Out of curiosity, do any of you Forum members engage in controlled hybridization of fruit trees? Over the last few days I've been emasculating a few selected flowers on specific (mostly apple-) trees and also collecting the anthers (pollen) from a few select others. I've only made five cross-pollinations so far (--two of them were pears: Ubileen x Rescue, and the reciprocal cross, Rescue x Ubileen), but will be making various controlled crosses over the next month.... I'm always amazed at how slowly some apple varieties come into flower, especially many of the French and English cider apples. (I'm particularly interested in breeding some new cider apples.)
I have a very few young seedlings from open-pollinated apples as well as three from an open pollinated pear coming along, but to me there's only real satisfaction in controlling the crosses in terms of which will be the pollen parent and which will be the seed parent. Only then does one learn about the heritability of specific traits.
It has largely only been in the last century-and-a-half that controlled hybridization has been applied in plants, yet so many of my favorite apples were the result of random cross-pollination over many years in a broad diversity of places over the temperate globe. That's certainly not to suggest in the least that a controlled cross will result in anything worthwhile. I'm of the impression that -- perhaps -- one in 1000 seedlings may be truly worthy. Nevertheless, odds are improved by crossing one's favorite with another favorite, if thoughtfully done.
Anyway, I guess I'm just curious about whether any of you Forum contributors have tried your hand at fruit tree hybridization, regardless of whichever fruit variety it was. If so, I'd be interested in hearing about your efforts and results. Aside from minor mutations of fruit tree varieties which are found and named (--and nowadays patented), a truly new genetic combination between two varieties offers so much more potential. In the midst of the resulting "tossers", as the Brits might say, there may be a particular plant worth maintaining, and potentially working with further....
Is it just me, or....?.... 
(It's OK. I've been called worse.)
Reinettes
In 2018 I used male fuzzy kiwi blossoms to pollinate female hardy kiwi. I collected seed from the fruits in the fall but failed to get any of these seeds to grow, they germinated but I couldn't keep them going. I wanted to see if I could hybridize a larger, smooth-skin kiwi. My male kiwi didn't bloom last year so I didn't get to retry. Maybe this year I will get a second chance.
Sometimes like with genetic dwarf peaches the art of controlling the cross is important because of recessive inheritance. You always want to keep all regular peaches out of the farm and let bees keep close quarters between two dwarfs in order to get more. It's kind of like chinchillas I used to breed. The male with the most handsome fur was allowed to access the most females.
Even though I never bred or crossed peaches before I have plenty experience making hand crosses bringing other species of differing character of cherry together. I could very much qualify to answer any questions.
It's been my experience that controlled crosses or chance mutations are not the only way of fruit improvement. The one more way is gathering together tissue cultured hybrids of prunus. Books state tissue culture is cloning like identical twins, but that's kind of false. Hybrid prunus is very unsteady material and when worked through the lab culturing process they wind out in the end all different.
One example is my tc maxima-14 cherry rootstock. Books say these hybrids come out infertile. Mine came out mostly by the book but a few flowered and produce fruit. I discarded the infertile ones and kept two fertile ones of the bunch.
You claim to have fruits on your marianna 2624 plum rootstock. I have the sane two clones for about 12 years. No matter what I do or pollinate them with they never fruit..
Rooney said
Sometimes like with genetic dwarf peaches the art of controlling the cross is important because of recessive inheritance. You always want to keep all regular peaches out of the farm and let bees keep close quarters between two dwarfs in order to get more. .....
It's been my experience that controlled crosses or chance mutations are not the only way of fruit improvement. The one more way is gathering together tissue cultured hybrids of prunus. Books state tissue culture is cloning like identical twins, but that's kind of false....
...You claim to have fruits on your marianna 2624 plum rootstock. I have the sane two clones for about 12 years. No matter what I do or pollinate them with they never fruit..
Hi Rooney,
With more hybridizing and careful record-keeping of results, one gets the opportunity to learn which characteristics are dominant and which are recessive in a cross. Once you know that a characteristic is recessive, you'd definitely want to cross recessive to recessive if that's the character that you desire.
...Yes, the tissue-culturing of a clone for its mass-production should all result in countless identical plants. However, there are plenty of examples of anomalous mutations that arose in the process. Mutations often play an important role in speciation events. As I understand it, most of the hybrid sweet corn in commerce today (supersweets etc.) originated with experimental mutation by use of irradiation of corn seeds. ...Makes one want to go back to a traditional "natural" sweet corn like 'Bantam Sweet'.
...As for the few delicious plums that I get each year from my 'Marianna 2624', I only wish that I knew what pollen the insects were getting on those few flowers that precipitated fruit formation. The pits themselves are sterile as a mule, so I can get no seedlings. Sometimes foreign pollen from a closely related plant will trigger fruit formation, but usually the incipient fruit will naturally abort before it develops very much. The fact that I've actually had fruits ripen on 'Marianna 2624' over several consecutive years has been interesting, but -- more meaningfully to me -- has been a really yummy freaky situation.
____________________
Dubyadee,
Nice attempt at the Actinidia cross. It was certainly worth making. Quite a number of Kiwi fruit crosses are interspecific in origin, so it's definitely worth the effort. The broader range of genes and variability provides a lot of interesting possibilities and opportunities.
I hope that your male Kiwi blooms again this year so that you can get another chance. How many varieties of Kiwi do you have?
Reinettes
@Reinettes,
Transgressive inheritance is what I am talking about when it comes to, per my comment above, of combining hybrid traits together. I wasn't sure where your head was in level of biology in your first comment so I dared talk of recessive traits and test the skill concerning the mandelian model which since your last post -I can now know you have.
Re-think the hybrid issue that I said earlier about my many flowerless examples of hybrid chokecherry to sweet cherry (all clones 'maxima-14') and go with this hit on google I paste below.
And that's what I do and sometimes find done in nature. My most extreme case find is an old established population (100 tree sucker forest) of clonal 'prunus emarginata X prunus virginiana' with varying degrees of forms and ability to flower.
I therefore stand on my point (and including the Saskatchewan Romance series bush cherry species prunus kerrasis) that variations will be expected in all prunus tissue culture when they are hybrids. It is truly a viable method of crop improvement. My efforts involve asian pear, bitter and pin cherry, and most recently pyrus X malus.
I have grown quite a few apples from seed but have not yet tried to hybridize. Someday I'd like to try hybridizing some of my seedlings.
I'm debating with myself what I should do with the seedlings after I have taken cuttings and grafted them onto mature trees. Most are still in pots. I have two from 15 years ago in the ground, but I'm not sure I want more. One seems to have a semi-dwarf habit which is nice, the other definitely does not.
Rooney said
Reinettes,Transgressive inheritance is what I am talking about when it comes to, per my comment above, of combining hybrid traits together. I wasn't sure where your head was in level of biology in your first comment so I dared talk of recessive traits and test the skill concerning the mandelian model ....
Rooney,
I didn't know that I was being quizzed on basic biological and genetic principles. I must admit that I'm a little disappointed that I needed to "pass" some kind of competence test....
I can assure you that I'm incompetent in a multitude of areas in this life. I know what I think I know. I know what I'm sure I don't know. I know what I think I don't know. Sometimes I'm thinking that I don't know anything, and yet I know a reasonable amount for survival and surety about my environment and staying alive. I just wish I knew why you thought you had to test me. I've been out of formal school for at least a quarter century. Now I'm largely being tested in the everyday "school of life."
Don't take it personally, but I was a bit offended by your attempt to find the level of my head. I'm still trying to figure that out myself....
Over the years, I tried pollinating a few fruits and growing the seeds. Nothing has come of it.
Two years ago, I pollinated Pawpaw, Sunflower X NC-1 and vice versa. Those resulted in fruits (my only success with pawpaws). I planted a number of the seeds, and now have 3 containers with several small seedlings each. I don't know what I'll do with those. I most likely will try to nurture them along for a year or two more, to see if I can get them to grow larger and set them out in the sun then. I understand that pawpaws don't like direct sun in their first couple of years.
I planted seeds from a couple of purchased pluots, so not controlled pollination and I don't know what the parents were. They grew, I grafted them onto plum trees. They have variegated purplish foliage, they bloom, but no fruit set in several years.
This year, I pollinated a red flesh Redlove Calypso apple blossom with pollen from columnar Golden Sentinel, and vice versa. I have the blossoms covered with mesh bags that I bought on Amazon to use as apple bags. It looks like Calypso took. I thinned to one fruit. I'm curious to see if I can get columnar, red flesh apple. If the leaves are red, then it's probably red flesh like the Calypso, which has red leaves, young stems, and cambium. I don't know when columnar trait comes through. Maybe the Golden Sentinel also took, we'll see.
davem said
I have grown quite a few apples from seed but have not yet tried to hybridize....I'm debating with myself what I should do with the seedlings after I have taken cuttings and grafted them onto mature trees. Most are still in pots. I have two from 15 years ago in the ground, but I'm not sure I want more. One seems to have a semi-dwarf habit which is nice, the other definitely does not.
davem,
I have to smile at your quandary. As I figure it, the quickest way to finding whether a seedling-clone is worth growing or not is to graft it to a mature tree in order to acceleratedly get flowering and fruiting of the clone and be able to make the assessment of its fruit. In the meantime, you've got these seed-grown plants (--unique clones) that are still growing on their own roots and some day will be MATURE SIZE unless you've assessed the clone and found it wanting... and thereby can discard the original seedling to make room for others.
Thankfully, I'm not yet at that stage, but I am quite aware that such a situation will be arising in about 3+ years. In an effort to get faster results, I had thought that the best method would be to graft something like 'Northern Spy' (known to produce a good structure) on to an EMLA 27 very dwarfing rootstock to have a "stock plant" to which one could graft seedlings and potentially get earlier bloom and fruit assessment. Now, I'm starting to think that it would be best to graft the seedling clones onto a well-established and blooming standard-sized tree. I don't have many of them yet.
