Apple

Long before it was a lunchbox staple, the apple was already ancient, tracing back to the wild forests of Malus sieversii in the mountains of Kazakhstan, where bears and horses once carried the seeds along what would become the Silk Road. Medieval monasteries kept careful orchards, prizing the apple as both food and medicine, stewed for the stomach and pressed into cider for keeping through winter. The old English proverb, an apple a day keeps the doctor away, grew out of centuries of folk wisdom about the fruit's gentle, tonic qualities. In American folklore, the wandering nurseryman John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, spread apple trees across the frontier, though his seedling apples were grown mostly for cider rather than eating.