Question
I am hoping you can settle a heated debate in my home on apple seeds. My question is can you take the seeds from any store baught apple and get it to germinate to make a sappling? Or does it requier a special seed that it formed somewhere else on the tree other then the apple? If you can answer these questions please also explane how the whole thing works.
  This all begain while i was eating an apple and i asked my father if i could take the seeds and then make a tree. He told me it was inpossible. because when he was a child and he planted seeds he could never get a tree to come up. he then called his father to confirm that. They feeel that you have to plant a sappling and then in many years you get apples. I tried to tell them that the sappling must have come from a seed at some time. But they are quite sertain they are not the seeds in the apple. They are quite cross with me for not thinking they are correct. PLease let me know who it right on this topic.

thanks  

Answer
Hi Steven,
Thanx for your questions.  This is indeed an interesting conversation your relatives and you have been having and one I've heard discussed amongst other families.

It is possible to grow an apple from an apple tree however,it requires a lot of care.  The problem is, the apples one buys in the grocery store have been hybridized so much that some seeds may be sterile (unable to germinate or grow into a plant).  Other seeds may grow, but as they mature, the fruit they may bear (in 5-7 years after germination) will seldom bear any resemblance to the original fruit from whence they came (the apple you were eating.)  This is because of the hybridization.  Any time someone hybridizes a plant, the resulting seeds seldom produce progeny that resemble the parent plants.  

The people who raise apple saplings to sell to the orchard growers often use cuttings.  That is, they take cuttings or growing twigs off of the hybrid apple tree and graft it to a strong root stock of a hardier native apple (one of the original apple varieties that has proven healthy and sturdy but the fruit is not the quality of fruit sold in the grocery stores.)  Root stocks are often started by seed or by cuttings and do not require a long growth period or the same amount of care that hybrid apple trees would.  The Root stock is created after a few years growth.  The top is cut off and the cutting from the hybrid apple is grafted to the top of the root stock.  This is done by cutting a notch in the root stock, treating the cutting with rooting hormone and employing horticultural tape or some other devices to secure the cutting to the root stock.  After a while, the cutting becomes biologically attached to the rootstock which is stronger and sturdier than the original sapling.  The sapling/cutting then grows into the trees that are seen at the orchard.  Hybridization does involve seeds to develop the sapling.  Two desirable parent plants will be used, one to pollinate the other.  The resulting fruit will be used to obtain the seeds to start the hybrid plant.  However, after that, once the hybrid becomes a tree, cuttings are used to increase the population of new plants.  Your father and grandfather are correct, that the apple you are eating most likely did not come from a tree that was grown from a seed but was grown from a sapling.  However, you are also correct in that even with hybrids, a seed was involved in the initial development of the original trees that were then used for cuttings to make the saplings that developed into trees grown in the orchard that now bear the fruit that you eat.  I hope this explains it.
Tom