apple egremont russet

Here's a curiosity of the apple world.

Richard gave me this Egremont Russet apple from his tree. This is not recognisable as the same variety I pictured last time. Its skin is red and glossy and it is about 50% larger than the russets we harvested.

This year Richards russet apples ripened later and were this colour - in a normal year they are conventional russets with a skin closer to the ones I photographed before.

So, why is it that apples can change in appearance so radically, one year to the next.

I had been looking through google images at Egrement Russets and spotted one similar to Richards from the RHS library and thought it was a cataloguing error.

Mystery in apple world...........

Inspector Russet to action..