Why do we care so much about Newton’s tree?

In 1943, at the height of the Second World War, Clarence A. Reed of the US Department of Agriculture decided to help orchestrate a dangerous transatlantic shipment across submarine-infested waters from Britain to the US. The goods? Two trees descended from the apple tree at Woolsthorpe Manor, where Isaac Newton was born and where the apple tree in the orchard helped inspire his theory of gravity.

For over 300 years, this tree has been the fascination of many scientists from all over the world. So why is this tree so important and what can learn from it?

The Story of Newton’s Tree

The story in the popular imagination goes something like this:

Isaac Newton is sitting under a tree, thinking intently about the universe and such. All of a sudden…boink! Apple falls on his head. “Ow” says Isaac, followed by “wait a second, gravity exists!”

Turns out this story is probably not accurate, although it is pretty close. The actual story supposedly goes something like this:

Newton is a student at Cambridge, but has to go back home because the university is forced to close temporarily due to an outbreak of plague (I know, totally unrelatable). While at home, he sees an apple drop from a tree (i.e. not on his head), which leads him to wonder why apples fall straight to the ground, eventually inspiring the theory of universal gravitation.

That version of events was shared with several acquaintances, including famous ones like Voltaire, and presumably less famous ones who no one cares about anymore, and was first published in 1726, the year Newton died. While he didn’t technically specify which tree he was watching, there was only actually one tree in his garden, so the process of figuring out which one it was proved relatively straightforward.

The Tree

Newton’s tree is known as a “Flower of Kent” tree, a type of apple tree that isn’t very popular nowadays on account of not being very good. It reportedly has a variety of different traits that make it inferior to other apple trees, including most importantly having bad fruit. The National Fruit collection describes it as having “soft, coarse-textured flesh with a subacid flavour” (whatever that means).

The tree continued to grow until 1820, when it fell over in a storm. Despite this, they managed to save a large part of the tree, and rerooted it in the same garden. Enough of the original tree remained that the tree that is currently there is still considered by most to be the same tree. Today, it can be seen at Woolsthorpe Manor, although it now has a fence around it to prevent visitors from trying to go under the tree to take photos of themselves (apparently mistakenly) emulating Newton sitting under the tree.

When it collapsed in 1820, part of the tree was taken to Belton Park, a nearby park, and in the 1930s, part of the resultant tree was taken to The Fruit Research Station in East Malling. Clones of the tree, made from either seeds or by grafting, were then spread all across the world. Newton trees have become a symbol of science, with universities, botanical gardens, and other scientific institutions particularly keen on getting hold of them. There are Newton trees on all six inhabited continents, including 14 in the US, 11 of which are at universities. One non-university example is at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which went one step further and cultivated a secret (!) grove of Newton trees, which were given out as gifts to famous figures including Senator Rockefeller and Vinton Cerf (who then subsequently donated theirs to universities). A piece of the tree was even taken into space, as part of the 350th anniversary celebrations of the Royal Society.

The Legacy of the Tree

The cultural impact of the tree isn’t just confined to its descendents either. It has also featured prominently (considering it’s a tree) in popular culture, for example. It’s featured in the 1957 movie The Story of Mankind (with Harpo Marx as Isaac Newton). It’s featured in the video game Mario’s Time Machine. There was even an entire TV show that ran for 15 years on PBS called Newton’s Apple, which focused on science education.

This prominent cultural role has led to the tree winning all sorts of awards. The Tree Council named it as one of the Fifty Great British Trees in honor of Queen Elizabeth’s Golden Jubilee (and it featured as part of the carriage for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee as well). It also made TIME magazine’s “Top 10 Awesome Trees” list, which is apparently a thing.

Why does the tree capture the imagination of everyone? Probably because physics often seems really hard. The tree makes all that complicated gravity stuff feel a little less, well, complicated. It brings the idea down to Earth (pun intended), showing us that science doesn’t always have to be this far-off, abstract thing. It can be as simple as an apple tree. And that’s why we still care about Newton’s tree — it’s not just about gravity, it’s about the spark of curiosity that drives all discovery. So, the next time you’re eating an apple, think about Newton’s tree, how it connects to the fundamental understanding of the universe, and how lucky you are not to have to eat an apple from it, because those things are apparently disgusting.