Given the number of seedlings that I have, and the number of seedlings that will result from this year's crosses, I'd say I'm already in a pinch.... 🙂 In the meantime, I guess I'll be growing quite a few apples (and a few pears) on their own roots until they get grafted and tested.
One of the reasons that I love our property is that the vast majority of it is native woodland with quite a respectable native species diversity. When I cut down trees to make room for apples or pears I need to be acutely aware so that I'm not endangering any particular species that we have. It's all a delicate balance, and I think we know that humans don't always get it right.
Reinettes
John S said
I've just found the accidental ones. Sometimes I will graft a known variety to them using them as a rootstock. I get fruit more quickly that way. I have liked some of them....
John S,
Anything from seed is gonna be unique. If you use them for grafting something that you like then you've already made a good graft. Most seedlings will be inferior. Some, but not all. Be willing to sample those occasional roadside apples that may bring a grimace, or may just knock your socks off!
I don't know who it was, but somebody sampled this hedgerow tree that we now call 'Hudson's Golden Gem'!
Out there, it's basically "the lottery".
Reinettes
DanielW said
Two years ago, I pollinated Pawpaw, Sunflower X NC-1 and vice versa. Those resulted in fruits (my only success with pawpaws). I planted a number of the seeds, and now have 3 containers with several small seedlings each. I don't know what I'll do with those....
I planted seeds from a couple of purchased pluots, so not controlled pollination and I don't know what the parents were. They grew, I grafted them onto plum trees. They have variegated purplish foliage, they bloom, but no fruit set in several years.
This year, I pollinated a red flesh Redlove Calypso apple blossom with pollen from columnar Golden Sentinel, and vice versa. I have the blossoms covered with mesh bags that I bought on Amazon to use as apple bags. It looks like Calypso took. I thinned to one fruit. I'm curious to see if I can get columnar, red flesh apple. If the leaves are red, then it's probably red flesh like the Calypso, which has red leaves, young stems, and cambium. I don't know when columnar trait comes through. Maybe the Golden Sentinel also took, we'll see.
DanielW,
Interesting crosses! I have perhaps 4-5 Pawpaw seedlings in tree-pots that were from experimental crosses back East. I must admit that I've been torturing my saplings for too long; it's time to plant them out. Regrettably, here in the PNW, pawpaws rarely get enough heat units to mature fruit. I know where I want to plant mine; I just need to cut down and remove some old senescent cascaras and cut back some vine maples in order to plant them out (--well, and also appropriately amend the soil). I always figured that -- even if the pawpaws couldn't mature fruit in my area-- their autumnal foliage color alone would most definitely make them worthwhile trees.
I'm particularly fascinated by the fact that you actually got viable seedlings out of pluots! If they ever set seed, by all means, sow them! They'll probably be as sterile as my 'Marianna 2624" seeds, but... you never know!
I'm not personally familiar with any of the columnar apples, but I get the impression that they largely arose out of a mutation of McIntosh, a 'Wijcik" clone selection, which almost never produces lateral branches. Basically, they form a columnar tree which simply produces flowering spurs. I don't know whether it's a dominant or recessive mutation, but somebody recognized its potential, and its uniqueness certainly made it prime for the hybridizing of "patio-type" compact apple trees. Given the diversity of these types of commercialized columnar trees over at least the last couple of decades, there must be a tremendous amount of hybridization work going on. The original 'Wijcik McIntosh' appeared in the 1960s.
If you make a cross, and you never sow the seeds, you'll never know "what might have been". Yeah, given the odds, a resulting seedling might amount to nothing. ...But if you don't grow it to fruition, how will you ever know? That's why controlled crosses provide one with data that one can learn from. Knowing the characteristics of the two parental clones that you cross allows you to learn something about the genetics involved. And, of course, crossing a favorite to a favorite increases your odds of something that's at least tasty.
...Like I pointed out to my wife earlier this evening: The anticipation of the resulting fruit is just one more thing that gives you a reason for living. 🙂
P.S. -- There are plenty of other reasons to keep living, of course. It's a biological imperative. Besides, if you leave the party early, you'll miss all the fun!
DanielW said
This year, I pollinated a red flesh Redlove Calypso apple blossom with pollen from columnar Golden Sentinel, and vice versa. I have the blossoms covered with mesh bags that I bought on Amazon to use as apple bags. It looks like Calypso took. I thinned to one fruit. I'm curious to see if I can get columnar, red flesh apple. If the leaves are red, then it's probably red flesh like the Calypso, which has red leaves, young stems, and cambium. I don't know when columnar trait comes through. Maybe the Golden Sentinel also took, we'll see.
Part of what Daniel said is true of what I just tried a couple of days ago. I pollinated some native malus fusca to a domtesic apple 'winterbanana'. There were a few interesting hopes that I had in mind for this kind of sub-species cross... (malus has no reported sub-species barriers to crossing) ..one is to find out if the pollen of malus fusca can travel the much longer than required distance they normally encounter within the same subspecies. ..two (if one works) is hoping to bring over some of the longer attachment points into domestic malus so that socks are easier to attach. ..three, is the question of how much compatibilty pear grafting goes along with such that malus 'wb' is well compatible with pear grafting.
(fingers crossed)
I can remember elsewhere on the forums a suggestion that sweet cherry cultivars when crossed are not that large of a fruit. Past 10 years ago I had chosen to grow out two good later flowering habits in a commercial cherry orchard. Just as suggested earlier about combining young wood to the mature scaffold branches of bigger trees to speed things, all three seedlings have been closely almost the same, and for a few year since.
'pollinator' X 'regina' were the parents, each of commercial size and pass-along qualities.
Reinettes, what you said about the columnars being descended from McIntosh ""Wijcik" is correct. I think it's a dominant mutation, so you only need one chromosome with that mutation. Because of that, a columnar parent could be both chromosomes columnar type, which would mean all offspring are likely columnar, or one columnar parent and one wild type, which would mean half of offspring are llikely columnar. If I'm wrong, and it's recessive, then likely none of the offspring will be columnar. The genetics of red flesh trait are probably more complicated. My "Redlove Calypso" is new. I'll only let it have one apple this year. The "Golden Sentinel" tree is mature, so I'll let it bear lots of fruits, but only one got pollinated from Calypso. It was raining during most of the time the Calypso was blooming.
Since none of my Redlove trees have borne fruit yet, I have no idea if they will taste good. You can't believe all of the nursery and breeder hype. I admire the plant breeder - Markus Korbelt in Switzerland. He seems almost like a Luther Burbank of modern times. Of the columnar trees, NorthPole is older, so I'm guessing has more McIntosh genetics than the newer ones. I think is a delicious apple, bigger than McIntosh and maybe a bit sweeter. I also think Golden Sentinel and Scarlett Sentinel are delicious apples. I may not be that good of a judge, but I think they certainly beat any grocery apple and some other home grown ones. They also have good genetics, based on the reports of their parentage. Of the Urban Apples, I have never tasted them. I have two very small trees that are blooming now - Tasty Red and Golden Treat. They come from Europe, the same plant breeder who developed "Opal" apple, the late Jaruslav Tupy. Part of the basis was to be disease resistant. Redlove are also meant to be disease resistant. I wanted to cross one of the Redlove with one of the Urban, to include disease resistance, but that didn't happen this year.
Rooney, I wonder why Winter Banana is compatible with apple. Maybe it has something not-apple, if not pear per se, in its genetics. I grafted some Winter Banana this year, both for itself and as interstem for some Bartlet-like pear. I don't know yet how they will do. The graft with Bud-9 Rootstock, Winter Banana interstem, then pear, looked nonviable but now might have some weak growth. No where near what the apple grafts have, and less than pear on Chinese Haw. Longer stems for sock attachment sounds clever to me, and worth pursuing. I wonder if crossing some Malus fusca into home apples would increase disease resistance, too. Most of the PRI disease resistant apples get that from Malus floribunda, and some diseases are becoming more resistant to that genetics.
John, you are keeping the genetic diversity going. That seems like a very good thing.
One thing I like about amateur breeding, is that it does not have the commercial limitations and goals. My experience with a lot of the Zaiger products is that they don't do well here in my garden. They are bread for California climate, so that rules out a lot of the peaches. They don't need to worry about Peach Leaf Curl, for one thing, but here it kills my trees. They need to concentrate on shipping qualities of their fruits, so the fruit needs to be firm and not easily bruised. Those are less important in the home orchard, not zero importance but less. They need bigger fruit size. We like that, but flavor is more important. What I like about what was done in WA with breeding Cosmic Crisp, was they included disease resistance in the genetics. I'm not that crazy about the flavor, it's OK but mostly sweet/sour, to my taste buds, nothing that stands out like some historic apples. Part of the hype for Cosmic Crisp was they can be kept in storage for a long time - a year if I remember. That is good too for the home grower. But maybe the home grower can breed apples or other fruits that, while not commercial or marketable, are more suitable for local or home conditions and goals.
Excellent Daniel, for your double chromosome comment to Reinettes, and thankyou!
For at least the 3 of us know the definition of homozygous and heterozygous, but there are probably at least more.
Last pear scion gathering that took place prior of what was supposed to be the big scion exchange at Corvallis was this curious looking pear tree that was nearest to where we gathered. It was a tree like the sentinel series by the cultivat name 'poire vert' (I think I got that right). Which is reported to be homozygous for the dominant double genes of compact growth. Meaning of course: any pollen collected from the hairs of a bee that just visited a 'poire vert' would pollinate any other pear flower on another non compact tree to produce 100% phenotypical compactness.
I am told this came about from 'nain vert' as another compact grandparent, but unsure about if the grandparent is homo or heterozygous. It seems hypothetically possible through jumping genes and sideways genetic transfer that compact genes worked into the original grandparent from an apple now that we know about compatible interstems between malus and pyrus.
