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..

@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.

Transgressive Inheritance

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

@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,

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.

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.

Rooney said
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,

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.

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.