The Tree of 40 Fruit is Exactly as Awesome as It Sounds!

1st off, I placed this in food and cooking because of its potential applications. So this fellow Sam Van Aken grew up on a farm and works as an Art professor at Syracuse University, Upstate New York. He also owns an old experimental orchard he saved:

In 2008, Van Aken learned that an orchard at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station was about to be shut down due to a lack of funding. This single orchard grew a great number of heirloom, antique, and native varieties of stone fruit, and some of these were 150 to 200 years old.

So this guy starts grafting a number of stone fruit species together on to a working trees root structure. Then once the working tree was about 2 years old he starts chip grafting additional species. Whats amazing is the level of thought he put into this:

Working with a pool of over 250 varieties of stone fruit, Van Aken developed a timeline of when each of them blossom in relationship to each other and started grafting a few onto a working tree's root structure.

So this genius has created a tree with 40 different fruits all fruiting at different times of the year but in really manageable amounts of food. As a small farmer myself with a bunch of fruit and nut trees my wife and I bought a freeze dryer in order to mitigate waste and store our uneaten treasure, this guy found what I think an insanely brilliant idea..smaller amounts of different fruits! I am blown away, now I want one of these beauties.

Follow the link and look at this natural piece of art in flower, its like a rainbow of different colors exploding.
www.epicurious.com...

Wow, that's gorgeous!
I knew different apple trees grafted together well, but I didn't know one could mix that many fruits.

a reply to: BlueJacket

I wish there was a picture of one actually fruiting.

We've had horrible luck grafting different species. They often turn out a weird hybrid.

a reply to: Atsbhct

Yeah we have bought the grafting tools, we havent really worked with it like intended. We have been working on an herbal based hair line my wife has been developing instead

An "Cocktail Tree", at least that's what we call our multi-grafted citrus trees. When I first encountered such a creature I had intent to go and take 'like every' fruit tree out there and graft them onto one. But it turns out they dont like veg chunks from other plant families struck into them, and they get rejected. But I did have about 20 different types of citrus at one point to go all out in that direction (the store ones will have up to maybe 5 type on them), but most of them got all messed up since then for various reasons.

originally posted by: Atsbhct
a reply to: BlueJacket

I wish there was a picture of one actually fruiting.

We've had horrible luck grafting different species. They often turn out a weird hybrid.

It might only look like "one type" or maybe a few at any given point in the year... with citrus. One of those cold climate critters might just have quite a few going all at once though. Just image search "Cocktail Tree".

Grafting wont create a hybrid. Hybrids only come from resulting seeds between different compatible types. Its more likely the tissues wouldnt hold together; or some part of the tree is sick and not making the fruits right; poor rootstock type you're trying to graft onto; things like this going on for you.

a reply to: BlueJacket

Thats awesome. I once lived at a house that had a cross lemon/tangerine. They were basically lemon sized tangerines.

a reply to: BlueJacket

I always wanted one of these trees, remember seeing apple trees that did 5 kinds of apples a few that had like all passion fruit, never seen one with this many.

# cool aF!

Maybe I could put one on my balcony

a reply to: Lysergic

Passion Fruit are a vine, and there are a great many types (species/varieties). One could set a post, then attach materials up top (wood / chicken wire type materials) in sort of the shape of a tree, plant 10 different types of Passion Fruit / other fruit vines around the base and get similar results. Once it tangles all up there and you cant see the crowning you attach it'll look like a 'tree'. Passion vines would double with nearly year round flowering to go along with it, each type out there has a rather unique looking flower to it so to have 10 types all flowering and fruiting at once would be amazing.

Oh yeah, if stuck up in an apartment you could hang a bit of lattice wood on your overhang / up the walls / across the ceiling and set a planter with several passions in it and they'd fill it all in and make it all green and ripe.

Ever eat a passion fruit? I have, amazing the sweet and the sour ones, and I have this theory that the name comes not from the baby Jesus, but instead well you have to 'eat it out'.

a reply to: IgnoranceIsntBlisss

yeah we grow a passion vine passiflora incarnata, although Ohio is a bit too far north so we have to cover it over with leaves for the winter. My wife makes a pasion fruit water kefir

also one of the most beautiful flowers

Wow!! That's amazing, gorgeous AND awesome!!!
I'm a totally amateur gardener. I'm really bad at it lol
I can't keep any fruit trees alive (or much else for that matter!) but I keep trying

a reply to: Starcrossd

They love manure, and they fruit a lot more if you prune them.

a reply to: BlueJacket

Thank you! I will try that.

a reply to: BlueJacket



Surreal and beautiful.

a reply to: Wide-Eyes

That is just gorgeous!!!!! Thanks for the pic!

a reply to: BlueJacket

Yea, I really enjoyed this. I read the source and also the 5 minute Tedx presentation at: TEDxManhattan which has more pictures too.

I never though of almond as a stone fruit before. I also liked the part about antique and heirloom varieties.

a reply to: Wide-Eyes

Thanks for posting the picture. Its stunning

a reply to: toms54

Yes, I intend to watch the tedx talk still. I 1st stumbled on to it on Graham Hancoks site, then found the epicurious article. Really cool effort.

originally posted by: BlueJacket
a reply to: Wide-Eyes

Thanks for posting the picture. Its stunning

You're welcome. I thought it was worth posting in the thread for the linkophobes.

Wow. I think I've seen this tree before without even opening your link. What I'm really interested in is your freeze dryer that you bought and do you freeze dry your nuts? What kind of nuts do you buy. My father grows chestnuts but now can't turn them into flour due to nanny state food and health rules. He looked at freeze drying them but it costs so much to do. He use to make chestnut crumb and flour and sell hot cooked chestnuts at the local market. Just curious. Thanks.