[Sam Van Aken] is working on a long-term project which literally will bear fruit. Forty different kinds, in fact. The Tree of 40 Fruit is a single tree, carefully grafted to produce 40 different varieties of fruit. Growing up on a farm, [Sam] was always fascinated by the grafting process - how one living plant could be attached to another.
In 2008, [Sam] was working as a successful artist and professor in New York when he learned a 200-year-old state-run orchard was about to be demolished. The stone fruit orchard was not only a grove a trees, but a living history of man's breeding of fruit. Many unique varieties of stone fruit - such as heirloom peaches, plums, cherries, and apricots - only existed in this orchard.
[Sam] bought the orchard and began to document the characteristics of the trees. Color, bloom date, and harvest date were all noted in [Sam's] books. He then had the idea for a single tree which would bear multiple types of fruit. By using grafting techniques such as chip grafting, [Sam] was able to join the varieties of stone fruit tree. The process was very slow going. Grafts performed one year must survive through the winter before they grow the following spring.
Throughout the process, [Sam] kept careful diagrams of each graft. He planned the tree out so the fruit harvest wouldn't be boring. Anyone who has a fruit tree tends to give away lots of fruit - because after a couple of weeks, they're sick of eating one crop themselves! With [Sam's] tree, It's possible to have a nectarine with breakfast, a plum with lunch, and snack on almonds before dinner, all from the same tree. The real beauty is in the spring. [Sam's] tree blossoms into an amazing array of pinks, purples and whites. A living sculpture created by an artist with a bit of help from Mother Nature.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04 2014, @06:34PM
Hope it doesn't die
(Score: 2) by Tork on Monday August 04 2014, @08:00PM
Wow, I've never seen a LoTR reference so badly duct-taped into a comment.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by WillAdams on Monday August 04 2014, @06:53PM
Criminal that the state was so short-sighted as to consider letting this lapse, but glad that it has such a caretaker.
(Score: 1) by saracoth on Monday August 04 2014, @09:18PM
I'm kind of on the fence, at least when it comes to clonal plant propagation techniques. It's not really the same as a particular breed of dog going extinct, for example. It's more like we've been cloning Lassie for the last however many years, and decided to stop. Meanwhile, those Lassie clones have had litters of pups half the world over, and her legacy lives on. (Unless the special thing about Lassie was being sterile. You don't often see seedless grapes reproduce in the wild!)
Yes, it's a part of our heritage and history, and I generally like preserving things. However, I don't have a problem with humans ceasing to clone a plant and letting nature and the cycle of life take their course again.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday August 05 2014, @04:25AM
I suspect you have to build this tree each time you want it.
Its not exactly a clone, its a collection of clones.
I've seen some of these trees around western washington, where ping and white cherry blossoms bloom from opposite sides of the same tree. Cute, but useless.
Easier to carry the stone fruit away and plant a few in the corner of your property and have them ripen in their own sweet (hopefully) time.
Same is true of apples, there are dozens of different varieties that are considered heirloom, only because not very many people plant them, not because they aren't good producers. Heirloom tomatoes are gaining something of a resurgence among home gardeners.
This is EXACTLY NOT the time to be allowing heirlooms slip away. We may rue the day we let a varietal go extinct only to have our mono-culture fail due to changing climate.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 06 2014, @07:07AM
Not all fruits are bananas. Many heirloom varieties reproduce with new generations grown from seeds of the last, exactly like an old dog breed.
Heirloom varieties often feature traits that have been bread out of our modern monoculture and as such are valuable even from a purely utilitarian standpoint. For example right now we prefer tomatoes that are hard and tasteless because they are easy to transport but if we get a better solution to the transport and storage problem it's possible that we'd want tomatoes that taste good again. Much easier to start with examples of the plant that have these (now) desirable traits than to start without it and hope was can get it back.
(Score: 2) by AnonTechie on Monday August 04 2014, @06:53PM
Isn't this a case of putting all your fruits on one tree ?? Seems to me that this is not a very good idea.
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 04 2014, @07:35PM
In Florida, multi-graft citrus trees have been on sale for years. They tend to only be 4 or 5 fruits, but they're nothing particularly exotic - you can pick one up at Home Depot.
If you have limited space, it's a good way to get some variety. Also worth mentioning is the fact that virtually all citrus grown in Florida is grafted to local rootstock (usually Myers' Lemon) the trees don't do well at all if they're grown straight from seed.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday August 04 2014, @08:19PM
This is what I don't understand about the story. I know apples and we use M9 or M27 rootstocks not your lemon rootstocks. Maybe something to do with freeze tolerance. Yes M27 is a little ridiculous small (people call it an apple "bush" well whatever I likes them that way even if M27 has to be staked more than anything else, so I hear)
I know other fruits use other rootstocks. I have seen other peoples pears on quince rootstocks. And some weird new cherry rootstock that if trained and pruned the heck out of it can be only 10 feet tall, which is "backyard compatible" at least for backyards around here. And its easier to bird net something 10 ft tall rather than something 40 ft tall. And of course the smaller the tree the easier the harvest, at least for amateurs.
