With over 20,000 named varieties across the globe apple is one of the most widely cultivated tree fruits.

According to some researches, the tree originated from Central Asia and most likely was the earliest tree to be cultivated. The thousands of years of selection helped improve its fruits and create many varieties including dessert apples (the ones for eating), apples cultivated specifically for cooking or producing cider. Allegedly, the world's biggest collection of apple cultivars is housed at the National Fruit Collection in England.

Apple holds a very high position in our culture, religion, and mythology with the apple that Eve cajoled Adam to share with her being the most famous one. However, there is a recent theory that that was not an apple Eve gave to Adam, but a green to orange fruit called Strychnos nux-vomica which seeds contain approximately 1.5% strychnine. Apple seeds, by the way, are mildly poisonous too, containing a small amount of amygdalin which is usually not enough to be dangerous to humans, but it can be harmful for birds.

One way or another, the larynx in the human throat is still called Adam's apple because of a belief that it was caused by the forbidden fruit sticking in the throat of Adam.

Another famous apple is the Big Apple, one of the names of New York that supposedly dates back to the early 1800s, when a French madame named Eve opened a brothel at Broad Street and called her girls "irresistible apples", which her grateful clients would "taste".

Read also Original Skin, in the Financial Times