Swiss Limbertwig Apple (Spring 2027)

This is our first year growing Swiss Limbertwig, so everything below is secondhand until we get more long-term data from our own mother trees.

Overview

Swiss Limbertwig is an old Southern Appalachian apple with a color you don't see much: deep maroon, covered in big white dots. It's crisp and sweet with a hint of citrus, ripens late and keeps well.

Origin and History

Limbertwig isn't one apple. It's a whole family of old Appalachian apples, and Big Horse Creek Farm lists Swiss as one of the named Limbertwigs. Century Farm Orchards and the Southern Heritage Apple Orchard at Horne Creek Farm in North Carolina both say it was grown by Swiss settlers in the Cumberland Mountains, which is where the name comes from. The dates people give for it are all over the place, so we won't guess at one, and we haven't found a published parentage.

Fruit and Uses

Lee Calhoun called it "a real beauty" with "a most unusual maroon color and large white pips." It's a medium-sized apple with a slightly rough, russet-like skin. Century Farm describes the flesh as "firm, sweet, and very crisp," and Horne Creek Farm says that when it's fully ripe it "can taste like a grapefruit." Watauga County Extension in North Carolina lists it as excellent for fresh eating and cider, firm when baked, and a good keeper. Brix Cider in Wisconsin tested the juice at 13.1 Brix with 8.8 g/L acid and 0.20% tannin, and called the single-variety cider "Nice, balanced. Good all around." That's high acid with the tannin sitting right at the cutoff, so it lands on the line between a sharp and a bittersharp. Every ripening date we've found comes from North Carolina, where it's picked in October, so we don't know yet how it'll time out in a Montana season.

Growth Habit and Spacing

Ours are on Bud 118, which acts more like a semi-dwarf in our Montana soils. Plan on about 15 feet between trees, 12 if you prune hard or up to 18 for more airflow. Watauga County Extension calls it easy to grow and says the Limbertwig name comes from the way the limbs weep when they're loaded with fruit. A writer for the Avery Journal in North Carolina, who has worked with an old Swiss Limbertwig tree since 2013 and planted a young one too, found they both grow "fast and easily" with "few insect or disease issues." Horne Creek Farm says the trees are consistent bearers.

Pollination

Swiss Limbertwig needs a pollenizer. We haven't found published bloom data for it, and we've estimated it as a mid-season bloomer. Haralson, Goodland, Wolf River, Frostbite, Kerr and Otterson crab all bloom mid-season.

Cold Hardiness

We haven't found a documented winter survival temperature for Swiss Limbertwig. None of the cold-climate nurseries we trust (Cummins, Purvis, St. Lawrence and Alaska Fruit Trees) list it, and everything we've found on how it grows comes from the southern Appalachians. We've listed it at zone 4 for now, which is an estimate, and we'll update it once we've wintered our own trees.

About the photo: this isn’t Swiss Limbertwig itself. Photos of Swiss Limbertwig are either under copyright or simply unavailable, so we picked the open-source image that looks closest to the fruit. Photo: “'King David' Apple” by Forest and Kim Starr, via Flickr, licensed CC BY 2.0.