PHOTOS
Grant Petford and myself posing with the Doddin tree we used to scrump as kids on Heathfield Road, Redditch. Formerly owned by Edie Gibbs and now by Betty Leighton.
I called on Paul Dyson and we had a stroll over the local allotments. He showed me his Doddin and another nearby that someone had planted a few years earlier. It was a sucker from the his own tree. Richard Pinfold phoned to say that his little Doddin tree, he has growing at his home in Astwood Bank, was loaded with fruit and I was welcome to take as much as I liked. I called by after work and his tree, or rather bush, is about 8’ high and was, indeed loaded with fruit. We picked half a carrier bag full and this was a fraction of the total fruit. The bush had no main trunk but numbers of stems rising from the ground. I’m doubtful if it had been grafted onto a rootstock. The apples were not quite ripe but three of the best specimens were sent off to Brogdale for genetic testing.
Elisabeth Aubury called me to say that her Doddin had lost all but three of its fruit but I called by her home in Alvechurch and took a look at the apples. And yes, they were the same as Richard’s. I also had a call from Anne Purcel to say that she’d lost all her apples but I was welcome to take a look at the tree which I accepted.
A bag of Richard Pinfold’s Doddins.
And a perfect Doddin!
MADE ON AN APPLE
Above left: Richard Pinfold’s Doddin at Astwood Bank, Redditch. This is more of a bush than a tree and produces the typical heavy yields of small apples. Above right is a large apple from one of Paul Dyson’s trees which he regularly feeds. Below: Paul’s Doddins on his tree (July 2009)
