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  • From: Douglas Hinds <cedecor@gmx.net>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] fruit trees
  • Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2012 12:33:12 -0600

On 12/23/2012 11:59 AM, Ben Martin Horst wrote:
At least some evolutionary biologists have attributed the
on-again-off-again production of mast crops as an adaptation to prevent
predator populations -- e.g. squirrels -- from growing to damaging levels.

Squirrels collect acorns and bury them in the ground, where some of them sprout. That makes squirrels the oak trees best friends and evolutionary partners, who do more good than harm, as long as oak trees keep producing more than squirrels can eat. In that sense, for an oak tree to develop an alternating high/low production strategy (which attributes anthropomorphic motivation to oak trees), it would be counterproductive to it's own reproductive success, since the squirrels would eat them all and none would create baby oak trees.

Also, not all evolutionary biologists think alike. Personally, I subscribe to Lynn Margulis's Serial Endosymbiotic Theory (SET) which emphasizes Fusion and Association (essentially collaboration, mutually beneficial survival strategies), over Darwinian Natural Selection (essentially, Competition). Lynn (along with Richard ?? was responsible for

The squirrel population (for example) is essentially limited by the oaks'
production of acorns in poor years, so in the good years there are huge
quantities of acorns left for propagative purposes. I don't know if this
applies to other irregular producers (like apples) or not, but might be
worth bearing in mind.

-Ben

Yes I agree. Particularly on Sunday.



On Sun, Dec 23, 2012 at 9:17 AM, Douglas Hinds <cedecor@gmx.net> wrote:

On 12/23/2012 8:33 AM, Frances wrote:
Sea buckthorn not only produces a highly nutritious fruit (which
requires processing and gloves to harvest), but it is, reputedly, a most
adaptable plant to earth conditions, and has natural protection from other
creatures that might want to harvest the fruit. And, it is a nitrogen fixer!
Many excellent tropical fruit bearing trees are also legumes.

... an apple and pear specialist ... explained what the off/on nature of
apple harvests was about – this, no doubt, applies to other fruit trees as
well...
Yes but - from my experiences (primarily with subtropical fruit, i.e.
avocados), some varieties are prone to this behavior (heavy crops one
year but light crops the next) while others are not. Furthermore, while
thinning may be good anyway (to obtain larger fruit), there are other
alternatives, such as growing a variety that produces it's heaviest crop
during the off years. That way you'll have plenty of fruit all the
time, to eat and sell.

In any case, these are genetically based traits, so how hard can it be
to develop a cross that tends to produce every year? After all,
_somebody_ had to develop or reproduce the varieties already in use.

People often refer to the phen. of an ‘on’ year and ‘off’ year for apple
harvest. What Bill explained was that, the trick is to thin the apples
when they are the size of ping pong balls, making selections among closely
located specimens... Otherwise, the tree has such a huge hormonal output
that it has little energy for the buds it is also preparing for the next
year. The trick is to even out its hormonal workload with a result of a
more consistent year-to-year yield. Otherwise, what happens is that the
buds are few for the following year on the year of a huge apple outlay, and
then, in the year with less apples, the buds for the following year are
proportionately higher in number... Very interesting to learn about the
life cycle of the apple tree, we thought, and to understand more about its
productivity cycles.

Once again - I seriously doubt that the phenomena you refer to is an
innate characteristic of apple trees per se. I would expect that trait
to be present in _some_ apple varieties but not all. And remember, those
of you who think seedling apples are inherently bad are rejecting the
means of resolving this issue. IOW: If the quality of most seedling
apples is less than ideal, all it means is that we human animals still
have more work to do, since that is exactly where all new varieties come
from: Chance (or intentionally crossed) Seedlings that are then
reproduced by whatever means, and if the means isn't planting seed, the
genetically instability will continue to remain. So plant the seeds,
see what you'll get and then plant again. :-)

DH






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