Timeline of United States discoveries
The Red Delicious is a clone of apple cultigen, now comprising more than 50 cultivars. The Red Delicious apple was discovered in 1875 by Jesse Hiatt on his farm in Peru, Iowa. Believing that the seedling was nothing more than nuisance. After chopping down the tree three times, Hiatt decided to let the tree grow and eventually, it produced an unknown and new harvest of red apples. Hiatt would eventually sell the rights to this type of apple to the Stark Brothers Nurseries and Orchards who renamed it the Red Delicious.
Cortland (apple)
The original Cortland variety, introduced in 1915 by the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, produced apples which were 20–30% red, and was not patented. Since then, several sports have been identified and patented: