A highly coloured sport of 'Discovery', bred by Frank P Matthews in Worcestershire, 'Rosette' is one of the prettiest apples you can grow — bright red skin concealing a striking pink, marbled 'rosette' pattern in the flesh, beautiful sliced into a salad or cheeseboard. Grafted onto the semi-dwarfing M26 rootstock, it makes a compact, manageable tree reaching around 3m in height and spread, ideal for the average garden.
Pink and white blossom appears in April and May, followed by richly coloured fruit ready to harvest from August — one of the earliest apples of the season. The crisp, juicy flesh has a light, sweet, summery flavour with berry-like notes, best enjoyed fresh from the tree, as it doesn't keep long and the flavour fades within a week or so.
'Rosette' is partially self-fertile, so fruit set is generally good, though it crops even better with a pollination partner in the same period (Group 2) or an adjacent group (1 or 3). It's a precocious, heavy-cropping variety with good disease resistance, including some tolerance to canker, scab, and powdery mildew. M26 typically needs staking for the first few years while the root system establishes, and trees usually begin cropping within a year or two.
Plant in full sun in moist, well-drained soil, and prune each winter to maintain an open, productive shape. As with all apple varieties, the pips contain small amounts of naturally occurring toxins, so they're best removed if the fruit is being used for cooking with children in mind.
Each tree is hand-selected before dispatch. Available from Pengelly Garden Centre.
