Apple: Magnus Summer Surprise

A beautiful red-flesh apple, with gorgeous pink flowers, and sweet, but balanced flavour!

  • Vigour: Medium (Reasonable amount of woody growth, required good training)
  • Precociousness: Medium (often fruits in 1 year after grafting)
  • Resistances: Shows resistance to woolly aphids, and powdery mildew
  • Size of fruit: Smallish
  • Flowering: Early
  • Fruiting: Early
  • Cropping: Medium to heavy
  • Ploidy: Diploid (?)
  • Fruit colour: Bright red
  • Flesh colour: Red
  • Leaf colour: Bronze-grey (maturing to dark green in late season)
  • Parentage: Huonville Crab (open pollinated)
  • Descendants: Unknown
  • Biennialism: None observed
  • Growth habit: Standard V
  • Self-fertile: No

Developed by Robert Magnus between 2002-2007, from open pollinated Huonville Crab seeds, after being encourage by a french tourist that had visited the farm upon learning of the red-fleshed apple, and after raising a large number of these open pollinated apples, a single standout was found, and made commercially available in 2019 under the commercial name "Magnus Summer Surprise".

It is a major improvement over it's progenitor, with a sweeter flavour, with more consistent berry notes, larger fruit, and crisp (not just hard, as is the case with the Huonville Crab) texture, as has been described as having a "spiced" flavour.
The flesh is a mild scarlet, with a clean white core, with skin that is notable almost fluorescent red (Similar to a Ballerina Flamenco).

In contrast to it's parent whose leaves start bronze-red, the Magnus Summer Surprise's leaves start much more grey, before turning a dark green with pronounced red veins later in the season.

NOTE: I have yet to try this apple directly, having only purchased it in 2021, and so have relied on others for some information related to this variety.
This entry will be updated as the tree grows and bears.