Retired FBI agent’s search helps rediscover 30 forgotten apple varieties
A retired FBI agent has spent over a decade rediscovering 30 lost apple varieties in the Pacific Northwest. His project began as a hobby after noticing unique trees in a neighbor's orchard and evolved into a collaborative effort with orchard experts.
Why it matters
This work preserves agricultural biodiversity and historical plant genetics that were previously thought to be extinct.
Retirement from the FBI gave Washington native Dave Benscoter plenty of time on his hands in 2012. Little did he know that a routine day of yard work would eventually lead him on a more than decade-long quest to rediscover apples that had all but vanished from the Pacific Northwest.Benscoter was helping a fellow parishioner from his church with some yard work when he noticed something unusual about the apple trees in her orchard. The varieties looked unlike any apples he had encountered before.“So I gave her a call, and I said, ‘Do you know what kind of apple trees are in your orchard?’” Benscoter recalled during an appearance on the Evergreen Thumb podcast last November.The woman could identify some of the trees. “And she said, ‘Well, I know the very top ones were named Yellow Transparent.
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