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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] apple & pear seeds to share

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  • From: dwoodard@becon.org
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] apple & pear seeds to share
  • Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2006 01:50:51 -0500 (EST)

Tanis, I deduce that your Beautiful Arcades are BA seedlings and not
the original clonal Beautiful Arcade cultivar. Please correct me if
I am wrong.

Then seedlings of your trees would likely be 1/4 to 1/2 to nearly 100% Beautiful Arcade and rather variable, rather than 1/2 Beautiful Arcade as in the case of the original Nova Scotia seedlings. Much
of their *average* suitability for rootstocks would depend on the
unknown pollen parents in the two generations.

I note that Snow/Fameuse is thought to be a parent of McIntosh, and McIntosh seedlings were much used as rootstocks for standard trees
in the old days up to about 1960.

I read in the old books that Tolman Sweet was popular as a hardy
framework in Ontario a hundred years ago.

Probably roguing would be especially important for seedlings of your trees; I seem to recall that "F2" seedlings are especially variable.
However, one would expect many of the seedlings to be strong in BA characteristics. Some of the seedlings that were slow growing but
looked thrifty might be quite interesting as dwarfing rootstocks.
Root cuttings could be taken later from grafted trees that
performed well after several years.

Can anyone comment on the initial growth rates of successful
dwarfing apple rootstocks compared to vigourous stocks? Is the
dwarfing character closely related to initial growth rate or is it
more closely related to final size and the time taken to reach it?

Doug Woodard
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada


On Sun, 29 Oct 2006, tanis cuff wrote:

Good points! Discussion in CAPS.


----Original Message Follows----
From: dwoodard
To: North American Fruit Explorers <>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] apple & pear seeds to share
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2006 03:16:57 -0400 (EDT)

Tanis, the pollen parent affects the hardiness of apple tree offspring
as well as the seed parent. If it's not too tedious, it might be
helpful if you could tell us the names of the cultivars you have
growing near your Beautiful Arcades, and maybe something about
the climate in your part of Wisconsin.
WINTER ZONE 4; I THINK IT'S TECHNICALLY 'HUMID', BUT SUMMERS CAN GET
DESPAIRINGLY DRY. THE BEAUTIFUL ARCADES' NEARBY POLLENIZERS ARE MOSTLY NOT
NAMED, THO ONE HAS TOLMAN SWEET NEARBY PLUS A MCINTOSH OFFSPRING; OTHER HAS
A SNOW/FAMEUSE W/IN REACH. ALL OTHER TREES ARE UNKNOWN NAMES, & A FEW
CHANCE-SEEDLINGS. ALL HAVE LASTED HERE BECAUSE OF ENOUGH DISEASE-TOLERANCE
TO HELP SURVIVE THE WINTERS AND ENOUGH FLAVOR IN THE FRUITS THAT PEOPLE
PROPAGATED THE TREES.

I understand that in Nova Scotia where the practice of using seedling
Beautiful Arcade trees as rootstock originated (their BAs are planted
with Antonovkas) it is considered necessary to rogue the BA seedlings
and discard about 20%, the ones that are unusually big or small.
I would guess that they take care to grow them in uniform soil and
sun and at uniform spacing.
THANKS! I'VE BEEN GARDENING & WEEDING ALL MY LIFE, SO IT WOULDN'T HAVE
OCCURRED TO ME TO TELL SOMEONE "YOU'LL HAVE TO WEED"!
ESPECIALLY THE PEAR SEEDLINGS SHOULD BE ROGUED, TO REMOVE THE HIGHEST-VIGOR
SEEDLINGS: HIGH-VIGOR ROOTSTOCKS WILL TEND TO GROW HIGH-VIGOR MONSTER PEAR
TREES.

If anyone hasn't heard of them, Beautiful Arcade is an old Russian
summer apple, fairly hardy. The Kentville Nova Scotia station of
Agriculture Canada found some decades ago that selected Beautiful
Arcade seedlings made a satisfactory semidwarf apple rootstock for
the Annapolis Valley soil (clay I believe) and climate.
I CAN CONFIRM MINE ARE SEMI-DWARF ROOTSTOCKS, W/ A GOOD RANGE OF
COMPATABILITY FOR APPLE (I'VE HAD SOME REJECTIONS AFTER 3, 4, 5 YEARS). BUT
MINE PRODUCE A SMALL RED APPLE-- MIGHT CALL THEM APPLE-CRABS-- LATE-SEPT,
EARLY OCT. GOOD TART FLAVOR.

I ACQUIRED MY BEAUTIFUL ARCADE ROOTSTOCKS IN LATE 80s OR 1990 FROM A
NAFEXER, OR 2ND-PERSON THRU NAFEX. SORRY, I DIDN'T THINK TO ASK ABOUT
POLLEN PARENT! THEY ARE PERFORMING WELL IN SANDY-LOAM, AND DON'T SEEM TO
SUFFER WHERE SPRING SNOW-MELT OCCASIONALLY FLOODS 1/2 THE ROOT ZONES.

Doug Woodard
St. Catharines, Ontario
Niagara Peninsula




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