Glossary · Orchard
Pollination group
Also written flowering group. Each is a name for the same thing, which is why none of them has an entry of its own.
Definition
A numbered band grouping cultivars by the timing of their blossom, so that a grower can plant varieties that flower together and can therefore pollinate one another.
- Subject
- Orchard
- Also written
- flowering group
In more detail
Groups are usually numbered from the earliest to the latest flowering, and adjacent groups overlap enough to cross-pollinate. The scheme is a convenience, not a botanical fact: flowering dates shift with season, altitude and aspect, and a group number from one national scheme does not map exactly onto another’s.
Where this is covered properly
The glossary defines; these pages explain. Each is described in its own words.
Production
Pollination management
Arranging compatible flowering partners and the insects to move pollen between them, without which a self-incompatible apple orchard sets little or no fruit.
Production
Flowering and frost
Managing the short, vulnerable window when the flowers are open and a single cold night can remove the season, through cultivar choice, site, floor management and active protection.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Orchard
Self-incompatible
Unable to set a useful crop from its own pollen. Almost all apples and pears are self-incompatible, so an orchard needs at least two cultivars flowering together.
Orchard
Triploid
A cultivar carrying three sets of chromosomes rather than two. Triploids are vigorous and often heavy croppers but produce sterile or near-sterile pollen, so they cannot pollinate anything and need two other cultivars in the orchard.
Orchard
Pollinator
A cultivar planted to supply compatible pollen to the cropping variety, or — in the other sense of the word — the insect that carries it. Crab apples are often used as pollen sources because they flower long and heavily.
Orchard
June drop
The natural shedding of a proportion of set fruitlets in early summer, by which a tree reduces a crop it cannot carry. It is normal and self-correcting, not a disorder.
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.
NIAB (incorporating East Malling Research)
NIAB · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
East Malling developed the M-series apple rootstocks that determine tree size in essentially every modern orchard, cider orchards included. The authority CiderHQ uses for rootstock behaviour.
A Somerset Pomona: The Cider Apples of Somerset
Liz Copas, The Dovecote Press, 2001. ISBN 9781874336877 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against Open Library: Liz Copas, The Dovecote Press, 2001, ISBN 9781874336877. The author was Long Ashton’s cider pomologist, which is why this work is registered for Somerset cultivar identity at all — it is the nearest thing to a successor to the station’s own descriptions. No copy was opened. Not digitised in any open collection.