Wild Apples by Henry David Thoreau — Read

But though these are indigenous, like the Indians, I doubt whether they are any hardier than those back-woodsmen among the apple-trees, which, though descended from cultivated stocks, plant themselves in distant fields and forests, where the soil is favorable to them. I know of no trees which have more difficulties to contend with, and which more sturdily resist their foes. These are the ones whose story we have to tell. It oftentimes reads thus: -

Near the beginning of May, we notice little thickets of apple-trees just springing up in the pastures where cattle have been,-as the rocky ones of our Easter-brooks Country, or the top of Nobscot Hill in Sudbury. One or two of these perhaps survive the drought and other accidents,-their very birthplace defending them against the encroaching grass and some other dangers, at first.