many different varieties were grown? Here are a few reasons why there may be different varieties in the orchard. Some of these varieties may have been bred in your area. What is the weather like during flowering time where the orchard is sited? Do you think the fruit will transport well to market? 9. Does the fruit all ripen at the same time? Write a poem describing the orchard and weather at flowering time.

7. 4.Honey Bee 5.Green Fruit 6.BramleyApples on Flower 1.Flower Bud 2.Bud Burst 3.Full Flower THE FRUIT YEAR Look at the fruit tree and observe how it changes through the year from blossom to leaf fall. Look out for the development stages in the pictures below. • Can you match the sentences with the correct stages in the pictures?

8. POLLINATION Pollination is needed for the production of fruit. Fruitlets appear when bees and other visiting insects have brushed pollen collected from the flower’s anthers onto the stigma of other flowers. The bees carry the yellow pollen on their legs. The pollen then passes down through a tube in the style into the ovary of the flower. The ovule is the reproductive cell which will become the seed when it is fertilised by the pollen. Wind can also blow the pollen onto the stigma. When this happens we say the flower has been pollinated and a fruit will grow with seeds in it. When the seeds are planted they will grow into new plants and produce more fruit. 1. Can you draw a bee visiting this flower on this picture? 2. Can you label the parts of the flower?

9. Picking in the orchard 1930-40’s FRUIT PICKING Fruit has its season, but not all fruits ripen at the same time. Plums are picked from July to Cherries are picked in June and July, Pears Apples and are picked from August to October. September and Often a good sign of ripeness is that the fruit is juicy when eaten. 1. Have you seen ladders being used by pickers in your local orchard? Do they have two legs or three legs? Ladders with two legs are traditionally long and tapered and have been used for hundreds of years. 2. How many rungs were there on the ladders?

10. Create a picture of the fruit found on the trees in your nearest orchard. Think about the texture of the skin; is it smooth or rough, shiny or dull? Consider using lots of different textured and coloured materials.

11. FRUIT TASTING Ensure all fruit is washed before tasting. Dispose of any waste material carefully. 1. What flavours can you taste? CHOOSE FIVE WORDS DESCRIBING TASTE FROM THE TABLE BELOW AND PLACE THEM IN THE FLAVOUR WHEEL

12. EXPERIMENT Apparatus Apple juice in four different flavours including Bramley. Method Taste all samples of juice separately and record by ticking the boxes in the table below which taste you preferred. Results

13. Now add together all the results for the class and fill the totals in the table below. Plot the class results on a graph; this could be a block graph or a pie chart. Conclusion Which apple juice did the majority of the class prefer? Discuss why you think the class came to this result.