Glossary · Fruit
Cultivar
Also written variety. Each is a name for the same thing, which is why none of them has an entry of its own.
Definition
A named clone propagated by grafting, so that every tree of it is genetically identical to the original seedling. "Variety" is used interchangeably in trade, though it has a stricter botanical meaning.
- Subject
- Fruit
- Also written
- variety
In more detail
Cider cultivar naming is unusually unreliable. The same fruit carries different names in adjacent valleys, the same name attaches to different fruit, spellings drift in print, and nurseries have propagated mislabelled stock for decades. National collections and DNA fingerprinting exist to resolve exactly this, and a cultivar record is only as good as the identification behind it.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Orchard
Graft
The joining of a scion to a rootstock so that their cambium layers unite and grow as one tree. It is the only reliable way to reproduce an apple or pear cultivar.
Orchard
Scion
A length of dormant one-year-old shoot from the cultivar to be propagated, joined to a rootstock so that it becomes the fruiting part of the tree.
Fruit
Sport
A shoot that differs genetically from the rest of the tree through a somatic mutation, and which can be propagated as a new cultivar. Many red-skinned strains of familiar apples arose this way.
Fruit
Heritage variety
An old cultivar surviving outside mainstream commercial propagation, kept going by collections, enthusiasts and old orchards. The term implies age and rarity, not quality.
Cider
Single varietal
A cider or perry made from one named cultivar, usually with a stated minimum proportion — commonly 90 or 100 per cent — rather than from a blend.
Where to go next
- Cider glossary — The whole vocabulary, by subject and A–Z.
- Comparisons — Terms that are only really clear when set against the thing they are not.
- Search — Finds terms by their aliases and by their spellings in other languages.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
University of Reading / Defra, Brogdale · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
The UK national reference collection for apple and pear cultivars. The authority CiderHQ uses for whether two names are the same fruit, which is the central duplicate-resolution problem in cider data.
Marcher Apple Network · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
Has rediscovered and DNA-fingerprinted a number of lost Welsh border cultivars. Cited for identity work on cultivars the national collections do not hold.
GRIN-Global germplasm database — Malus and Pyrus
United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24