The tree that produced a new apple that no one had tasted before - and the woman behind it

On Boronia Farm, just outside Donnybrook, Western Australia, stands an approximately 80-year-old apple tree (Malus domestica) that is at the heart of a global industry.

This tree produced an apple that no one had seen or tasted before, now called Lady Williams. Without the Lady Williams there would be no Sundowner, no Pink Lady, no Bravo - apple varieties which, together with the Lady Williams, have made an enormous contribution to the global apple industry.

The Boronia Farm apple tree is now on the National Trust Register, but the woman behind the Lady Williams isn't well known. Yet, as her son Bob remembered, Maud Williams was crucial to the story of this tree and the apple it produced.

A remarkable accidental seedling

Since the 1930s, Maud, her husband Arthur and their two boys Bob and Ron worked their 12 acres of orchard, with its apples and stone fruit, and 40 cows.

Maud has collected ideas for plants to grow, from catalogs and women's magazines, experimenting with her taste for the unusual, recalls her son Ron. Not content with roses and petunias, Maud grew feijoas and hydrangeas instead.

The original Lady Williams apple tree at Boronia Farm, Donnybrook .(Supplied: State Library of Western Australia)

With her eye for horticultural novelty, it was perhaps unsurprising that she identified the very special qualities of the tree with the bright red apples that had grown unexpectedly next to the tank stand next to the house.

The fruit was firm and crisp and showed great aptitude for long storage, ideal for Australia's export market. The Williams family collected a good price for their crates of apples grown from this tree and over time the family propagated new trees from the original.

This tree was a chance seedling, a spontaneous creation whose probable parent cultivars were Granny Smith and Rokewood.

Some of our most common apple varieties started as seedlings by chance. But random seedlings don't happen naturally in our supermarkets.

Apples often produce random seedlings. But for a seedling by chance to be put into production and become known as a variety, many factors are involved, including people who recognize distinctive apples that will have value in their contemporary context.

Only a few randomly selected seedlings are made into varieties that impact the orchard industry. For this to happen, there must be people who make the necessary investment of care, time, or funding - just like Maud did.

In her location impractical, the unknown apple tree was almost cut several times, but it survived thanks to Maud's protection and care. On one occasion when he nearly destroyed him, Bob recalled receiving a stern reprimand from his mother, who "picked him up, bandaged him up, and off he went."

Reflecting Maud's importance in the creation of this new variety, the apple was given the name Lady Williams. This is the name that the little girl, Lynette Green, who lived on a nearby farm, used for Maud.

Maud's recognition of the qualities of the fruit of this tree, and its initiatives to protect it, were poised to enable a remarkable new phase in the Australian apple industry.