Anyway... my question is how this dude puts 40 fruits on one rootstock as everything I've read is you really don't want to do apples on anything but a M series rootstock or pears on anything but a quince rootstock. It would be like a guy claiming his motherboard can use 40 different simultaneous CPUs from Pentium II carts to AMD socket 939 and 940 (hell just snip off a pin, whats one pin gonna matter). The story just sounds weird.
I initially thought the guy was "cheating" and sticking 40 varieties of apple on a larger M series rootstock but reading further there's all kinds of crazy stuff on this guys tree.
The closest living outdoor citrus tree is probably hundreds of miles south of me. I can totally understand if you guys roll differently. Maybe all citrus is compatible with any citrus rootstock. All I can say is it isn't that way with northerner fruit tree species we pretty much are stuck with 1 to 1 mapping of fruit to rootstock.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04 2014, @08:34PM
Not really; those are all x86s. It's more like saying he can use anything from Alpha to z/Architecture.
(Score: 3, Informative) by demonlapin on Tuesday August 05 2014, @12:26AM
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday August 05 2014, @03:31AM
I'm reminded of what some growers found with grafted oranges vs own-root oranges: the grafted trees performed better, but the own-root trees were much more freeze-tolerant.
I can tell you from firsthand experience that lemons grown from seed can survive Montana winters: We had some in our garden in Great Falls; they survived at least one winter, tho they were stunted. But I've been told of a lemon tree in Bozeman that was a big tree and produced fruit.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 07 2014, @05:55PM
I guess, if anything, that's what's news about this guy's 40 fruit tree - beyond the fact that he took a common concept and pushed it to absurd lengths, he probably also broke some ground in demonstrating what's possible - maybe with multi-stage grafts, etc. e.g., not just fruit A, fruit B, fruit C all on root D, but maybe fruit E on fruit F on root G, etc. where E might not be compatible with G, but it does work when going through F.
Sounds like basic trial and error work... good basic science, if it's published in a way that other people can use.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by M. Baranczak on Monday August 04 2014, @08:30PM
Also also worth mentioning: all Eurasian grape varieties (Vinis Vinifera) are now grown on North American (Vinis Labrusca) rootstock. That's because of a disease that attacks the roots, which Labrusca is immune to. This disease almost destroyed the world's wine industry in the 19th century (yeah, you can make wine out of Labrusca grapes - if you like drinking piss).
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Monday August 04 2014, @08:34PM
Sorry: that's Vitis not Vinis.
(Score: 1) by saracoth on Monday August 04 2014, @09:06PM
Reminds me of the Panama Disease [wikipedia.org] situation a coworker told me about. In her youth, she remembers bananas that were bigger than we have today. Then a disease forced a change in the industry. Fortunately, at least in her opinion, today's bananas are sweeter. This was before my time, so I'll have to take her word for it.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Tuesday August 05 2014, @03:11AM
Maybe the bananas weren't bigger, but your coworker was just smaller?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 05 2014, @06:05AM
Hey baby, my banana might not be bigger but it's... it's SWEETER!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 07 2014, @05:48PM
Muscadine is also disease resistant, and slightly more palatable than piss - but not much. They grow wild, and vigorously, in fairly competitive woodland environments.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by JeffPaetkau on Tuesday August 05 2014, @02:29AM
There is lots more information in the TEDx talk here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9EuJ9QlikY [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Monday August 04 2014, @07:19PM
My father does that, but not on that scale. He as a tree with four types of citric fruits.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04 2014, @07:22PM
I am from Santa Rosa, CA
o Luther Burbank Home and Gardens are there, along with a tree like this. Part of why he came up with Nectarines (Peach/Plum Highbred) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Burbank [wikipedia.org]
o Church from One Tree is across the street.
o Ripley of "Believe or Not" is buried 100' from my brother.
o Hell my father had 4 fruit trees in his garden that he graphed (farm kid himself). One had 6 fruits (2 types apple, peach, 2 types plums (prune and royal) and a pear, another had 4, and the last two had 3. This was all on his city house in the front garden.
I am glad that this person is doing this, but it is old school and old news.
(Score: 3, Informative) by saracoth on Monday August 04 2014, @07:58PM
I think there's a difference of scale, time, and effort involved here. Even a 6-in-1 tree would be relatively easy by comparison. I work at Stark Bros. Nurseries, and we've created 5-in-1 trees for general sale before.
Forty? Forty takes a lot of time and effort. Looking at that picture, it's a pretty impressive accomplishment. That tree probably started as a little more than a stick to roast marshmallows on, with grafts done bit by bit over time. The effort of pruning such a tree to achieve the desired shape and maintain balance between varieties likely took some dedicated planning and work. Not to mention patience.
