Re: fruit salad trees

fellow gardeners
I received a catalog in the mail just this week. This is the first time for this one as far as I can remember. The name is "Gardeners' Choice" . I can't find anything that tells about the company or their policy.
Their claim to fame seems to be the largest plants, with the most and biggest fruit or veggies, the largest blooms on each flowering plant, and get this, an apple tree that bears 3 differant kinds of apples, and a fruit tree called the "fruit salad tree" bearing 5 differant kinds of fruit on this tree, and a plant that bears tomatoes above ground and potatoes below ground.

Well, Donna, the plants described above are certainly real enough. Plants of the same (and sometimes even simply similar) genus are often grafted onto one another, roses being being a good example, where the top (scion) is grafted onto the rootstock of a different variety or species. This can be done for a number of reasons: hardiness, ease of propagation, dwarfing by the rootstock, and, of course, marketing.

The apples are all the species Malus. The so-called "Fruit Salad Tree", which is usually a combination of plum/peach/apricot/nectarine/cherry are all in the genus Prunus. The tomato/potato combination are different genera (Lycopersicum/Solanum, respectively), but are both members of the same family, the Solanaceae. This plant is presumably created by growing a tomato and potato next to each other, then bringing the stems in close enough contact that that they actually fuse, a grafting procedure called "inarching" . Once the graft has taken, you can remove the potato top and the tomato bottom and be left with a plant which, presumably, would bear both tomatoes and potatoes. Somehow, I don't think this is a commercially viable crop, otherwise we would see fields of it. I think it exists more as a curiosity.

The grafted fruit trees are a bit more "legitimate". I have an Asian Pear (Pyrus pyrifolia) which has two varieties grafted onto the same tree. This eliminates the need for having two separate trees for pollination. The only problem with grafted trees is that if one of the grafted portions dies, the advantage is lost, the same as what happens if the top of a grafted hybrid tea rose is lost during the winter and you are left with the "wild type" rootstock, whose flowers are generally less than spectacular.

But back to the Gardeners'Choice catalog. While I have never ordered from them, I looked at the website (www.gardenerschoice.net) and am always suspicious of companies that show artist's renderings of the plants they offer, rather than actual photos. I'm certain there are better sources for grafted fruit trees.



--
Don Martinson
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
l*@wi.rr.com

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