Courtesy Molly Wagoner
The apple might be the most ubiquitous fruit in the world, and some would surely agree a freshly picked apple in autumn is a special experience. Local author and naturalist Priyanka Kumar certainly shares this feeling, and her love for the fruit inspired her new book, The Light Between the Apple Trees (Island Press, 2025). Kumar grew up in the foothills of the Himalayas in northern India, where apples grow abundantly, and her love for the fruit has become an integral part of who she is and her life’s work. Kumar’s upcoming talk with botanist Bob Sivinski (5 pm Thursday, Sept. 25. Free. Garcia Street Books, 376 Garcia St., (505) 986-0151) explores the apple’s wilder side—we wanted to hear more. This interview has been edited for clarity and concision. (Adam Ferguson)
When you take a bite of a wild apple, what comes up for you?
I love to be out there in an orchard. There is something very elemental about the act of picking and eating a fruit. For me I feel like a lot of my most joyous memories are connected around the act of picking and eating apricots, plums, cherries and apples straight from trees. Last weekend, I was driving back from Pecos and I saw a man selling apples from the back of his truck. I slammed my breaks on to stop and talk with him and see the different varieties he was growing. It was just such a beautiful moment of getting a crate of apples from him. The apples I got were Early Gold and Jonathan. I was telling him, Jonathan’s are what they call the “essence of the American apple.” He was just so lit up and it was just such a nice moment. I spent my early childhood in the heart of an apple growing region. I was very fortunate that I was able to roam freely as a child and started botanizing very early on, which started with eating wildflowers. I would walk to school everyday and I would have a conversation with the mountains and I saw them as venerable old beings and my friends. I was fortunate to grow up in a place where I didn’t have many toys, but nature was my playground. It’s almost like a love for apple trees was imprinted in me. Several years back I started to stumble across feral apple trees. I found they had a very strong draw and I wasn’t sure why. Slowly as I started to go deeper into my fascination with apples, I began to circle back to my childhood and some important moments started to come back to me, which in a sense, was a seed that eventually sprouted into me becoming a lifelong naturalist.
How does a piece of fruit present a doorway into the wild?
First of all, the origins of the cultivar apple, the apple that we eat today, are wilder than we ever imagined. Scientists once believed that the primary ancestor primary ancestor of the cultivar apple was the wild apple, which grows in the mountains of Kazakhstan. Just thinking of that alone transports us into the wild and gets us to think about how a fruit that we may think of being a very domestic fruit, is just footsteps away from the wild. In my book I chart the scientific roller coaster of the apple’s origins story. Over the past 20 years genetic science has brought us a lot closer to answering the true origin story of the apple and that was kind of mind blowing. I also came up with the concept of the microwild; these are areas between the wilderness and urban areas. The microwilds are fragmented bits of wilderness that are still around us and sometimes closer to where we live than we realize. In the book, I write about how enriching it can be to get to know the microwilds around us. It’s in these places that I’ve stumbled across feral apple trees that led me to take this transformative journey. The humble apple tree can really open up a whole world to science, history and developing a deeper ecological consciousness.
Do you think something like an apple can bring such a divided world together?
During the course of researching and writing this book I feel like I’ve made a lot of “apple friendships.” Starting from the days of the pandemic and we couldn’t have anyone over and, coming from India, which is a very hospitable country, I would have apple tastings in my portal with neighbors and friends. I started to get the sense of how something as simple as an apple can help us form a community. We may not always agree, but we can still connect. The whole idea of forming apple friendships across political lines came to me when I was researching apples for a month at Thomas Jefferson’s orchards in Virginia. In Charlottesville, engaging with people who may not share the same political views, I still felt like I was able to break down those barriers because they cared about apples, apple trees and orchards as much as I did. I was able to share my research on the apple’s role in American history and people would light up and become really engaged. When we first met it was easy to see we were on opposite sides of political beliefs based on things people were saying, but at the end of the day we were able to connect around these apple stories and form lasting friendships.
