North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Lon J. Rombough" <lonrom@hevanet.com>]

Title: Re: [nafex] Seedling tree

The pome group that really gets promiscuous is Crataegus.  I have, or know of, Crataegus x Sorbus, Crataegus x Mespilus,  Crataegus x Mespilus x Sorbus, and there are probably more.   Pyronia is used as a virus indicator at the NCGR in Corvallis, but while it bears fruit, it is so late it never ripens.  The "Shipova" is a joke - the only place I've ever seen it bear fruit here is at the NCGR where it was surrounded by all sorts of pears, etc.  that pollinated it.  No one I've talked to who has a tree of it in an ordinary yard has been able to get any sort of crop.  
Certainly there could be some apple x pear hybrids out there somewhere with good fruit.  Pears will graft on Winter Banana apple and the Russians often use a technique of grafting one species on another to make it easier to cross the two.  Maybe that would be the way to make apple-pear hybrids more readily possible.  NAFEX is certainly the gang to play with it.
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From: jim <jmc1@epix.net>
To: nafex@egroups.com
Subject: Re: [nafex] Seedling tree
Date: Fri, Oct 27, 2000, 10:38 AM

As a matter of fact, Donna, the apple x pear cross IS possible.  The late Don Egolf at National Arboretum worked on this a bit some 3 decades ago;  Don figured he was getting about one true intergeneric hybrid per 20,000 crosses -- not the best odds.  Our pomes are a bit oddball, you know -- the pear x quince hybrids are well known as Pyronia veitchii; 'Shipova' and 'Smokvarka' are in eastern Europe widely distributed Sorbus  by  Pyrus  cultivars. No doubt there are other notables lurking around. The Polish and Russian pomologists have done considerable work along these lines.

As to your peddler neighbor's apple -- Golden Delicious x pear? Not even a little bit likely -- but not quite impossible.

Jim Cummins
Geneva
 www.cumminsnursery.com
 

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