Description
Connell Red is a medium-to-large, round apple, mostly red over a yellow skin. Its crisp, white flesh is highly aromatic, with a rich, sweet flavor. Connell Red is ready to pick in mid-October, and it keeps well. Its skin develops a harmless, natural greasiness in storage to help it retain moisture.
Discovered: 1943, Minnesota
Parentage: McIntosh x Longfield
Harvest: Late Season
History
Technically, Connell Red is a sport, or mutant branch, of Fireside, although they are classified as the same variety. Fireside, a cross of McIntosh and Longfield, was developed in 1943 at the Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station of the University of Minnesota.
Several Midwestern growers also found the red Fireside strain in their orchards in the late 1940s, but Tom Connell of Menomonie, Wisconsin, named and patented Connell Red in 1956. This was seen by some as a breach of apple-naming etiquette, which favors a name that mentions the tree’s lineage, such as Fireside Red, rather than an individual.
