An old variety of eating apple with red-brown skin and sweet, juicy white flesh which probably arose in the early 1600s in Roxbury, near Boston. It is a late-season apple, picked from mid-October in South-East England, is stored and is at its best between January and March. When we lived in Boston we worked in the Hospital district not far from Roxbury, which was a dangerous place. The annual murder rate in 1990 for the greater Boston area was the same as for the whole of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (and the Troubles in Northern Ireland still persisted). About 90% of these murders occurred in Roxbury. Children were caught in the cross-fire of drugs wars and innocent people died in large numbers. Many African-Americans coming to Boston to work found themselves with no option but to live in Roxbury however respectable and hard-working they were. I have no idea what the predicament of Roxbury is now, but it is somehow comforting to think of a pleasant apple being raised there.
