Slow to bear, the mature tree is very vigorous and reliably productive, with a spreading habit. It is triploid, and two diploid pollenizers should be present for full fertility. Susceptible to fireblight, this is not otherwise a difficult tree to grow, and it is a suitable antique for organic growers. It is thought to be resistant to brown rot.

The apple is medium-large, fully blushed orange with white and russet lenticels and russeting at the stem and calyx. Its flavor is intense and aromatic, as you would expect from the parent of Cox's Orange Pippin. Opinions differ as to whether its progeny is actually the better apple, but there can be no doubt that Ribston is the easier to grow of the two. The fruit will store well for up to two months, and it makes, as Jacobsen writes in Apples of Uncommon Character, "a bone-dry, lemony, gaunt, hard cider" that is high in sugar and acid.

Ribston Pippin was first cultivated at Ribston Hall, Yorkshire, England in 1688. According to Jacobsen, the apple began its life when Sir Henry Goodricke, the lord of Ribston Hall brought back some seeds from an apple he had enjoyed while traveling in Normandy. One of the seeds grew into a tree even better than the French original, producing the Ribston Pippin. By the 1800s it had become a favorite variety in England, but in the second half of the century it was pushed from the spotlight by it's child, Cox Orange Pippin.