Mela sergente is a Campanian apple that sits close to Annurca: a little larger, and with a faintly fuller perfume. Regione Campania records that, together with that better-known fruit, it underpinned regional apple growing until the years just after the Second World War—reason enough to look twice at a variety that still belongs to the same landscape.
It remains in circulation across the provinces of Caserta, Benevento, Avellino and Napoli. In many traditional Annurca plantings it still works as a pollinator, a quiet partner rather than a vanished name on an old list.
The tree itself is vigorous, so growers give it generous planting distances. That single orchard fact explains both its presence among older layouts and why it is not a crop you squeeze into a tight modern grid without changing the whole pattern of the field.