Stark Bro's Nurseries & Orchards Co. is a horticultural company based in Louisiana, Missouri, that specializes in growing and selling fruit trees to home gardeners and orchardists. The company was the original marketer of the Red Delicious and Golden Delicious apples.
In 1816, James Hart Stark moved from Kentucky to Louisiana, Missouri. He brought with him a bundle of apple scions. He started a nursery business from his bundle, officially incorporated in 1889.
In 1893, Stark Bro's held their first International New Fruit Fair. Jesse Hiatt, who owned an orchard in Peru, Iowa, sent samples of his fruit to compete in the contest for the best new fruit. Hiatt's apples won the judging, but his nametag could not be found. He submitted samples of the same apple the following year and won again. This time there was a nametag, and the apples could be identified. The Stark brothers traveled to the Hiatt farm and bought the rights to the Red Delicious apple in 1894. [1] [2]
In 1914, the Stark Golden Delicious apple was discovered and developed. The original tree was found on the Mullins' family farm in Clay County, West Virginia and was locally known as Mullin's Yellow Seedling and Annit apple. Anderson Mullins sold the tree and propagation rights to Stark Bro's Nurseries & Orchards Co., which first marketed it as a companion to their Red Delicious apple in 1914. [3] [4] They collaborated with Luther Burbank who willed over 750 of his varieties to the company.
In June 2001, the possibility of closure to Stark Brothers Nurseries, Louisiana, Missouri's oldest and largest employer, famous worldwide for the fruit trees it grew and sold, was a reality. [5] However, the alarm was short-lived. By the fall of that year, Stark Bro's was back as two separate business Stark Bro's Fulfillment Services and Stark Brothers Nurseries and Orchards.
Stark Bro's has three main business areas: e-Commerce/Mail-Order, Wholesale, and the retail Garden Center. The operations include: [8]
One million trees per year are shipped from Stark Bro's facilities.
Golden Delicious is a cultivar of apple. It is one of the 15 most popular apple cultivars in the United States. It is not closely related to Red Delicious.
Malus is a genus of about 30–55 species of small deciduous trees or shrubs in the family Rosaceae, including the domesticated orchard apple, crab apples and wild apples.
Lloyd Crow Stark was an American businessman and politician who served as the 39th Governor of the U.S. state of Missouri. He was a member of the Democratic Party.
Red Delicious is a type of apple with a red exterior and sweet taste that was first recognized in Madison County, Iowa, in 1872. Today, the name Red Delicious comprises more than 50 cultivars. It was the most produced cultivar in the United States from 1968 to 2018, when it was surpassed by Gala.
The Braeburn is a cultivar of apple that is firm to the touch with a red/orange vertical streaky appearance on a yellow/green background. Its color intensity varies with different growing conditions.
Gala is an apple cultivar with a sweet, mild flavour, a crisp but not hard texture, and a striped or mottled orange or reddish appearance. Originating from New Zealand in the 1930s, similar to most named apples, it is clonally propagated. In 2018, it surpassed Red Delicious as the apple cultivar with the highest production in the United States, according to the US Apple Association. It was the first time in over 50 years that any cultivar was produced more than Red Delicious.
The Baldwin apple is a bright red winter apple, very good in quality, and easily shipped. It was for many years the most popular apple in New England, New York, and for export from the United States of America. It has also been known as 'Calville Butter', 'Felch', 'Late Baldwin', 'Pecker', 'Red Baldwin's Pippin', 'Steele's Red Winter', and 'Woodpecker'.
The Ben Davis, originally trademarked by the Stark Brothers Nursery as the "Black Ben Davis", is an apple cultivar.
The Cornish Gilliflower is a cultivar of apple.
Ginger Gold is a yellow apple variety which entered commerce in the 1980s, though the original seedling dates from the late 1960s. According to the US Apple Association website, as of 2008, it was one of the fifteen most popular apple cultivars in the United States.
The Siberian elm cultivar Ulmus pumila 'Green King' was once believed to have been derived from a crossing of the Siberian Elm Ulmus pumila with the American Red Elm Ulmus rubra. However, it is now apparent the tree originated as a sport of U. pumila in 1939 at the Neosho Nurseries, Neosho, Missouri.
'Ambrosia' is a cultivar of apple originating in British Columbia, Canada in the early 1990s. The original tree was first cultivated by the Mennell family of Similkameen Valley, British Columbia, who discovered it growing in their orchard.
Luther Burbank was an American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science. He developed more than 800 strains and varieties of plants over his 55-year career. Burbank's varied creations included fruits, flowers, grains, grasses, and vegetables. He developed a spineless cactus and the plumcot.
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree. Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus Malus. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, Malus sieversii, is still found. Apples have been grown for thousands of years in Asia and Europe and were introduced to North America by European colonists. Apples have religious and mythological significance in many cultures, including Norse, Greek, and European Christian tradition.
Malus niedzwetzkyana, or Niedzwetzky's apple, is a kind of apple native to certain parts of China, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan noted for its red-fleshed, red-skinned fruit and red flowers. Some botanists consider it a distinct species, while others have argued it is simply an unusual variety of the common apple, Malus pumila.
Pristine apple is a hybrid cultivar of 'Co Op 10' x 'Camuzat' domesticated apples, which are descendants of the 'McIntosh' apple and the 'Starking Delicious'. This cultivar was developed and patented in the United States by the PRI disease resistant apple breeding program, in Indiana, United States in 1994, for its resistance to apple scab. It is susceptible to cedar-apple rust.
Wijcik McIntosh is a mutation of the McIntosh apple that has a columnar growing habit, meaning that it grows straight and upright, and is spur-bearing, without any major branching. This property is very much appreciated for use as an ornamental plant for itself, and also in the breeding of other apple cultivars, to make them columnar as well.
'Crimson Gold' is a modern cultivar of applecrab, meaning that it is a cross between a crabapple and a domesticated apple. It is a small apple.
Sweet Sixteen is a cultivar of domesticated apple.
EverCrisp is an American apple cultivar developed by the Midwest Apple Improvement Association (MAIA). Trademarked as EverCrisp, the MAIA-1 variety is a cross between two existing apple cultivars: the Honeycrisp and Fuji. Originally produced in Ohio, EverCrisp has since expanded to apple-growing regions across the Midwest in Michigan, Illinois and Indiana, in the Northeast in Pennsylvania and New York, and in the Northwest in Washington. The apple entered the public marketplace in 2017.
In 1816, James Hart Stark and a small band of pioneers moved west from Kentucky and settled on the west bank of the Mississippi in a place that would later become Louisiana, Missouri. ...
When Stark's successors, in a similar stunt, found and named the Golden Delicious growing in West Virginia in 1914, the Delicious became Red Delicious.
The Starks sent a man to look at the tree, just like you've heard, and they bought the tree and the ground for 30 feet around it, and eventually they fenced it. They were to get all the fruit from the tree, down to the last apple.
Small fruiting plants like blueberries are becoming increasingly popular with homeowners, said Clay Stark Logan, president of Stark Brothers Nursery of Louisiana, Mo. "Probably only strawberries are presently more popular," said Mr. Logan, whose family-owned company, which dates to 1816, ships fruiting plants nationwide.
