American Scientist

THE LIGHT BETWEEN APPLE TREES: Rediscovering the Wild Through a Beloved American Fruit. Priyanka Kumar. 256 pp. Island Press, 2025. $32.

In her new book The Light Between Apple Trees: Rediscovering the Wild Through a Beloved American Fruit, Priyanka Kumar seeks to explore how apples might be able to better connect us to the wild and give us another viewpoint into ecological problems such as threats to biodiversity and climate change. She takes the reader on a tour through various histories of apple trees and different varieties of apples, and she introduces us to a diverse array of people whose lives and family legacies are intertwined with these fruits.

Kumar’s own connection to apples started with a childhood visit to an apple orchard in the foothills of the Himalayas and continues through to the present, at her current home in New Mexico. Kumar is a naturalist who studies ecosystems and biodiversity, and she realized how abstract and remote many ecological problems feel when one doesn’t have access to areas of wilderness such as large forests. What is more accessible to many people are areas of “micro-wilderness,” as she calls them—spaces “at the boundary of the urban and the wild.” Orchards are one of these places.

Kumar posits that apple trees, then, may serve as a catalyst to interest in ecological restoration: Connecting people with the natural sources of their food can be an important first step, and apples are relatable to most people. Her quest to find old apple trees in the wilds of New Mexico connects the dots along 400 years of production to a time when people were more in touch with nature. She writes:

To absorb the significance of biodiversity loss and climate change, it helps to engage with the biosphere that enables life on this planet, including our own. This book is one map of what such engagement could look like.

The text is structured over 14 calendar months, with Kumar first reviewing the history of apples in North America, and eventually taking readers on a journey into the apple orchard world, introducing farmers and ranchers, as well as New Mexico–based orchardist Gordon Tooley. In addition to pruning and protecting the trees, Tooley propagates them so their genetics can persist, and he gives the apples descriptive names when variety designations have been lost, such as “Nearly Dead apple.” Maintaining these older varieties can create genetic resources for apple breeders in a period where the gene pool appears to be shrinking. Apples have historically been extremely diverse in North America, but approximately 80 percent of apple varieties unique to the region have been lost. According to Tooley, “No genus can afford to lose that much variety.” Historic orchards that contain rare varieties of apples are not protected in ways that other kinds of land are. Kumar writes that 90 percent of all the apples sold in chain grocery stores come from only 11 varieties, and “81 percent of all apple varieties available to gardeners, orchard keepers, chefs, and cider-makers are endangered. Perhaps rare heirloom varieties of fruit trees on public and private lands should be offered similar protection as endangered trees or birds.”

Although Kumar seeks to link our connection to apples with ecological interest and activism, her writing is strongest when she focuses on conserving native plants and natural habitats, rather than preserving apple trees. The text feels much more cohesive and purposeful when she writes about different kinds of gardening, such as straw-bale gardening to help guard against the effects of global warming, or what she calls “wild gardening,” reenvisioning how we grow plants (and for whom).

Ecological awareness and activism often begin with a personal story or connection to nature, and Kumar has zeroed in on an iconic fruit that is part of American lore. She knows that rediscovering our relationship with nature, however imperfect, is a fundamental step toward stewardship, and she presents part of her journey in this book. The Light Between Apple Trees: Rediscovering the Wild Through a Beloved American Fruit may not offer a comprehensive conservation strategy, but it does illuminate how even a single fruit can evoke deep connections and serve as a launching point for environmental action.