'Nain vert' is said to be worthless in fruit qualities, and 'poire vert' a good one, though I have tried neither myself. A late breeder told me long ago 'winter banana' was said to be a kind of hybrid apple. So Peter Svenith (late) had been the only source I have ever heard rumored of it.
I spent time with him in his Vashon Island WA asian pear breeding farm in the 90s picking fruit samples. The asian pears are invented recenly as originally named "nashi pears" some 500 years old through Japan breeders. Therefore most Peters were rather close to the wild harbin pear ancestry in being tart. As said before these can be changed sometimes for the better or worse by hosting on other pear trees if the seedling is yet young as this is something fascinating to me.
Well... it's now a few days later, and I'd love to comment on the various interesting posts that have been made in previous days. It sounds to me like several of you are engaged in your own interesting crosses and experimentation. I can't comment on all of the interesting, individual, experimental crosses, but it's great to see the amount of experimentation that's going on.
Research your plants of interest, starting with their taxonomic affinities and chromosome counts, potential genetic inter-compatibilities, etc.
Floyd Zaiger has created some amazing interspecific hybrids over the years, but I get the impression that he has been using "embryo rescue" technology in order to bring some of his crosses to fruition. Certainly an amazing achievement with "tasty" results. However, it seems that at least some of these interspecific fruit tree clones, despite how well they do for him in his area, can only be successfully grown in very limited geographic and climatic areas. I certainly don't mean to denigrate his accomplishments, but the resulting cultivars need to be able to thrive when cultivated in various diverse environments.
Interspecific hybrids in the genus Prunus (taken as a whole) would normally not result in a viable seed. [E.g., cherry x plum, plum x peach, cherry x peach, etc.] Consequently, crosses, that under natural conditions would abort their embryos, may on occasion be excised from the seed-coat and put on a specially formulated agar solution to develop further and be grown into viable plants. The resulting plants -- being progeny of two different species artificially bridged across a genetic abyss, and unable to produce viable seed of their own -- will not be able to produce viable seeds in a cross-pollination endeavor because the original F1 cross itself would not have survived outside of in vitro rescue effort. This is why the few fruits that I have gotten over the years on my 'Marianna 2624' plum don't produce viable seeds. I don't know whether there has been any recent DNA work on Prunus (on par with that done in Malus) to actually determine the parentage of 'Marianna 2624', but Alfred Rehder, a few decades ago, speculated (based on morphology) that the parentage might be "Prunus cerasifera x munsoniana or ?angustifolia" [sic].
OK. I think that I'm getting ahead of myself in trying to explain things. There are few things worse than seeing the eyes of those to whom you are speaking glaze-over. My apologies. By all means, anyone with a differing perspective on these matters please correct me where I'm wrong. I feel like I'm lecturing but I am not qualified to be a lecturer and I don't want to be one. I much prefer the exchange of thoughtful ideas.
I've blathered enough.
Forum friends: please follow hygienic protocols as recommended by the scientific experts and not politicians. We all need to be rational about dealing with the current coronavirus peril. [Monty Python: "Let me go back in there and face the peril." "No, no, it's much too perilous!"]
Reinettes
Reinettes (per post-16):
I agree on all your observations and opinions. Some of which remind me of what Luther Burbank had with raspberry and F1 hybrids of 2 species, in which rasberry as a whole are "more used to it" as far as mixing the genome together. The 'paradox' he had illustrated as a very stable show. However he well noted the bulk of the sibling F1 crosses were weak, which demonstrates that ourselves or with mother nature can only do so much.
(Burbanks raspberry & blackberry)
When Lon and I became friends on his farm in Aurora Oregon during my period of time spent there cultivating his pyrus ecotypes, I got introduced to a few pass-along projects that he basically inherited from others. (those remembering the old forums would remember him) One of these were prunus insititia that would only partially encase the internal kernel with the outer bone. Now this p. insititia species is hexaploid (6x), and the writer of the book Advances in Fruit Breeding, Jiles Jannick had talked with some people and found that chromosome diploids (2x) can combine with 6x, the offspring combining into tetraploids and fertile 4x, unlike the many weaklings found in wider crosses.
But the idea of an edible kernel wasn't too appealing with the p. insititia plum because, of course the cyanide. However I have heard of people crossing 2x apricots (not just plums) with hexaploid plums before. To plan such a thing with sweet pit apricot might work, or almonds are also 2x.
Some of what I have found locally at my home over the last few years (of more maturity in my aquired wisdom thanks to books et all) that thus far I am able to cross pollinate things very wide. Things that set well enough they could be considered real pollinators. Were it not that they bloom at completely differing times they could be considered such.
-The malus bacatta is able to pollinate pyrus betulafolia.
-The prunus nigra is able to pollinate prunus insititia (st julien-a).
I could never get any results on hybrid marriana 2624 with amy other plum, but the same plum would do better results on even sweet cherry. (a weird one!) When I see good results on anything weird I just make sure I don't waste my time planting any seeds out until I had seen 2-3 years worth of good seed set so that I don't have to feel disappointed. So I had given up on the marianna this year but not cherry yet.
Which along those lines one of my favorite passions are just talking to the experienced. Then take what they know, condense that, and go further. This is how I ended up not being suprised to hear from Daniel in post-14 that pear is not perfectly fine on apple, but the other way is so far perfectly fine. My last look into it was 'magness' pear grafted on malus 'palmetta' (a pear compatible cultivar). The control was 'magness' on pyrus betulafolia.
This combination grows with no problems on either of the above stocks, however there are more fertility problems having magness pear on apple then on the pyrus. The flowers in both cases start to form. On malus the small developing flowers buds turn black where on pyrus they mature but lack the ability to set fruit.
If I hear of a good place to send in for leaf nutrient analysis I think I would like now to send each in for testing.
Rooney said
>> Jiles Jannick had talked with some people and found that chromosome diploids (2x) can combine with 6x, the offspring combining into tetraploids and fertile 4x, unlike the many weaklings found in wider crosses.... I could never get any results on hybrid marriana 2624 with any other plum, but the same plum would do better results on even sweet cherry. (a weird one!)
Your point being, of course, that M2624 is triploid so would only rarely be successful in any crosses. Did you make any successful cherry x plum crosses with other plums?
The stability of even-number ploidy levels is behind my choice of breeding projects. As you know I have assembled a collection of sweet cherry (p. avium, 2x), plum (p. domestica, 6x) and sour cherry (p. cerasus, 4x). My plan is to matrix the sweet cherries against the plums with the thought that potential offspring would be 4x. The next step would be to matrix those 4x f1's against the 4x tart cherries. I chose not to work with Asian plums (2x,4x) because, well, Zaiger already did it and because I'm hoping for more sweet cherry-like results than he got.
I've wondered if Zaiger tried European plums against sweet cherries in his breeding program. He was heavily influenced by his work for Burbank so he might have had some bias based on that experience. Or, maybe he did it and was unsuccessful.
Zone 6a in the moraines of eastern Connecticut.
RE: -Crankyankee yesterday
-Zaiger
In my own attempt for information I looked up and down his diploid sweet cherry crosses patent information. I did so because I wanted to experiment with haploid pollen from diploid hybrids he or such as others had filed, such as in the case of 'Nadia' by others. Patents have Nadia as first generation (F1) thus less likely to cross out to other hybrid plums or hybrid cherries, which you are likely to know they are **weak. Background: **R. Sawatsky & hybrid plums.
My experience also applies this problematic point in first generation (in fertility) is one also applicable to "sweet cherry & native cherry" (ie. x-pugetensis) of which also are of the lower same ploidy numbers diploid.
There almost needs to be a good reason to get past these infertility barriers as imposed by two species because it required back-crossing with trees to overcome these problems. Instead of waiting I look through some of the patents for any sweet cherry & plum hybrids that are already bred to such a condition of higher fertility which can only be done searching the patents. Of most value to myself is 'sugar-twist' which is 5/8 plum, 1/4 peach and unfortunately only 1/8 sweet cherry. So if you happened to find any more varietal hybrid names with more low ploidy in the cherry & plum department I would be pleased to know.
Another point about cherries as far as my own is concerned. I have had several tissue propagated purchases of 'maxima-14' cherry hybrid rootstock as released by the trade as part of volunteer trialing experiments. Un-grafted they after 15 years of watching them in an un-grafted state are very variable. They will sometimes flower and rarely set fruit in extremely low numbers. The level of fertility is low enough to compare to the hybrid triploid (3x) gisela-5 adult that I also have. So after reviewing old disclosures of how and where these maxima were raised it seems very apparent that it was only an "old estimation" they were Sweet cherry (2x) & St Lucie cherry (2x) aka p mahaleb. To me they are all naturally grouped siblings of Tart cherry & St Lucie cherry.
One might assume that the Marianna 2624 (per my May 2020 above) is as well as the case I just made some fluke chance triploid hybrid of two diploid parental lines. So without lots of information and the lack of new microscopic tools these old folks have had a hard time coming very real in where they thought their trees really were.
As well from after last year's pollination I found no seeds in my pyrus x malus, and my insititia plum (6x) x nigra plum (2x) did have the fruits fully matured. In the case of the plum the only barrier is timing of flowers.
This year I am to be using the nigra plum pollen on van sweet cherry up and down the whole tree because of a good enough minumum set ratio last year. I should trial this nigra pollen to my hex 6x insititia plum tree and in a few other directions to include sweet cherry for you. My goal is quite different than yours.
When planning you might well want and decide to look at the female tree being the smaller species. In which if you planned on the female being the bushy form species sand cherry aka. prunus besseyi (a true plum 2x) and any other plum species being the larger then p. besseyi X p. domestica (female designated first) then the outcome will prove to be much smaller then the other way around. This should also apply to the closely related bushy beach plum or prunus maritima as the substitution.
The lead was taken on the aspects of this by the following link where these true plums they list as sand cherry were crossed with almost all other kinds of plums around the world;
https://core.ac.uk/download/pd.....583571.pdf
Also note the weak fertility between plum and sweet cherry per page 14. But certainly note the whole document concerning the transfer verses omissions of the super-genes or what ever it is through the maternal tree forms that transfers across. I think they stay that way past F1 so it would be DNA.
