Early apple varieties take us by surprise each summer, as our brains aren’t ready for them until the autumn. Nonetheless, there are several worthy late-summer cultivars, among them the scarlet-flushed Worcester Pearmain. This apple suffers from a deserved reputation for tasteless flesh with the unwelcome texture of damp cotton wool when bought in a shop, but this is unfair, as it is intended not to be kept, but eaten straight off the tree, when its lovely, sweet, juicy, unassuming freshness makes the whole exercise worthwhile. Discovery and the well-named Beauty of Bath fall into the same category.

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