North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["del stubbsrockyman" <pinewoodel@hotmail.com>]

thanks Jim,   valuable imput on prunifolia.  the seedlings of it my neighbor 
and i purchased and grafted 3 years back were from Lawyers in montana (300 
trees)    this was before i found nafex!......the roots as they were sent 
varied from bare sticks  to impressive masses of long fibry rootlets.   so 
far at their young age no suckering.     orchards are nearly nonexistent in 
this zone 2 to 3 region.   one of my long term goals is to prove it 
possible, and years from now when ive got well tested rootstock, frame, and 
varietal  trees to choose from to turn my love of grafting into a truly 
locally appropriate nursery.
                                           minnesota del

>From: jim <jmc1@epix.net>
>Reply-To: nafex@egroups.com
>To: nafex@egroups.com
>Subject: Re: [nafex] Malus prunifolia
>Date: Sat, 09 Dec 2000 12:23:58 +0000
>
>1) I used Malus prunifolia seedlings from Lawyer a good many years ago and
>have been gunshy ever since.  Suckering in the nursery and later in the
>orchard was the heaviest I've ever encountered.  Roots were very fibrous in
>the nursery but I did not observe later in the orchard.  However,
>2) If we look at the geographical distribution of the species, it's easy to
>judge that one should not generalize from a single or even several
>samples.  Malus prunifolia is evidently endemic across an extremely wide
>belt, from eastern Siberia nearly to Lapland.  The north-south
>distribution  is also quite extensive.  Within that wide distribution there
>must be an enormous variation in characteristics.  To further complicate
>matters, there has been constant hybridization along the contacts with
>other Malus species.    We have no way of knowing whether  a particular lot
>of Malus prunifolia seeds came from Vladivostock or from the northern Urals
>or maybe from half a dozen hybrid trees in the Warsaw Botanical Gardens.
>3) We do know that within the species we can find resistance to fire blight
>(although there is no evidence that the species in its natural habitat was
>ever exposed to Erwinia), immunity to apple scab, non-preference resistance
>to voles, and a lot of tolerance for low winter temperatures. The
>Cornell-Geneva 'Novole', which carries those 3 resistances, comes from a
>Malus prunifolia x Malus sieboldii cross.
>
>My bottom line:  I wouldn't touch Malus prunifolia with a 10ft pole for
>rootstock purposes unless I knew a great deal about the characteristics of
>the particular seed lot.
>
>//Jim
>www.cumminsnursery.com
>
>edforest55@hotmail.com wrote:
>
> > Del (ando others interested)
> > I just did a search on prunifolia and did find that one site
> > (garden. . . something or other) did say that it does well on heavy
> > clay soil.
> > This makes me wonder Del, what did the roots look like, were they
> > more carrot shaped or fibrous?
> > It said that prunifolia also does well under drought conditions, and
> > is frost tolerant.
> > I would like to learn more about malus prunifolia, anyone out there
> > used it as a rootstock? Lawyers used to offer it but not lately.
> > Kevin
> >
>
>

_____________________________________________________________________________________
Get more from the Web.  FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com


-------------------------- eGroups Sponsor -------------------------~-~>
eGroups eLerts
It's Easy. It's Fun. Best of All, it's Free!
http://click.egroups.com/1/9698/0/_/423498/_/976415464/
---------------------------------------------------------------------_->