Man-made crosses bring to light things that don't normally happen in nature such as one specific type of plum flowering before another. This is not so unnatural in interior Alaska. An almost retired friend of mine doing the same things as I saves his mongolian bush cherry seeds (true cherry 4x, prunus fruiticosa) that have some spring overlap with his earlier american plums (ie. very wide crosses) and it happens due to very quick transitions away from winter to summer temperatures. He spreads these cherry seeds in the ground plot area for germination and sometimes seedlings with all the leaf character of plums that grow nearby develop out of these. However as I understand they lack robustness due to harsh winters, they are weak in some regard, then die.
But really take a serious look at the entire document and see for yourself.
Thanks for these references. I know Hansen's work with prairie roses, there was a group of successors who carried it on including Percy Wright, Walter Schowalter, Robert Simonet, Robert Erskine, George Bugnet and Frank L. Skinner. Schowalter's daughter Margit is a friend of mine. If you need a yellow rose for Alaska try Prairie Peace and maybe Bill Reid if you can find them.
https://www.helpmefind.com/gar.....#038;tab=1
>>There almost needs to be a good reason to get past these infertility barriers as imposed by two species because it required back-crossing with trees to overcome these problems.
Timing is not the only barrier. You also have the mostly unknown, for plums, problem of self-sterility alleles. For cherries this system has been worked out pretty well so you can know which diploids crosses will not be successful.
https://drive.google.com/file/.....sp=sharing (Excel spreadsheet)
Basics and more on cherries here -
https://www.rosbreed.org/breed.....patibility
My guess is that wild type cherries have s-alleles that overlap with domestic cherries to at least some degree so that it is necessary to do survey crosses against as many different s-allele domestic types as you can get pollen from. It may also be wise to try the self-compatible types like Stella. Van is compatibility group II so that may be a clue about nigra.
For plums there is not as much information and, because the high ploidy level, it is not as simple. Although, from what I have read so far, self sterility is not as strict as it is for cherries because of the polyploidy.
If you can get these articles by Dr. Julia Halász in the January 2019 edition of Acta horticulturae 1231(1231) you will be up to date on self-compatibility for plums.
1. S-allele constitution of hexaploid European plum cultivars, p151-156,
2. Self-compatibility in Prunus: Accidents in transposon traffic? p123-130,
3. S-genotyping of Hungarian sour cherry cultivars, p161-166.
This past October I wrote to her for reprints and to ask specifically if enough was known now to design interspecific crosses between cherries and European plums so as to minimize cross-incompatibility based on the S-alleles. I did not get any response and so far have not been able to come up with these papers on my own. I need to take a ride to a university library once I break out of quarantine which will be in a few weeks, got my first shot this week.
>>My goal is quite different than yours.
?
From reading your posts it looks like you are mostly trying to generate improved stone fruit for your northwest environs using a strategy of introgressing domesticated prunus genes into American wild type prunus. You seem to have cast a broad net in this regard. Have you narrowed your focus?
>> if you happened to find any more varietal hybrid names with more low ploidy in the cherry & plum department I would be pleased to know.
This guy Brian Smith at University of Wisconson Fall River (Zlesak's uni btw) has carried on his father's work with plum hybrids. I wrote to him last fall too, got no answer to my question asking have they released any of these cultivars yet. Beach plum figures in this mix.
https://fruit.wisc.edu/2019/08.....idization/
I am still trying to find a source for beach plums, so far only one lead and its not solid.
Zone 6a in the moraines of eastern Connecticut.
Hi again Crankyankee.
I have not looked into your links yet. Thanks for the three quotes. It gives me space in a new post to expand some of each of them as one general commentary.
Barriers" (quote /unquote) is not referring necessarily to timing. There is actually a whole other dimension to what occurs in cool springs that make crosses much harder in flowers. So when your talking stone fruit flowers that typically flower much earlier in the spring than roses or apples the factors that relate to false fruit set or self incompatibility will rise. Any plum breeder would know this as well that as you refer to a sweet cherry van >> "compatibility group II " is a very much smaller issue being raised to the breeder when crossing to plums of any kind. I am sorry you didn't know that from Brian.
There are many references. The plum cherry hybrid Nadia breeder tried about 200 plum flowers to come up with about half a dozen live trees. I think 2-3 were fertile one of the best being Nadia. Brian Smith isn't telling you that he's tried hard to cross sweet cherry and plum together. But because of others (unlike where he is) in warmer areas like California and Nadia in Australia where fertility is naturally high -only then is this wide cross a feasible idea. And as said it seems feasible in interior Alaska sometimes when we see bees get the results per the wide cross between late flowers of american plum pollen to bush cherry.
The point is not well pointed to scientifically as to why. So I can't quickly brief you. Again it's simply not compatibility groups. Prunus inside of Rosacea have barriers in addition to compatibility groups as they have evolved both. But if you wish I will PM you several discussions on the prunus specific issue that does not even apply to most other rosacea, apples-roses included in that group so just PM me because we would almost need a new forum classification to adequately discuss the details.
Tomorrow I will check my PM because this is important to you and then too, I am sure I will enjoy your links tomorrow with more time.
Here are the two seedlings so far from my cross of red flesh Redlove Calypso(TM) with columnar Golden Sentinel.
I stratified the seeds from apple harvest (August, maybe Sept) in moist paper towel in ziplock sandwich bag in fridge. I changed the paper towel once or twice due to mildew. I thought the pepper seeds planted in these cell packs were not going to grow, about 2 weeks ago, and planted the apple seeds then. So one now has companion Thai pepper seedlings after all. 
Obviously, the genetics is such that not all of the seedlings have the red leaf trait. Maybe its on one chromosome and is recessive, and the parent tree was half red heritage, which would mean Rr, so the red seedling is also Rr and the green one is rr (R for red). Columnar trait is also recessive, so either of these could be Cc or cc (c for columnar). It will be interesting to find out. I hope to make more crosses this year.
I had no good description for how to start apple seeds. This was good for 2 out of 5 seeds. The seeds all had red seed coats. I don't know if the others will germinate, or if they are not viable.
I red that apple flesh and apple skin are separate genetics, which is while something like Airlie Red Flesh can have greenish yellow skin but pink flesh, while other apples have red skin but yellow or white flesh. Who knows what will happen with these seedlings, assuming they grow up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.....ove_apples
Why would wikipedia never alert to type-1 or type-2 genetics in the red flesh lineup? Type-1 is a single locus that determines red leaf and flesh by other web resources and if your seedling to the left will stay constant red then what you put out is a proper assessment of the odds. I guess the bigger question is where, if any, you knew what color of leaf the red Redlove (TM) came of?
It's a good strategy and love these ideas, so if it's legal we should do it more. It raises questions, so what about patented trees; okay to breed them while in an active patent status; aimed towards another use of the art? (etc.)
My guess is this is the same material that Phil Forseline talked about at the Leech gardens botanical show. We were introduced to new apples from wild overseas and others in his collections were offered out to researchers with red flesh and small crab-apple size. I can only speculate between the two types which were offered. So about improvements, I am glad you're picking that up! Columnar red-flesh high quality apples already sounds really great!
@Rooney, the leaves and flowers of that Redlove(TM) Calypso(TM) are dark red with a greenish cast, similar to the seedling. The flowers are dark pink, and the cambium is red. It's as if one dipped the whole plant into some red dye. I think Bud9 is also like that, as is Redfield apple. It may come from a shared Malus niedzwetzkyana ancestor, which if you can spell without looking it up, you are a lot smarter than me.
I am not a lawyer, but I read that it's fine to grow seeds from patented trees. It is not OK to propagate patented trees vegetatively. Also, it's not OK to propagate or grow seeds from genetically engineered plants, because then it is the gene that is patented. I only know of a few apples that are genetically modified, and those are gene silenced, not gene added, to stop browning reaction (Arctic (TM) series). I don't know if those are patented.
As far as I have been able to determine, Redlove series trees are not patented. They do have copyrights. Either way, if you grow a seedling from them, it is genetically different from the parent so is not patented and it would be inappropriate to refer to them by the trademark name.
It will be a long tine before I know if my seedlings amount to anything.
If interested, here is a link to an article about growing apple seedlings from juvenile nonfruiting stage, to adult fruiting stage. They state that is at about 77 to 122 internodes. They give some options to encourage earlier maturity.
Shortening Juvenile Stage for Apple Seedlings.
I have noted that horizontal branches tend to bloom earlier, so I wonder about grafting to a bearing tree and bending the growth to horizontal,
@daniel, bud9 is like that. I remember it from a few years ago helping Joannie's group found Botners apples when we went from a group of other rootstocks that were typical green to bud9 typical red and no green. The bark was never in the slip so I am not sure if the cambium is red but with bud9 Malus niedzwetzkyana. However in each and every case other than Malus niedzwetzkyana (outside of malus as well) it is the phloem that is green.
It's interesting they state 77 to 122 internodes. In my days I had tested a highly productive nashi pear on quince-C. I set two of the said quince clones beside each other, grafted juvenile root sprouts from nashi 2-2-40 to one and flowering wood to the other. The tallest at 5 feet was the one with juvenile wood and made the tree with flowering wood look significantly small. They stood beside each other for years with no capacity of the tall juvenile tree to produce flowers.
My newest 2021 breeding strategy is to develop my own lots of malus hybrid seedlings of cultivar hardy malus 'palmetta'. This is a very winter hardy apple for extreme cold. It's unusual that it grafts well with nashi pear and the palmetta is not normally selfing unless, wait for it, -grafted to pyrus. These new seedlings will serve as future stock in interior Alaska conditions as the dominant skeleton of which to get grafted onto by newer nashi crosses that I am also making out well with over time because they are short season. Nashi are not hardy and so in the future it will be interesting to find out how much hardiness the skeleton will impress upon the nashi.
