INTRO: Well there’s something you don’t see every day: icy casing of apples hanging off a tree. Rather appropriately, they’ve been given the moniker “ghost apples”, but what the heck are they?
Currently going viral on Twitter, these rather striking features were spotted in West Michigan by one Andrew Sietsema, who posted the images on his Facebook page. He told me that he’s not quite sure how they formed, but suspects that after some rather cold conditions and plenty of chilly rainfall, the surface of the apples froze over. The apples themselves, which are resistant to temperatures that freeze water to a greater extent, remained intact.
Later, it was just warm enough to allow the encased apples to take on some of that water and turn into a mush. “When I pruned a tree it would be shaken in the process, and the mush would slip out of the bottom of the ‘ghost apple’,” he explained. “Most apples just fell off, ice and all. But quite a few would leave a cool ‘ghost apple’ behind.”
As these apples happen to be of the Jonagold variety, Sietsema has come to calling them “Jonaghosts.”
As far as I can tell, this phenomenon hasn’t really been seen before. During a brief Twitter exchange, I wondered if botanist extraordinaire James Wong had seen anything like this before, to which he replied: “No!” before noting that he isn't sure how a frozen apple would rot and fall out of the casing like that. Some of you may be wondering if this is too good to be true....
Feb 10, 2019 08:02 PM
![[Image: ghost-apple.jpg]](https://usatftw.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/ghost-apple.jpg)
