This isn't a day celebrating the donation of an apple-based product, even though that might be appreciated, but rather the gifting of the fruit itself.
The apple is one of the most widely cultivated fruit trees in the world, with there being over seven thousand different varieties grown around the world. The apple may have been the earliest tree to be cultivated, with the earliest wild apple trees being in Central Asia, with eastern Turkey having the largest diversity of the genus Malus, the genus of which the apple is part of, which includes the crab apple and the wild apple. The apple tree has since been spread around the rest of the world, and were taken to North America by European colonists in the seventeenth century. The only apples native to North America are crab apples. Today, the largest producer - by a significant margin, something like 8 times as many as the next country, the United States - is the People's Republic of China.
Apples have many appearances in mythology and religion, from the apple of the tree of knowledge eaten by Adam and Eve to the golden apple that caused the Trojan War to the apples which give the Norse gods their eternal youthfulness.
Apples can be eaten raw and cooked, although apples used for cooking are rarely used for eating, and are used as a base of many different foods and drinks. Apples provide little in the way of essential nutrients, with the exception of dietary fibre.
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