Nashi pears are the standard Japanese pears of the type that are usually round and crisp.
This begs the question of whether precocious rootstocks like Newroot1, Krymsk1, Pixie, Citation and Clare (Corette series) break the internode rule and allow us to speed up the breeding cycle.
Does anyone have any direct experience grafting seedlings onto precocious rootstocks?
>>It's interesting they state 77 to 122 internodes. In my days I had tested a highly productive nashi pear on quince-C. I set two of the said quince clones beside each other, grafted juvenile root sprouts from nashi 2-2-40 to one and flowering wood to the other. The tallest at 5 feet was the one with juvenile wood and made the tree with flowering wood look significantly small. They stood beside each other for years with no capacity of the tall juvenile tree to produce flowers.
Zone 6a in the moraines of eastern Connecticut.
Here is update on the Redlove™ Calypso™ X Golden Sentinel™ seedlings. I transferred them about ten days ago into fresh potting soil, out of the seed starting medium. For brevity, I labeled them CalGo#1, #2, and #3. Short for Calypso golden.
CalGo #1. The first to germinate. I think there might have been something wrong with the seedling mix, or an issue with the LED lights. The first true leaves were distorted. Then it shot up with new growth. The leaves are not as dark red as the cotyledons. Maybe that's the filtered light in my sunroom, or an LED effect.
CalGo#2. The second seedling to emerge. A little less vigorous than #1 but still growing nicely. The leaves are green, but the petioles, stems, and main veins on undersides of leaves are a bit red.
Calgo #3. This is the last to emerge, almost as red as #1. Again, the cotyledons were darker red compared to the true leaves. It's interesting, this one has much shorter interstem. I don't know if that is evidence of columnar habit, which includes short interstem, or just a growth stage or growth condition issue. It's fun to speculate and of course, I hope it is evidence of columnar habit.
Hybridizers make thousands of crosses and grow thousands of seedlings. My efforts are infinitely more modest, and just doing it for fun. Still, if one of these gives a reasonably good apple, especially if red flesh and ornamental, and on columnar form, it will be fun. Next effort planned is more red flesh X North Pole, columnar which I like the best, large sweet apples with McIntosh flavor. Also maybe red flesh X something big and sweet, like Beni Shogun Fugi, or Jonagold, to make up for these red flesh apples being smaller and less sweet so far. I don't know if triploids can be crossed with dibloids. Somewhere I read there are apples descended from Liberty or Gravenstein. Those might be exceedingly rare, or via embryo rescue or something. But it won't kill me to try.
Also, if there are about 6 internodes now, in about a month, that might get them to 30 or more by fall, a good ways toward the supposedly magic 70s (to 120s) for blooming. Interesting to speculate on when there might a result. These are highly pampered now, in Sunroom with LEDs to lengthen the day, in a good potting soil.
Crankyankee said
This begs the question of whether precocious rootstocks like Newroot1, Krymsk1, Pixie, Citation and Clare (Corette series) break the internode rule and allow us to speed up the breeding cycle.Does anyone have any direct experience grafting seedlings onto precocious rootstocks?
>>It's interesting they state 77 to 122 internodes. In my days I had tested a highly productive nashi pear on quince-C. I set two of the said quince clones beside each other, grafted juvenile root sprouts from nashi 2-2-40 to one and flowering wood to the other. The tallest at 5 feet was the one with juvenile wood and made the tree with flowering wood look significantly small. They stood beside each other for years with no capacity of the tall juvenile tree to produce flowers.
Crankyyankee, I don't know if that observation would carry over to other species. In the article, they are just looking at apple seedlings. I've been seeking information regarding whether losing the juvenile (non blooming) trait is due to issues such as carbohydrate storage in stems, or something epigenetic, or what else. Something tells me it is epigenetic, because you can graft a fruiting stage scion and get bloom more quickly than grafting a juvenile stage scion.
I've read that grafting seedlings to mature trees can speed up fruiting. I don't have experience with that. I did graft some variegated plum or pluot, grown from purchased farmers market "pluots" that were deep red, throughout the fruit. Unknown variety and pollenizer. Those have pretty variegated leaves, bloom very early, and have never fruited. I keep them for novelty and because I grew them. It's been about six or seven years. They are top grafted onto other plum trees.
Crankyankee said >> Does anyone have any direct experience grafting seedlings onto precocious rootstocks?
After Dr. Bors and R. Sawatsky came out with prunus x-kerrasis ~2005 a chinese lady student performing a thesis partly discovered that p kerrasis ground cherry seedlings could have been used and promoted as top grafts on older forms that have already escaped the principles of juvenile. I did not hang onto the information very tightly thus don't still have it, neither had I yet tried, but I do remember a graft done as such of the within the same program facilitates the goal to fruit by a whole year.
It's more common knowledge (on another point) when cross species breeding in the genera prunus that the pistillate parent is usually the one that would contribute (inherit) speed of flowering towards the offspring.
Both these points look like epigenetic influencing ... and if I remember correctly serviceberry (amelanchier) breeding grafting goals were attempted (per thesis), but no epigenetic mentoring effects had taken place.
Daniel; nice red apple veins! As I tried to find any link to the thesis above I ran into this:
Reduced_generation_time_of_apple_seedlings_to_within_a_year_by_means_of_a_plant_virus_vector
I am not sure the institutions will allow you to get those two genes that are involved in your hand though. In light of this it certainly looks as though these are ordinary epigenetic principles that are not persistent so maybe they will hand you something.
Rooney said
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.....ove_applesWhy would wikipedia never alert to type-1 or type-2 genetics in the red flesh lineup? Type-1 is a single locus that determines red leaf and flesh by other web resources and if your seedling to the left will stay constant red then what you put out is a proper assessment of the odds. I guess the bigger question is where, if any, you knew what color of leaf the red Redlove (TM) came of?
It's a good strategy and love these ideas, so if it's legal we should do it more. It raises questions, so what about patented trees; okay to breed them while in an active patent status; aimed towards another use of the art? (etc.)
My guess is this is the same material that Phil Forseline talked about at the Leech gardens botanical show. We were introduced to new apples from wild overseas and others in his collections were offered out to researchers with red flesh and small crab-apple size. I can only speculate between the two types which were offered. So about improvements, I am glad you're picking that up! Columnar red-flesh high quality apples already sounds really great!
Rooney,
As far as I can determine, Redlove® varieties are not patented. I've looked and looked and looked to find it. I think if they were patented, the nurseries would say so. So would Lubera. I have looked on google patent search, too. However, even if they were, you can still grow seedlings, which are each genetically unique and are not clones of their parent. You can't clone patented varieties, but you can grow their seedlings. The exception is if a gene is patented, ie, genetically engineered varieties. You can't propagate GMO plants because it's the gene that is patented. However, these apple varieties are not genetically engineered. They do have a trademark, but that is not the same thing. I can't use their trademark name for progeny, or for clones, and I wont. Again, I'm not a lawyer so I'm open to someone who is.
This info is from the US Patent office: "Grant of a plant patent precludes others from asexually reproducing, selling, offering for sale, or using the patented plant or any of its parts in the United States or importing them into the United States." I bolded the "asexually". Seed hybridization is not asexual. The website further states "Asexual reproduction is the propagation of a plant without the use of fertilized seeds to assure an exact genetic copy of the plant being reproduced. Any known method of asexual reproduction which renders a true genetic copy of the plant may be employed. " Again, my bolding. Sexual reproduction, on the other hand, combines the genes from both parents, resulting in plants that are genetically unique, and not at all an exact genetic copy of either parent.
As for the genetics of the red flesh trait and red leaf (stem, cambium) trait, I don't know. I read somewhere, red skin and red flesh are under separate genetic control. For example, Redlove® all seem to have red skin AND red flesh (and red coloration in young leaves on my trees, and red-ish flowers). On the other hand, Airlie Red Flesh has green or, if really ripe, translucent yellowish skin with some red flesh color showing through. I forget if Airlie Red Flesh has red cambium too. I'm speculating but I think the red flesh trait is from Malus niedzwetzkyana.
(From the wikipedia I guess I should use ® instead of TM. Depends on where and whether the trademark is registered. I try very hard to respect these issues. Either way, that is trademark, not patent. I wont call any seedlings by those names).
All of thus prompted me to see if my Redlove® apple trees have red leaves all year. Actually, the only photo I have shows that just the new growth was red. The older leaves were green. Sometimes my brain is a sieve! This is May 2020, Redlove® Era® Based on this, I bet the seedlings leaves will green up as they mature, too. Time will tell.
Thanks Rooney.
I think I'll stick to the old fashioned methods, growing with good light, nutrition, warmth, grafting.
Engineered make me think too much about the remake of Planet if the Apes,when the Simian virus killed off most of humanity. Not that a plant virus will do that, but Im not in that much of a hurry, either. ? Or a certain other virus I won't name.
You know about patents. Thanks for being so meticulous.
Now that it's straight that this breeding of a patented cultivar isn't stealing, that we know you are breeding leaf curl resistant peaches like your " designated as cowlitz peach ", and short internode peaches make for stylish trees that are easier to prolong due to the ease of coverage against a few months of PNW winter rains, then you must contact me for free peach pollen.
Let the PNW breeding begin. I will PM you now.
Daniel: I got your note about declining my offer of this pollen, thanks. Since it has curl resistance, short internodes, and blooms the same period of time as my part plum/peach/sweet cherry (ie. 'sugar twist', today 3-15-2021) then I think I will attempt a stylish short internode plum on the same. If it is to work at all it would take 2 more pure selective plum backcrosses.
I have a "purple-leaf" Malus fusca that I found on my property 3 or 4 years ago when I was doing my usual wandering about the place in spring looking at "what's comin' up". Throughout the property that spring, there were numerous seedlings of our native "Swamp crabapple" that were germinating, but this one -- with its cotyledons still in evidence and about to unfurl its third "true" leaf -- looked anomalous for its leaf color. I dug it up and transplanted it to a 2-gallon pot to grow on and determine whether it was truly a mutation, or whether it was purple-leaved due to something in the soil. As it turned out, this M. fusca is the equivalent of the "purple-leaved-plums-purple". Personally, I don't think of the leaf color as "purple", which is why I put it in quotation marks. (I'm picky about color terms.)
