Bramley Apple Trees

Malus Bramley Apple Trees

Bramley Apple trees are the most popular cooking apples of all time. Their full name is Bramley's Seedling.

Browse our full range of apple trees, see the full variety of fruit trees for sale, or read our guide to buying the right apple tree.

Characteristics of Bramley Trees:

• Use: Cooking. Bakes to a puree. Superb flavour.
• Partial Tip Bearer: not ideal for cordons & training on wires.
• Tree's Growth Habit: Strong vigour. Spreading habit.
• Harvest: Early October
• Store & ripen in a cool, dry place: Until March.

General description of Bramley:
These are great big, flat bottomed, vivid apples, usually with a rusty coloured, striped flush. The white flesh has a sharp flavour and juices very well. Mixed with sweeter apple varieties, it makes excellent apple juice - go for about 70% bramley's, 30% other sweet varieties and it can also be added to cider. The sharp flavour mellows with storage, so they become interesting dessert apples by the spring if you have a taste for very tart apple. A raw Bramley's apple contains about 2.5 times more vitamin C than an average apple.
Although these fruit are so versatile, they excel at one thing. Few other cooking apple bake so easily into the deliciously light, fluffy, syrup infused puree that is the ideal cooked apple - the flavour is mouth wateringly tangy and fruity and the texture is simply perfect. These apples are ready to pick in early October and store very well, well into the following spring if they are kept nice and cool.
This tree is very vigorous and heavy cropping. Although it is a partial tip bear and can theoretically be grown as a wire trained cordon or espalier, this plant is so vigorous that we don't recommend it. It is best grown as a freestanding tree.

Rootstocks for Bramley apple trees:
All of our Bramley trees are grown on MM106 rootstocks except bushes which are on M26.

Pollination Partners for Bramley:
Bramley is a self sterile triploid: its flowers must be pollinated to make any fruit and it cannot pollinate other trees.
Bramley is in pollination Group D.
This means that they can be pollinated by other apple trees in pollination Groups C, D and E.

See our Guide to Apple Tree Pollination for a full list of partners & more tips about pollination.

Bramley Disease notes:
Disease resistance: Brown Rot
Disease susceptibility: Scab (slight), Bitter Pit.

History & Parentage of Bramley
Raised from a seed in Nottinghamshire in 1809 by Mary Ann Brailsford, a young girl at the time, there is no record of this tree's parents. The house and garden were later bought by a Mr Bramley and the tree was first raised commercially by Mr Merryweather's Nursery in 1865. The RHS awarded it a first class certificate in 1893. The original Bramley tree is still alive, although in a sense all Bramley trees are the original because fruit trees are propagated through cuttings, which are effectively clones of their parent (above ground, at least).

How Apple Trees are Measured:
Our fruit trees are delivered in 3 sizes and you can also buy selected apple trees as ready made cordons.
Maiden: This unbranched tree is the smallest starting size. You can train espaliers and cordons from a maiden.
Bush: This is a freestanding tree with a short trunk of about 60cms. It will grow to about 3 metres tall.
Half-Standard: This will grow into a full sized apple tree, about 4 metres tall.