According to author
David Morrell, the apple provided the name for the hero of his novel,
First Blood, which gave rise to the
Rambo film franchise. The novelist's wife brought home a supply of the fruit as he was trying to come up with a suitable name for the protagonist. It is uncertain whether David Morrell's wife brought home Rambos or Summer Rambos. Summer Rambos would have been much more common, but since his wife bought the apples at a roadside stand, either is possible (Morrell had previously been influenced by the French poet and soldier
Arthur Rimbaud, the last name often pronounced Rambo, and then the Rambo apples... seeing the actual spelling of the word Rambo... sealed the name).
James Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier Poet, sentimentalized the Rambo in his poem,
The Rambo-Tree which appeared in his 1902 collection
The Book of Joyous Children. The poem includes the repeating chorus: For just two truant lads like we, When Autumn shakes the rambo-tree There's enough for you and enough for me It's a long, sweet way across the orchard. A similar sentiment was expressed by "Uncle Silas" in his column for the September 1907 issue of
The American Thresherman: "What has become of the good old apples we used to eat in the long ago down on the farm? The Rambo, the best apple that ever grew in an orchard, is fruit vouchsafed only in memory. [In Missouri,] no apple was ever enjoyed like the Rambo.... A boy would go farther to swipe Rambo apples, and subject his pantaloons to greater exposure from ugly dogs than he would for any other kind, and boys know on which tree the best apples grow. A drink of cider without any fixin', made of Rambo apples, will go farther down and awake the molecules of mankind in a greater degree than any other kind of cider. The world is growing wiser, but not in raising Rambo apples." The claim that the Rambo was the favorite apple of
Johnny Appleseed is false. Johnny Appleseed did not grow or sell any grafted varieties, and for the Rambo or any other variety to be perpetuated, it must be grafted. As
Michael Pollan indicates in his chapter on the apple in
Botany of Desire, John Chapman (1774–1845), for religious reasons related to the doctrines of
Emanuel Swedenborg, believed grafting was an unnatural practice. Chapman was given the nickname "Appleseed" pejoratively for his highly unusual practice of planting trees from seed. Apples grown from seed are most often small and poorly flavored. Back when the frontier only extended as far west as the state of Indiana, that worked fine for Johnny Appleseed, since the apples from his trees were used principally for making hard cider. Also the pioneers didn't have any other choice in suppliers. The apple tree in Nova, Ohio, that is more than 175 years old, can either be the last surviving apple tree that Johnny Appleseed planted or it can be a Rambo tree. It cannot be both, despite any marketing claims. ==References==