Anyway, after transplanting the seedling to a pot, it grew to about 12 inches during that first summer, then our doe (--a deer, a female deer--) nipped off the top two inches. I then moved it to a more protected place amid other apples where it then sent up 2 new leaders the next year from the ultimate and penultimate vegetative buds. This past year has been its 3rd year of growth. By observing Malus fusca on our property over the last 20+ years, I know that the "seedling" won't bloom for at least 10 years. Consequently, while trying to protect the plant from the deer, and other perils, I'm hoping to graft the clone to M26 and M27 in order to get it to flower earlier so that I can use it for crosses that will potentially produce a semi-dwarfing rootstock that will be tolerant of my heavy, hibernally wet soil.
Over the last couple of years I've wanted to mention the clone and post a photo of the leaves, but, despite the helpful recommendations of HOS Forum members, I have not yet been able to post any photo online. ...It's no fun being a physical dinosaur in an abstract computer era.
Suffice to say, I'm hoping to keep the clone alive and graft it to other rootstocks so that I can at least keep the clone alive in some form, regardless of rootstock type. I believe that it would be useful in potentially breeding for rootstocks amenable to the Pacific Northwest. The reason that the leaf color mutation would be particularly beneficial in such an endeavor is that -- in the F1 and F2 generations of seedlings -- those with the burgundy leaf coloration would make their hybridity known by their phenology. That, in itself, would speed up the selection process, especially if crossed to another "purple-leaf" variety, of which there are few.
By the way, although I still have only the one clone, it was in my nature to give it a cultivar "pet" name when I realized that it was definitely unique: Malus fusca 'Vinummei'. I just hope that I can keep it alive and propagate it sufficiently so that our local rabbits, deer, other critters, and general unforeseeable mayhem and acts of God, don't annihilate the variety. I'm hoping to eventually send scion wood to the National Germplasm collection in the next year or two if I have sufficient vigorous growth to do so. [By nature, the species has very thin annual stem growth which I presume would make grafts more difficult]. My job is to keep the clone alive in the mean time. I've lost unique plants in the past, so I guess that you could say I'm a bit paranoid on such matters.
My primary goal in this case is to ultimately get seedling crosses of M. fusca 'Vinummei' by 'EMLA 27' dwarfing. I figure that this cross would result in the most useful seedlings in regard to a range of possible dwarfing or semi-dwarfing effects produced by the rootstocks.
Reinettes.
P.S.--Wishing all of you northern hemisphere folks a GREAT spring!
P.P.S.--When I should be starting our 2021 garden, and doing all kinds of other time-critical things,... I've been called to Jury Duty for the entire month of April. Odds? What are those?
Hi Reinette! I signed up to this forum after reading your post. I'm super happy to know you are keeping an eye out for interesting variants of Malus fusca. I have also been curious about experimenting with using it to produce rootstocks for other apples, but although it has been documented to accept grafts from Malus domestica it seems like they would probably be full size trees. That's probably a good thing in some contexts, but in my mind the whole point of using it as a rootstock is its ability to handle wet boggy soil. This is the kind of ground that would often be pretty unstable/unsafe for using a ladder on due to the softness. Last year I searched through the data on all the M. fusca accessions in the USDA repository and found they had four clones listed as "low vigor". Of those four two were not considered to be highly resistant to fire blight so I crossed them off my list. Of the remaining two clones, I went with the one documented to have larger fruit. This was PI 589975 (GMAL 2891). I got the scion already and will be grafting it soon. I have to say the internode spacing on the scion is VERY TIGHT! I think that this means it really might be genetically programmed to stay small (as opposed to the original tree having been small due to growing conditions). I'm gonna nurse root graft the scions and then transition them to their own roots. I think they might either in themselves or through a bit of breeding become a good basis for dwarfing rootstock to use in wet soil! Here's the link if you want to look up the clone I'm referring too: https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/g.....id=1022422
For perspective they are using four different size categories:
1 SMALL STANDARD (EMPRESS) - 4 M. fusca accessions listed in this category
2 MEDIUM (STARKIMSON) - 12 M. fusca accessions listed in this category
3 VIGOROUS STANDARD (DELICIOUS) - 7 M. fusca accessions listed in this category
4 VERY VIGOROUS STANDARD (SPIGOLD) - 0 M. fusca accessions listed in this category
I encountered one of my "accidents" during the fall and tasted it. It was good! I think I"m going to graft it onto a tree and bring it to the school garden I'm working with. It tastes sort of similar to Callaway Crab, for those who are familiar. I think I'm going to call it "Tiny treat". Good tasting crabs are great for school gardens, because then everyone gets to try one. If you have a large apple on a small rootstock, those 6 kids get a huge apple and no one else gets anything.
John S
PDX OR
Hi JohannsGarden,
I'm only just checking in briefly after quite a few months off the HOS site. I'm just starting to collect apple anthers for pollen, and emasculate flowers for pollination in the new spring season.
I still have the "red"-leafed M. fusca, although whatever the shortcomings of my computer are I've never been able to post a picture to the HOS Forum. The leaf color is equivalent to a "purple-leafed" plum (--the ornamental Myrobalan plum, I presume).
Here in western Washington -- the glorious Cascadia -- our native Malus fusca is not uncommon on the north hectare of our property in the woodland and, in the 23 years-or-so that my wife and I have been here, I've been favorably impressed with its ability to withstand our heavy, wet, clay soil in the wintertime, as well as our natural droughty summers. [Granted, with the very real global warming, we're getting more (and unpredictable) heat waves. "They're" talking about temperatures near 90 F this weekend.]
I just emasculated a flower of M. domestica 'EMLA 26' today in order to pollinate it with the largest-fruited (--still small-- 🙂 --) Malus fusca on our property. The hope, of course, is to grow-out and assess the F1 progeny and then cross-pollinate the "dwarfest ones" for an F2 generation. Chances are good that I won't live that long, but I've always enjoyed hybridizing a diversity of plants over my years in order to get a better idea of the heritability of traits. Mendelian genetics don't necessarily apply in all cases, but it's always the best starting point. I'm just a curious person, and I was born a "nature boy". If I can manage to live long enough to get to an F3 or F4 seedling generation, I might potentially get a rootstock that would be useful in Cascadia. I would like, however, to factor in the red-leafed M. fusca in the breeding project so that I might have a partial visual cue as to the hybridity of the seedlings. I also have a reddish-leafed, presumably genetically compatible Malus kirghizorum that I think might be useful in such a project. I have new dwarfing rootstock* this year to which I hope to make a "T-bud" graft in about July.
Growing an apple seedling to maturity, however, can easily take 10-13 years before they're mature enough to bloom. Hence, I think that one's best option is to graft a well-established seedling cutting to a dwarfing rootstock to cut that flowering/fruiting time to 3-5 years. I don't know just how old Luther Burbank got to be, but, by golly he got a lot of hybridizing done!
Cheers!
Reinettes
*[The rootstock is G214 from the Geneva, New York, breeding program which is supposed to produce a tree ca. 35% standard size. I'm going to cross my fingers. A few years ago I grafted the same apple clones onto both the old English EMLA 26 and the newly acquired G30. Sad to say, the former was better; the latter seemed more interested in propagating itself than in putting energy into the grafted clone. ...As a disclaimer, that was my sole experience in a particular year where all other factors were equal.]
P.S. --If I don't reply promptly, it's because I get so busy outdoors through the warm season. Please don't take it personally. I practically live like a hermit. 🙂
Thanks for the update @Reinettes. My PI 589975 (GMAL 2891) Malus fusca grafts appear to be taking so if its natural dwarf growth habit and tight internode spacing seem of interest to you for using as breeding stock I may have something to share with you come next dormant season (I low grafted them and will be burying the unions to get them "own-rooted").
In my initial stages of learning how to graft which goes back to the middle 90s I had budded a hybrid pear to winter banana apple. I had the same hybrid grafted to quince-C. The combinations stay viable. The hybrid pear is between a mishirasu and shineiki so non chinese pears may not be as viable. The hybrid pear is naturally productive and just as prolific on winter banana.
After a bit of growth as a spur I let the apple part outgrow and shade the spur of this pear and I managed to keep the spur shaded and barely alive. That state of shading any pear on any apple for about 24 years may have a mentoring effect on the spur. So last year I forced out lush growth so that I can see it root by air layering the pear into a possible rootstock for apples. Graft mentoring was established over a hundred years ago but the genetic sciences of modern times for producing improved rootstocks are leapfrogging that by marker assisted tagging of favorable DNAs.
I had grafted a hybrid apple onto another clone of the same hybrid pear and the hybrid apple has been far more productive for many years that way. So I found 'norkent' and another hybrid apple rootstock that originated in Montana at the former hardy tree nursery of "Lawyers nursery". I used those because they are cold survivable hardy apples for the north and because malus bacatta is incorporated in the breeding which seems to bring as a species the most viability with pyrus, however this may not be the case with regular pears that have no chinese breeding.
One of the Alaskan pioneers that was originally from Alberta is why I take this more seriously, because he sold trees that had been raised in 5 gallon pots and the pyrus I think was p ussuriensis (harbin pear), and the hardy apples. In all cases for harbin pear are always unpalatable, so the very few sales he made were likely sold as apple trees.
This is all a thrill to me as well and worth all the planning.
JohannsGarden said
Thanks for the update @Reinettes. My PI 589975 (GMAL 2891) Malus fusca grafts appear to be taking so if its natural dwarf growth habit and tight internode spacing seem of interest to you for using as breeding stock I may have something to share with you come next dormant season (I low grafted them and will be burying the unions to get them "own-rooted").
