According to the fruit company and grower of the Lucy Apple, Chelan Fresh, this unique hybrid is a cross between the delicious Honeycrisp apple and the colorful Airlie Red apple. Lucy’s origins are credited to Bill Howell, an “apple breeder” and former research technologist in plant virology (via Capital Press). According to Howell, he was inspired by seeing red-fleshed apples, an uncommon variety of apples whose interior is colored a shade of red rather than the usual pale-yellow color. While red-fleshed apples are indeed an attractive shade of red, the high amounts of anthocyanins, pigments that give fruits and vegetables certain colors such as red, blue, or purple, have the tendency to give the fruits a surprisingly bitter taste (via Salon). What Bill Howell wanted was to create a red-fleshed apple that was both attractive to look at and pleasant to eat.
To create the perfect rosy red fruit, Howell carefully pollinated red-fleshed apple seeds alongside the more common Honeycrisp apples in his orchard. Taking only the best seeds of this natural pollination process, Howell’s long and laborious work paid off. Not one, but two varieties of red-fleshed apples came to be: The Lucy Glo and the Lucy Rose.
