Bramley Apple Trees

Bramley Seedling Apple Trees

Bramley Apple trees produce the most popular cookers. These are great big, flat-bottomed apples, usually with a rusty coloured, striped flush. The white flesh is the most acidic of British cooking apples which is one of the reasons why a raw Bramley apple contains about 2.5 times more vitamin C than the average apple. Bramley Seedlings have a distinctive, sharp flavour that mellows with storage so that by spring they are almost tart dessert apples. Freshly picked, they juice very well indeed and mixed with other apple varieties, it makes excellent apple juice - go for about 70% bramley's, 30% sweet varieties. It is also added to many ciders.    

Few other cooking apples 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. Look through the rest of our list of apple trees or read our guide to buying the right apple tree.

Bramley Seedling apple trees are very vigorous in growth, heavy cropping and are ready to pick in early October. They are partial tip bearers and so only need pruning to keep them open and to remove dead wood.

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.
• RHS Award of Garden Merit

 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 in Group D: its flowers must be pollinated by other apple trees in pollination Groups C, D and E to make any fruit and it cannot pollinate other trees. Use our interactive Guide to Apple Tree Pollination for a full list of partners & more tips about pollination.

Bramley Seedling Apple Facts

The first Bramley was 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 at the time of writing, although in a sense all Bramley trees are the original because apple trees are propagated through grafts, which mean they are clones of their parent (above ground, at least). All good things come to an end, and the original tree is succumbing to honey fungus.