apple-and

Updated: May 1, 2025

Apple-and pear-trees in rough or barren places that have a severe struggle for life, often develop sharp, thorny branches. It is a struggle of some kind which begets something like ill-temper in vegetation heat and drought in the desert, and browsing animals and poor soil in the temperate zones. The devil's club in Alaska is one mass of spines; why, I know not. It must just be original sin.

John Burroughs - Under the Maples

In fact, to my mind, a house of hewed tulip-logs, with liberal stone chimneys and heavy oaken doors, embowered in an old gnarled apple-and cherry-orchard, always suggests a sort of simple honesty and hospitality long since fallen into desuetude, but once the most marked characteristic of the American people. It is hard to imagine any meanness or illiberality being generated in such a house.

Various - Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885