Where the facts come from
Every factual claim on this site links to its source. This is the full list.
How we checked
We only use expert and official sources: the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), the UK’s National Fruit Collection at Brogdale (Crown copyright, used under the Open Government Licence), Encyclopaedia Britannica, the National Trust and the charity Common Ground. Each fact was written alongside its source. Our build script stores the source text and, for every fact, checks that the key words and figures really appear in it. 171 of 171 checks passed when this site was last built (31 Oct 2026). Where we couldn’t find one of those sources saying it, we left the claim out.
Things that change
Some figures are counts or rankings that get updated, such as how many apples the RHS lists or which countries grow the most. These are marked “checked 31 Oct 2026” so you know how fresh they are.
The games
Blossom Match uses the flowering groups, triploids and incompatible pairs in the RHS apple pollination chart; the garden, bees and scoring are made up by the game. Rootstock Picker uses the RHS rootstock heights; the jobs are ours. The Orchard Year Dash and quiz answers come from the pages below.
All sources (44)
- Britannica: Apple (17 facts)
- Common Ground: Apple Day (3 facts)
- National Fruit Collection (1 fact)
- National Fruit Collection: Blenheim Orange (2 facts)
- National Fruit Collection: Bramley's Seedling (3 facts)
- National Fruit Collection: Cox's Orange Pippin (3 facts)
- National Fruit Collection: Discovery (3 facts)
- National Fruit Collection: Egremont Russet (3 facts)
- National Fruit Collection: Ellison's Orange (2 facts)
- National Fruit Collection: Fiesta (1 fact)
- National Fruit Collection: Flower of Kent (1 fact)
- National Fruit Collection: Golden Delicious (2 facts)
- National Fruit Collection: Granny Smith (2 facts)
- National Fruit Collection: James Grieve (2 facts)
- National Fruit Collection: Katja (2 facts)
- National Fruit Collection: Lord Lambourne (2 facts)
- National Fruit Collection: Ribston Pippin (2 facts)
- National Fruit Collection: Spartan (2 facts)
- National Fruit Collection: Sunset (2 facts)
- National Fruit Collection: Worcester Pearmain (2 facts)
- National Trust: Things to do at Woolsthorpe Manor (2 facts)
- National Trust: Woolsthorpe Manor’s history (1 fact)
- RHS: Apple and pear scab (4 facts)
- RHS: Apple canker (2 facts)
- RHS: Apple pollination groups (PDF) (7 facts)
- RHS: Biennial bearing (1 fact)
- RHS: Bitter pit in apples (1 fact)
- RHS: Brown rot (1 fact)
- RHS: Choosing apple cultivars (4 facts)
- RHS: Choosing the best fruit trees (5 facts)
- RHS: Codling moth (4 facts)
- RHS: Feeding and mulching fruit trees (4 facts)
- RHS: Fruit pollination (7 facts)
- RHS: Fruit tree rootstocks (6 facts)
- RHS: Harvesting fruit (3 facts)
- RHS: How to grow apples (27 facts)
- RHS: Pruning apples made easy (8 facts)
- RHS: Stepover training (6 facts)
- RHS: Storing fruit (7 facts)
- RHS: Summer pruning apples (2 facts)
- RHS: Thinning fruit (3 facts)
- RHS: Training an espalier (4 facts)
- RHS: Winter pruning apples (3 facts)
- RHS: Woolly aphid (2 facts)