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Blue Pearmain Apple on G.11 (Spring 2026)

You are viewing a tree that will ship in Spring 2026. You can also find trees for Spring 2025.

An American heirloom with a distinctive bluish skin.

The tree is hardy, fireblight resistant, and moderately vigorous. It is slow to produce and tends to biennialism.

Blue Pearmain is beautiful and distinctly colored. In Rowan Jacobsen's Apples of Uncommon Character he describes this apple's appearance as "mottled with pink, green, yellow, orange, taupe, auburn, carmine and black, all airbrushed with loveliest powdery blue bloom." With a flavor that is mildly acidic, sweet, and rich, the flesh is firm, rather coarse, and aromatic. Blue Pearmain ripens in late October in upstate New York. It develops full flavor in storage and is best to eat between November and February. This keeper dries and shrivels in storage, yet retains good flavor.

Blue Pearmain is an heirloom American apple first discovered as a chance seedling sometime before 1833. It was a favorite of Henry David Thoreau, who wrote about it in his essay Wild Apples: "for I do not refuse the Blue-Pearmain, I fill my pockets on each side; and as I retrace my steps in the frosty eve, being perhaps four or five miles from home, I eat one first from this side, and then from that, to keep my balance."

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The tree is hardy, fireblight resistant, and moderately vigorous. It is slow to produce and tends to biennialism.

Blue Pearmain is beautiful and distinctly colored. In Rowan Jacobsen's Apples of Uncommon Character he describes this apple's appearance as "mottled with pink, green, yellow, orange, taupe, auburn, carmine and black, all airbrushed with loveliest powdery blue bloom." With a flavor that is mildly acidic, sweet, and rich, the flesh is firm, rather coarse, and aromatic. Blue Pearmain ripens in late October in upstate New York. It develops full flavor in storage and is best to eat between November and February. This keeper dries and shrivels in storage, yet retains good flavor.

Blue Pearmain is an heirloom American apple first discovered as a chance seedling sometime before 1833. It was a favorite of Henry David Thoreau, who wrote about it in his essay Wild Apples: "for I do not refuse the Blue-Pearmain, I fill my pockets on each side; and as I retrace my steps in the frosty eve, being perhaps four or five miles from home, I eat one first from this side, and then from that, to keep my balance."


The Fruit

Fruit Type

Category: Apple
Subcategory: Heirloom, Disease-Resistant, Cold-Hardy, Hot-Climate

Fruit Uses & Storage

Uses: fresh eating, cider, baking, storage
Storage duration: three plus months (approximate, depending on storage conditions)

Fruit Appearance

Skin color: purple
Flesh color: yellow

Fruit Origins

Parentage: chance seedling
Origin: New England
Introduced in: early 1800's
Introduced by:

The Environment

Calendar & Geography

USDA zones: 3 - 8
Chill hours: Not yet determined
Ripening date: Nov 03 (approximate, in New York State) + 49 days after McIntosh

Tree Height & Spacing

Rootstock: G.11 Rootstock
Rootstock size class: Dwarf (25% of Standard)
Tree spacing (natural spread of tree): 8'
Good for wildlife planting? N

Diseases & Pests

Fireblight: Very Resistant

Pollination

Pollination Factors

Bloom group: 3
Is it self-fertile? N
Is it fertile? Y
Ploidy: Diploid
Rootstock size class: Dwarf (25% of Standard)

Pollination Partners

This table shows the first few results from a full search for pollenizers of Blue Pearmain Apple on G.11. Please see our Pollenizer Search to run other queries and read how the application uses various factors. Also read more about fruit tree pollination.

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