"My favorite apple is the last apple I ate," says Tom Burford, who specializes in the history of apples. As a Lynchburg, Virginia, orchardist and nurseryman who has raised more than 500 different varieties of apples, Burford reveres the apple--botanically, Pyrus malus--and he sees his mission as convincing everyone else to love apples too.

He also bemoans the apple's gradual disappearance from the global marketplace. A world without apples? "We have to keep in mind," says Burford, "that in the early 1900s, an inventory was made that listed 17,000 varieties in the world." Today, there are probably only 2,000-3,000 apple varieties left, with a few dozen of these dominating the commercial market.

For such a notable fruit, does extinction really loom? No, believes Burford, who spends almost every moment as an apple detective, tracking down rare or presumed deceased varieties all over the world, often relying on the memories of apple octogenarians to get a consensus on whether the apple under scrutiny is the Rainbow or the Red Winter Pearmain variety. Written documentation is very limited, and often descriptions disagree, he says.

Fortunately, Burford is not alone in his quest to preserve the apple's dignity, for this is a fruit with an ancient pedigree, having come to symbolize almost everything in life from stolen pleasures to homey comforts--and plenty in between. It's possible that apples were the very first beloved fruit. But the first of the sweet apples resembling today's picks appeared several thousand years ago in Kazakhstan. And the ancient Greeks had already domesticated at least a dozen different kinds of apples. Among these, the tiny Lady apples are still grown and enjoyed today for their delicate sweetness and as decorations in holiday boxwood wreaths.

From Europe, apples made their way to the New World with early settlers--not to be grown for their good eating qualities, but to be grown from seeds for their juice, which farmers used to make into hard cider each fall. But early Americans soon learned that apples made good eating, not only raw out of hand but turned into pies, puddings, sauces, dumplings and cakes. In colonial America, apples were also dried for later use.