JohannsGarden,
Wow! In clicking back online it looks like you responded in little more than a couple of hours. I'm gonna be much less predictable.
Your potential dwarf (--and potentially dwarfing--) Malus fusca sounds like it might be promising. Although unrelated to this matter, I've noticed this spring a couple of our "feral" (i.e., one of our many "weedy adventive') Prunus avium growing no more than 5-6 feet apart in which the southerly sapling has shorter internodes, more foliage due to this, and is about 3/5th's the size of the adjacent Prunus avium. I'm going to have to keep an eye on this over the next few years to see whether It could potentially be a dwarfing rootstock that could be used for sweet cherries. I'm always observing the natives on our property (--and elsewhere--) for anything anomalous that might be useful.
As for our humble, native, northwestern crabapple, I've always been a bit intrigued by the descriptions in the accounts of early explorers to our area. My wife and I have a copy of [wait for it!]: "Reports of Explorations and Surveys, to ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. Made under the direction of the Secretary of War, in 1853-5,.... 1860". Hard to come by, but certainly interesting. :
Page 60: "Pyrus rivularis Douglas" (as it was taxonomically known at the time): Oregon crab-apple. Wet grounds everywhere west of Cascade mountains; April, May. Fruit small, but good; ripe in July. Very useful for grafting on.
And on page 29: "The "Oregon crab-apple," (Pyrus rivularis) grows sometimes twenty feet high and one in diameter, but usually forms low, tangled thickets, &c., and its fruit, though small, is abundant and well flavored, ripening in October. At Astoria excellent apples have been produced by grafts on this tree.
I've wanted to share this historical information for some time, given how rare the reference is. However, while one can graft domestic apples to our native crabapples, both are still subject to the endemic "Northwest anthracnose." That's without mentioning that a graft onto a Malus fusca is still gonna take as long to reach maturity as any other apple tree. While this is an interesting historical record, we don't really know how those grafted trees performed long-term. ...I'd like to think that they performed equally to M. domestica seedling apple trees which weren't grafted. Who knows?
Keep observing and studying the world around us. There's always something new!
Reinettes
@Reinettes I also have started cloning a very dwarf locally found crabapple which appears to be a M. fusca x domestica hybrid. It has tart kumquat flavored fruit and is very interesting in its own right, but may also end up becoming a rather useful dwarfing rootstock for wet soils (time will tell).
Hi JohannsGarden,
Nice to see your reply. Keep experimenting!
It appears that I have offended enough of the "powers that be" such that I'm now blocked and blacklisted from the HOS site. It took me quite awhile to actually get to your response, which I was curious about. This'll probably be my last posting. ...Try to make sure that you don't disagree with anyone in control of the site and you should be OK.
Best wishes to ALL fruit growers! You're all good people! The best fruits are HOMEGROWN with love!
Reinettes.
Reinettes said
Hi JohannsGarden,...It appears that I have offended enough of the "powers that be" such that I'm now blocked and blacklisted from the HOS site. It took me quite awhile to actually get to your response, which I was curious about. This'll probably be my last posting. ...Try to make sure that you don't disagree with anyone in control of the site and you should be OK.
What are you talking about?
He has problems seeing his way through uploading pictures and getting reliable leases that make it appear he's blacklisted. At least that's what I'm guessing because I have at some time or another been effected as such. Once you figure out the pictures and how to regain a new lease between WordPress and your modem connection and all that cleared away then the road ahead is easy.
I almost thought of giving advice in the uploading of pictures department of giving instructions out there how to use a PC and boot from a pendrive that's dedicated for the WordPress/ HomeOrchardSociety because that's the way I do it. The downloads I use to make it all work (a slight overview here) are the Rufus app to burn Raspberry 32 bit to the pendrive and then invoking the graphical spectacle app which is part of the Raspberry Debian packages. Which if your interested is easy enough for me to PM you.
Actually right now I use a little galaxy smartphone in summer situations like now and it's a lot harder than a PC but when you become well versed with comfortable PC tools and the Wordpress even small smartphones are not challenging to me anymore.
Hybridizing:
I have not noted on the forums some finishing that has occurred related to the breeding of (a+b) two kinds of cherries over the years.
Cherry rootstocks:
(a) We have seen hybrid Gisela cherry as a new golden about 20 years ago. They are not fertile so 'clonal' propagation is the only option for these 'goldens'. 'Pontaleb' is a rootstock that's not sterile but isn't as golden as Gisela. I have had each side by side for 20 years and although Gisela will crop better neither one of these cherry rootstocks volunteer suckers from the ground for me. And now I have been successful breeding Pontalebs to another non-suckering rootstock, the 'Maxima hybrid series' that were introduced by the Lewelling Brothers in Oregon 100 years ago when they were popular. Maxima was an infertile hybrid which I succeeded over time to bring into fertility with the aid of using ponteleb.
Other than bringing a new species into the world that has been formerly deemed infertile there has been a DNA discovery about
(b) Japanese Zakura species now known to be more related to our American natives and much more than the sweet commercially noted types (ie. sweet cherry). However I am not going to talk much concerning this because ilthey do sucker from the ground as rootstocks and therefore unuseful in regards as rootstocks. In short though the sweet cherry hybrid designation x-pugetensis as proper (sweet x bitter cherry) are thus yet too infertile unless find them as x-pugetensis (Japanese x bitter cherry). For example it's impossible to use pollen of the closest relative to bitter cherry (ie. american prunus pennsylvanica) to sweet cherry because fruit will never form (tried that for years). However prunus Pennsylvania pollen will readily form fruit on the Japanese zakura species.
The Japanese Zakuas with their easier 'crossibility' to American colder hardy cherry species will be the easier method of producing what northern agriculture will permit in organic agriculture. And I will make my first collections zakura fruits this year as a proof of this concept.
John: We compared three kinds of cherries fruits on a pail a few years ago. Your Balaton, my carmine jewel, and the street tree with no name from 163rd Avenue Vancouver. The Vancouver tree will now be known as a zakura, I think, after it gets a DNA test finished. I have not yet tested it that way.
@Rooney that seems like a lot to have to go through to access the site. I didn't realize it was that bad for some folks.
I hope that Reinettes isn't trying to get in and not succeeding. I wonder if there is a way for @Idyllwild to determine if registered users are having failed login attempts. Our traffic is very low, it makes me question if potential new contributors are failing to clear the unintended hurdles to get in and post.
I have sent an email to Reinettes registered email address, but didn't get a reply.
Ahhh. You picked up on that. That's why this forum will never fail because we are paying attention.
Your idea is good. Another way I think I already covered about an pendrive OS. Which is a way of the future. The drive idea has the specialized browser with all the personal dedication that's necessary to remember site passwords and more. Which is equal to or more than the site administrator can do then even more when you think of making distribution plans with animation files in them for have the browser place the uploads to the wordpress server the right way.
I can get you into my house to pick up a pendrive sample anytime through PM, but tell me on the public side first that I have a PM.
jafar said
I hope that Reinettes isn't trying to get in and not succeeding. I wonder if there is a way for @Idyllwild to determine if registered users are having failed login attempts. Our traffic is very low, it makes me question if potential new contributors are failing to clear the unintended hurdles to get in and post.
@jafar I added your and John's emails to receive notifications when someone gets locked out of the site so you can contact them directly, or you can contact me privately if they need unlocking. There are some settings we can change regarding number of failed attempts allowed before lockout and duration of time for lockout before login is allowed again. Contact me privately if you'd like to change any of these settings. Thank you!
@Rooney
Your idea is good. Another way I think I already covered about an pendrive OS. Which is a way of the future. The drive idea has the specialized browser with all the personal dedication that's necessary to remember site passwords and more. Which is equal to or more than the site administrator can do then even more when you think of making distribution plans with animation files in them for have the browser place the uploads to the wordpress server the right way.
I can get you into my house to pick up a pendrive sample anytime through PM, but tell me on the public side first that I have a PM.
Thank you for the offer. That's more than I'm ready to deal with right now. I just use chrome browse, uusally on Windows 10 PC generally without serious problems.
Of course feel free to post any information that is important in the areas your most currently experienced with or familiar about. Some of which fruit types is already stated being cherry. To me it's always been interesting to learn how Dr. Hansen hybridized plums from across the seas but left out any fruit breeding specifically with cherry. Long after Hansen was gone we learn of hybrids x-pugetensis that they exist as crosses between prunus avium sweet cherry and native prunus emarginata bitter cherry.
Old timers such as Hansen must have attempted the formation between those two species in italics before ...but had decided to never have documented it just because it won't work, at least for me it never has, and I'm 66 now, and this year I verified the Japanese species of zakura cherry is the intermediating species that allows avium and emarginata to mingle together as x-pugetensis.
I'm a picture gatherer and sorter kind of person and at times through certain channels such as here or other colleagues of mine at universities we get a few things going that will eventually embark on what Hansen did with diploid plums in the Northern Hemisphere but missed upon with these diploid japanese cherry types. The latter of which easily in hand crosses were producing fruit from sweet or bitter cherry pollen.
So is your pollination more related to diploid or some of the tetraploid prunus cerasus sour cherry types?
Hello dear fellow fruit growers,
I got a nice enquiry from Jafar some 3 or 4 weeks ago about my last post. He indicated that everything on "their (Forum)" end seemed to be in order and they couldn't understand my difficulties in accessing the site. I sent a response to Jafar, but I was too busy to continue online, so this is a much belated response on the actual Forum itself. ...I guess that I just have to chalk it up to our POS local, rural internet service yet again. ...Perhaps some day we can all be in the 21st century....
Given that this thread is about hybridizing, I just wanted to mention something. Here, west of the Cascade Mountains, we have endemic Northwest anthracnose which affects numerous woody, rosaceous plants (--Malus, Prunus, Amelanchier, and Sorbus). I recently looked at one of my old books that was "Diseases of Fruit Crops", 1956, which -- in relation to apples, at least, states the following:
"...Varietal resistance is not marked, although it has been stated that 'Baldwin' is especially susceptible, While 'Ben Davis' and 'Northern Spy' are seldom attacked."