It's one thing to talk about multi-variety trees someone could own by just throwing money at a retailer. However, this kind of accomplishment could inspire people, or intrigue them enough to lead to something even better down the road.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Geotti on Monday August 04 2014, @10:15PM
The tree in the picture [treeof40fruit.com] looks absolutely surreal. If I wouldn't have read the summary, I'd have thought it's just another photoshop job.
(Score: 1) by nadaou on Tuesday August 05 2014, @11:33AM
It sure looks like a really bad Photoshop job from the lasso tool edges, uniform texture and perspective of the planter box, and of course the shadows.
The shadow of the tree is facing the viewer on the ground but the blossoms on this side are illuminated? And no shadows from a massive flash?
But the tree might still be real, I'd just love to see a less "artistic" photo of it.
~ Forward in all directions ~
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04 2014, @07:37PM
He actually gave a TED talk on this earlier this year (March)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9EuJ9QlikY [youtube.com]
I have to say, the way this tree blooms is amazing with all the different colors from the different branches.
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Monday August 04 2014, @07:41PM
This article got me wondering how similar 2 trees have to be to do a graft. Could I graft an apple onto an oak, a pear onto a birch, either onto a cedar?
If so I might have some work to do where I go hunting so I can have some apple and pear fed deer.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Monday August 04 2014, @08:08PM
Probably not. The 40-fruit tree is a made of all stone-fruit. These are all in close family with each other. An apple and an oak would be considerably apart, genetically speaking, and that would probably play against success. There are parasitic plants that tap into other plants. But they also are rather picky which hosts they can cope with.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by saracoth on Monday August 04 2014, @08:37PM
I admit I handle the technology side rather than the growing side of the business, but at least at Stark Bros. Nurseries we generally stick to the same genus at the very least. Even the examples from TFS all appear to be from Prunus [wikipedia.org]
There are exceptional and fuzzy cases. We have at least one case where the rootstock and variety have different a genus, and I've heard of cases where a graft might last for the better part of a decade before being rejected.
It's kind of like how humans and pigs don't mix, but we can transplant heart valves, but we can't use other pieces. Biology, including plant biology, can be a strange world. It can be hard to draw clear lines and make simple rules with no ambiguity or exceptions. Sure makes programming stuff fun sometimes :)
(Score: 1) by dbe on Monday August 04 2014, @08:45PM
Just give/subsidize 2 trees to house owners to plan:
- one multi citrus
- on multi stone fruit tree
Wait a few years and enjoy a local production of nice fruits for the community.
With the climate we have south bay that should work great...
-dbe
(Score: 1) by panachocala on Monday August 04 2014, @09:48PM
Maybe a dumb question - do all the fruits on a grated tree tend to taste alike? E.g. if you grafted an orange branch onto a lemon tree, do the oranges appear slightly yellow and taste sour? Or is it indistinguishable from a legit orange.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jackb_guppy on Monday August 04 2014, @10:12PM
No, they do not taste a like. It is common that graphs are done. Normally a local wild root is found and used a root stock for a tree you want to plant. The reason for this, the wild local root already grows in the local soil with it fungus/bacteria/virus "immunity" in place. California wine crops started as cuttings from France and graphed to local roots. When France had a blithe, they brought the root stock and vines back from California, to restart theirs.
As noted above, my father created his own multiple graphed trees. They were not all stone fruit (peach/plum/prune), also had apples and pears. He harvested and canned every year. My sister is doing the same in her backyard, multiple trees with multiple type of fruits that come in season at different times of the year.
(Score: 1) by helel on Wednesday August 06 2014, @07:15AM
Fun fact: The blight in Europe came from soil/roots of American grapes brought back. Once it had spread everywhere they had no choice but to use American rootstock in their now American soil conditions. Invasive species don't just go one way.
(Score: 2) by jackb_guppy on Wednesday August 06 2014, @04:29PM
It less the French got even... also gave us snails!
(Score: 1) by Meepy on Monday August 04 2014, @10:11PM
From looking through his website and TED talk, so far all he has is a couple of badly photoshopped pictures and a nursery of trees that are maybe 5 years old. At least it looks like he's doing it right by producing many copies at once. Some of them are also planted in various sites around the country. Whether any of them make it to full size with 40 grafts remains to be seen - I truly doubt it since some varieties are likely to be far more energetic than others and the tree will quickly become unbalanced.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday August 05 2014, @06:41AM
Hmmm... Yummy... If it's like the fruit salad tree that Leela gave Fry in Futurama S1E3, I want one! :)
This might get you there:
http://www.tubeplus.me/player/942245/Futurama/season_1/episode_3/I%2C_Roommate/ [tubeplus.me]
(Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday August 05 2014, @06:47AM
Good candidate for best episode ever :)
One of my favorites!
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Tuesday August 05 2014, @08:18AM
Wow, that sounds like a lot of hard graft.