The whole keffiyeh kerfuffle over Rachael Ray’s Dunkin Donuts ad set off a dKos thread (very humorous) that included someone writing about wanting their apple pastries.
Of course we all know that apples aren’t native to the western hemisphere–if they were, Johnny Appleseed would have had to find another line of work. But where are they from?
Biblical references are often ascribed to pomegranates rather than true apples. But that might be wrong. Wikipedia points out that one problem with assuming the ancients meant the apple as we know it today is:
Apples appear in many religious traditions, often as a mystical or forbidden fruit. One of the problems identifying apples in religion, mythology and folktales is that the word “apple” was used as a generic term for all (foreign) fruit, other than berries but including nuts, as late as the 17th C. CE.;[6] For instance, in Greek mythology, the Greek hero Heracles, as a part of his Twelve Labours, was required to travel to the Garden of the Hesperides and pick the golden apples off the Tree of Life growing at its center.[9][10][11]