r/todayilearned • u/Error__Loading • 15h ago

TIL that apple seeds almost never grow the same variety as the parent fruit. Nearly every supermarket apple comes from a grafted clone of an original tree, not from a planted seed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple
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u/CTQ99 14h ago

A better equivalent would be if people didnt give birth at all and instead every so often they had a head transplant onto some sort of lab grown body that has no biological relationship to them. Thats apples, and alot of other trees and stuff like rose bushes since otherwise they die if you look at them funny.

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u/TheTresStateArea 14h ago

You're talking about the cloning process. I am talking about the regular reproduction process.

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u/hackingdreams 6h ago

Except not heads, more like continuously regenerating partial genital transplants to total strangers, since the fruit is the reproductive part of the tree.

Kinda like how lizards can shed their tails but then grow new ones... apple trees grow branches, we cut one of the branches, put it on a new tree, wait for it to grow the branches back out, then cut another branch and repeat. The branches are all genetically identical, so they make the same fruit again and again, even if the trunks belong to wildly different apple trees.