Description
Paula Red boasts a red color with light yellow striping and has a sweet tart flavor with a hint of strawberry. Its firm flesh makes Paula Red a good fresh eating and cooking apple, especially good for a delicious, naturally pink applesauce and for pie making. It is an early season apple ripening in late August, and like most early apples, Paula Red does not keep for too long.
Sometimes at the farm stand, Paula Red is mislabeled Early Mac, a 1923 Geneva, New York apple. Early Mac is a cross of Yellow Transparent and McIntosh. Early Macs are moderately firm and crisp and good for cooking and eating.
Discovered: 1960, Michigan
Parentage: Unknown
Harvest: Early Season
History
Paula Red is a relatively new variety, introduced in Sparta, Michigan, in 1968. Grower Lewis Arends found the chance seedling in 1960 near a McIntosh block in his 80-acre orchard, so it is commonly thought that Paula Red may have McIntosh in its parentage. He named the new variety after his wife, Pauline.
