Jonathan is a medium-sized sweet[1] apple, with a touch of acid[2] and a tough but smooth skin, good for eating fresh and for cooking.

The first theory; it was grown by Rachel Negus Higley, who gathered seeds from the local cider mill in Connecticut.

[6] She continued to carefully cultivate her orchard to maturity and named the resulting variety after a young local boy, Jonathan Lash, who frequented her orchard.

[citation needed] The other, more accepted, theory is that it originated from an Esopus Spitzenburg seedling in 1826, on the farm of Philip Rick(s) in Woodstock, Ulster County, New York.

Although it may have originally been called the "Ricks" apple, it was soon renamed by Judge Jesse Buel, President of Albany Horticultural Society, after Jonathan Zander, who discovered the apple and brought it to Buel's attention.