Apple: Tropical Beauty

A beautiful low-chill apple that is sweet and crisp, that can be stored for months.

• Vigour: Medium
• Precociousness: High
• Resistances: Unknown
• Size of fruit: Medium
• Flowering: Early
• Fruiting: Mid-autumn
• Cropping: Medium
• Ploidy: Diploid (?)
• Fruit colour: Red
• Flesh colour: Yellow
• Leaf colour: Green
• Parentage: Unknown
• Descendants: Unknown
• Biennialism: None observed
• Growth habit: Standard
• Self-fertile: Yes

A chance seedling first grown by Meredith Strapp in Maidstone, South Africa, but named and first sold by Longbecker Nursuries in Bundaberg, Australia.

Tropical Beauty boasts one of the lowest chill unit requirements of any apple, early flowering, mid to late bearing, and a long storage period. They are crunchy, dry and quite sweet.

They have been noted as being highly precocious, both in descendant seedlings, as well as in grafts, commonly flowering in under 2 years. They are not common outside Australia, but are available in most low chill countries.

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