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7:29 pm
June 17, 2015
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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
7:47 pm
April 6, 2015
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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.
11:42 pm
March 25, 2015
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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..
6:31 pm
June 17, 2015
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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
10:59 pm
March 25, 2015
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@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.
4:18 pm
March 27, 2015
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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.
7:45 pm
Moderators
March 16, 2015
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I've just found the accidental ones. Sometimes I will graft a know variety to them using them as a rootstock. I get fruit more quickly that way. I have liked some of them.
John S
PDX OR
4:33 pm
June 17, 2015
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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....
5:23 pm
June 21, 2015
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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.
6:00 pm
June 17, 2015
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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
6:08 pm
June 17, 2015
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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
7:38 pm
June 17, 2015
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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!
7:42 pm
March 25, 2015
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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.
8:57 am
June 21, 2015
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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.
10:18 am
March 25, 2015
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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.
9:12 pm
June 17, 2015
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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
7:19 am
March 25, 2015
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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.
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