Ben Davis is my determination for a very old tree persisting half-mile away. While I wouldn't live long enough to engage in such experimentation, it seems to me that if someone were interested in breeding an apple that is more resistant to the Northwest anthracnose, that would be a good place to start.
Sadly, once upon a time their were regional land grant colleges established in various parts of the U.S. Today, too many have been taken over by corporate money to the corporation's own ends. Some of the few untainted introductions of garden materials seem to be from a few researchers at Cornell University (NY) and Corvallis, WA.
So many of the truly tasty apples are selections from the past. Today's corporations have very different ideas about what a commercial fruit should be.
If you have it in yourself to make cross-pollinations for fruit improvement on an "amateur" basis, do it conscientiously and carefully, and label the pollinated flower with a tag that indicates the date of pollination, and clearly indicates the varity pollinated, and the variety that provided the pollen. ...It may take awhile before you see the product of your cross bloom and set fruit, but --worthwhile or not -- it's still fascinating to see the results of mixing the genes.
I always say: "Cross your favorite with your other favorite." After all, you are breeding plants for what YOU want. If it's to YOUR tastes, chances are it's also to someone else's tastes!
Reinettes.
Nice post, Reinettes,
I seem to remember that Baldwin was a favorite variety until one very cold year in New England when many of the trees died. They were nearly universally replaced, I think by McIntosh. If you live in the PNW, it doesn't get nearly as cold here, so their reasons for banishing it don't apply here.
On another note, I grafted a seedling pie cherry to Montmorency and just tasted one of the wild lower branches this year. It tasted good and was as productive as Montmorency. I have never found a pie cherry that is as productive as Montmorency. Nor have I found one that is close. I think I might let it grow out and see what I get. I'll keep you all posted.
John S
PDX OR
The simplest approach is to create two lines of seeds from that apple as the female progenitor. One line is seeds that outcrossed with other normal colored apples and the other you would try to force self pollination. Then the ratios years later will tell the true story how stable and true to type that will be.
I think there is a way to make apples that only outcross to other apples as is the case with probably most trees. It's a way I'm working on. It's progressed by grafting the apple scion that you wish to be the progenitor to healthy Asian nashi pear types. I made a normally unproductive palmetta apple a highly productive branch on Asian pear and it's been tested that way as a highly producing branch even when isolated away from any other apple types. So maybe grafting your apple on my palmetta and removal of all palmetta flowers would cause all the selfing on yours to accomplish what you need?
I also repeated this mini trial by grafting other hybrid apples on Asian pear and directly to regular pears with good takes and exceptional self crossing abilities. The regular pear is 'OHxF-513' directly as the support and there is Asian pear as the majority of the rest of the tree on that root. Asian tree on the 513 clone of pear in this instance is other than the one pointed out before.
(using my smartphone and to post I had to "double" login all my credetials)
Hello dear Forum friends,
I guess this is the first time that I'm back on the HOS Forum since mid-July! My sincere apologies! I love reading everyone's contributions but I get so busy during "the warm season" that I sometimes don't get back online for a couple of months (--sometimes even longer!). Sorry. I love the contributions of so many different fruit enthusiasts. My profound thanks to Jafar and John S. for all of their efforts to keep the Forum alive, and to Idyllwild as well for the support.
I don't have much time today, but, in regard to apples that seem to be resistant to our nasty, endemic Northwest Anthracnose, I've been thinking about all the different rootstocks that I've experimented with over the years. It's interesting to me that the one that seems most resistant is the good ol' fashioned MM111. It has made me wonder whether the ever more dwarfing rootstocks make the grafted scionwood somehow "weaker", and thus more susceptible to it.
For those of you west of "The Cascades" where Northwest Anthracnose is a scourge, I wonder whether you've personally noticed any differences when you've grafted onto different rootstocks.
With cordial regards,
Reinettes.
Thanks, John! I wish that I could get on-line more often but there are {to tritely say} too few hours in a day.
Given that my wife and I are getting older, we're starting to sort through layers of old belongings which tend to be old books and scientific journals. (We're hoarders.) I've been sorting through some recently and found an article of yours in an older issue of POME NEWS (HOS) which quite amused me. I think that it was called something like "Some Fruits Aren't Worth Growing". I tried to find that specific issue of POMONA so that I could cite it and be accurate, but I couldn't. Suffice to say that I found it quite amusing! Some of the "more unusual" fruits that you had tried and failed with were comparable to fruits that I tried cultivating, yet failed. Some things just aren't right for one's climate.... Goodbye Hippophae & xSorbopyrus, etc. Oh yes. I've experimented with all kinds of fruits on our property... and there were some that simply didn't like our climate and God only knows what else they rebelled against....
In the midst of sorting through old journals I also encountered an issue of POMONA (--North American Fruit Explorers--) from Summer 2005 (Vol. 33 No. 3). This was after my wife and I had moved to SW Washington but before we were aware of the HOS. These were about Larry McGraw, founder of the Home Orchard Society.
Farewell to Larry McGraw, by Shaun Shepherd....p.21.
Remembering Larry L. McGraw, by Jim McGraw (his son)....P. 22.
McGraw Experimental Gardens, by Larry L. McGraw....p.25.
I wonder just how many of the last members of the Home Orchard Society remember, or knew, the original members of the HOS. ...I'm not "in the loop," but I imagine that Shaun Shepherd is still with us. Isn't he one of the expert apple variety identifiers? I wonder how he feels about the dissolution of the HOS. I think that it's important that we still have people who carry on the memories and the goals of an organization, even when the social organization itself is gone. It's the goals and philosophy of the organization that must be carried on, and those were only established by people committed to an educational and sharing vision.
...Sorry, John S., I'm gettin' into a philosophical mood as I too often do. 'Tis my curse, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the title of this thread. 
What can I say?!
Reinettes. (Glad to still have access and to be able to read the opinions of others.)
Chris M.,
Having a library is a blessing, especially if it has accurate, up-to-date reference books and classic literature, rather than romance novels or generic pulp fiction. Those books that aren't up-to-date should be vital earlier references in you field of interest. While I know that I'm getting old, the thought of getting rid of classic reference books that I collected over decades is just so hard to accept. I know their value, but if I die first, then the people going through all my "trash" will be clueless as to their value.... It's a tough time of life, trying to assess what could happen in the future.
Chris -- I think that there are shows on "TV" to help Hoarders to get "rid" of their "stuff". What these shows apparently can't discern are the difference between what are "crap" and what are important, wonderful, beloved reference books. Yes. Especially in this modern age, there are hoarders of "crap", but there are also some individuals who know the value of great books.
I say, keep your "crap" (--to others--) as long as you need or desire those books. When we go bye-bye, we won't give a darn. My current concern, and perhaps yours, is that the books go to a bookseller who KNOWS their values, and will sell them to others who KNOW their value.
Reinettes (--I still need this reference!--).
[Libraries preserve knowledge, and culture, and history, and so much more....)
Hi John S.!
I'm a bit curious about whether Shaun is one of the 2 or 3 people that I've heard about in recent years who are going around the great Northwest searching for "lost" apple varieties that haven't been seen for decades. I heard a report on the local PBS station about 3 (?) years ago with news about their discovery of, perhaps, 3 or 4 "forgotten" apple varieties. Do you, or any of the other Forum members, know anything about their efforts?
Also, I didn't know that our own Jafar was one of the apple ID experts! I learn something new every day!
Reinettes.
P.S. -- The last 3 times that I've tried to get to the Forum were easy. Some kind of "blockade" must have been lifted, given just how difficult it had been earlier. Whoever's responsible,... Thank you so doggone much! I've always enjoyed the info on the Forum ever since I first joined years ago. I love "hearing" about other people's experiences, experiments, trials, and successes. ...We-re all in this together!
I find fruit variety ID to be an expert skill, that is way above me. To me, it's kind of like speaking German. I don't speak German, but I know a couple of words. Eisen =Iron. Hower =smith/worker. Now I can guess what Eisenhower means, but there is no way I can fluently speak the language. I get little blips like this, but no real overall understanding.
John S
PDX OR
Dear Jafar & John S.,
So sorry for my long absence once again! I hate being away so long, but I just have to go along with the current of life, even when it doesn't play along with me.
Jafar: It just sounds to me like you're being more modest than you need be. If you were part of the original HOS Apple ID Team then I don't think they'd have had you there unless they'd recognized that you had the abilities! Give yourself some credit for what you do know. NONE of us know everything in a given field of expertise! Hey. No matter our ages, we're always learning if we care to. ..I think I have Shaun's email from an "old" HOS publication. I guess that I've been reluctant to bother him if he's engaged in more serious apple exploration throughout the Pacific Northwest. Nobody likes dumb questions from an amateur who gets your email address. 🙂
John S.: I've read enough articles that you've written for the former HOS publication to know that you have a lot of personal observation of worth that can provide insights for others. They're appreciated. Yes. Perhaps it's like speaking German, at times. 🙂 I have several bilingual dictionaries, but even though English is supposedly a Germanic language, we got so much from Norman French, as well as Latin and Greek for the more technical terms, I still think of English as a language unto itself. Shall we say, "a highly evolved bastard language"? ..."Mein Gott in Himmel!" [...I really must find my German/English dictionary. Otherwise I'm just blithering... But. Then. When am I NOT?] 🙂
...I'm hoping that I''ll get more time to catch up on all the intervening posts that I haven't yet had time to read! I love getting perspectives from other fruit growers and lovers. [I should specify: fruit growers and fruit lovers, NOT fruit growers and any secret 'lovers']...
I'm sorry that this is so belated and so brief. Perhaps the winter cold will bring me indoors a bit more. I can only hope.
Best wishes to all on the HOS site, asking questions or providing your individual observations and insights.
Reinettes.
Idyllwild
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