Wijcik McIntosh is a mutation of the McIntosh apple that has a columnar growing habit, meaning that it grows straight and upright, and is spur-bearing, without any major branching. This property is very much appreciated for use as an ornamental plant for itself, and also in the breeding of other apple cultivars, to make them columnar as well.[1]
This mutant was first discovered in the mid 1960s by Anthony Wijcik in Kelowna British Columbia.[2] His daughter Wendy pointed out the mutated branch on a fifty-year-old standard McIntosh tree. The mutation that causes the extreme spur-type growth is governed by the compact (Co) gene. This gene is highly heritable and around 40% of crosses that involve the Wijcik plant are also columnar.[3]
It was the first "columnar style" ornamental apple trees. Over 300 crosses were made from this single McIntosh Wijcik tree, by various apple breeding programs throughout the world, in order to develop more columnar apple cultivars.[6] Some examples of varieties that have Wijcik Mcintosh in their parentage are Telamon, Tuscan, Trajan, Golden Sentinel and Scarlett Sentinel.[7]
^Story of the discovery: The ´Wijcik Spur McIntosh`Archived 2016-12-28 at the Wayback Machine, by Donald Vince Fisher in Fruit Varieties Journal, volume 49, number 4, article 36, pages 212-213. Published in October 1995.
^WIJCIK, ANTHONY C. (October 13, 1979). "Dwarf McIntosh apple tree". Archived from the original on October 13, 2022. Retrieved October 13, 2022 – via Europe PMC. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
