Artist makes ink from clone of Isaac Newton’s apple tree after it blew down in Storm Eunice

An artist has made ink from a clone of Sir Isaac Newton’s apple tree that was blown down by Storm Eunice in Cambridge last year.

The fallen tree was a scion of the original apple tree which was said to have inspired Newton to formulate his theory of gravity by watching an apple fall from it in the 1660s.

Planted at Cambridge University’s Botanic Garden in 1954, the clone fell in high winds in February 2022.

The botanic garden’s artist-in-residence Nabil Ali has extracted ink from its bark, and used it to create an artwork of 68 apples – to mark the age of the tree before it fell.

Newton’s original tree, grown in the garden of his childhood home of Woolsthorpe Manor near Grantham in Lincolnshire, was said to have fallen in a gale in the early half of the 19th century.