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nafex - [nafex] Re: Hardy Apricots

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  • From: dwoodard@becon.org
  • To: nafex@egroups.com
  • Subject: [nafex] Re: Hardy Apricots
  • Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 07:36:19 -0000

--- In nafex@egroups.com, Claude Jolicoeur <cjoli@g...> wrote:
> Douglas,
> I was reading in more depth your well documented note on hardy
apricots and
> a few questions raised...
>
> 1. Are P.mandshurica and P.sibirica really different species from
> P.armeniaca or simply strains?
>
I actually know very little about this, but I have noticed that
authorities seem to differ; some treat them as species and some as
subspecies or botanical varieties.

> 2. Other than cold hardiness, are there important difference
between them?

Again, I am confident of very little. I have a vague impression, and
I am not sure whether it was formed from reading direct statements or
from inference, that P. sibirica is a smaller tree, has poorer fruit,
greater coldhardiness (resistance to deep cold) and less
susceptibility to dormancy problems that P. mandshurica. I understand
that P. sibirica has been favoured on the prairies as an apricot
rootstock. Possibly the Morden station would know of a source of P.
sibirica, or possibly Arthur Coutts (or his son)(A. W. Coutts, Box
539, Unity, Saskatchewan S0K 4L0).
> For instance, you wrote :
> >I understand that Scout has tended to have dormancy problems in
the
> >East which makes me suspect that it may have some P. mandshurica
> >ancestry.
> Does this mean that there is a fundamental dormancy problem with
> P.mandshurica in the East?
>
Yes, very definitely. I have not grown either P. mandshurica or P.
sibirica, but this has been reported by others, including Ken
Taylor's comments to me. I was told by the Vineland station (seven
miles west of me) that they had tried to keep Scout and Sansin (both
Manitoba-hardy) in their collection (they bred apricots in the past)
but found it impossible, especially with Sansin. The trees had no
problem with our deep cold in this commercial peach growing area, but
they could not take the cold weather following long warm thaws in
late winter. An extreme example occurred in the winter of 1980-1981.
I was living on Amherst Island near Kingston at the time. We had
minus 25 or 30 F. just after Christmas which did not seem to bother
some young Harrow apricots that I had. In February we had a thaw
lasting 2 or 3 weeks during which day temperature peaks got close to
50 F. In March we had a cold snap with temperatures down below zero
F. My apricots couldn't take this and the branches started to shrivel
up and the trees died. P. mandshurica will take very little of this
kind of stress; it is a sucker for thaws. As I mentioned, there is
one recent cultivar which has a reputation for being more resistant
than the others, but I am not sure which one it is.

>
3. In my notes, I had Scout listed as a Manchurian seedling, which
goes
> with what you suspect (above), but then Brooks and Olmo would be
wrong. Or
> maybe the explanation could be that if Manchurian is a strain of
> P.armeniaca, then Brooks and Olmo would also be right???
>
I get the impression that fruit authorities get things wrong from
time to time. Maybe Brooks and Olmo made the mistake, maybe it was
Woykoff, maybe a translator or some other intermediary. There are
lots of opportunities to make mistakes in this kind of work;
including relying on memory, one's own or other peoples', when one
should not. Maybe Woykoff reported (sheer speculation) that he was
sending seedlings of a cross in which the seed parent was P.
armeniaca and this got garbled to both parents being P. armeniaca.

Whether species or strain, there is a difference in dormancy.

> Thanks, Claude
>
> ---------------
> A 14:28 00.12.11 -0000, vous avez écrit :
> >Claude, have you tried Westcot and Morden 604? They were both bred
at
> >the Agriculture Canada station at Morden, Manitoba in Agriculture
> >Canada zone 3b and have been reported successful by several people
in
> >cold areas of Eastern Canada. They have Prunus armeniaca ancestry
(or
> >mostly) and are not unusually prone to dormancy problems. [....]

I have read or been told some time ago that Central Asian P.
armeniaca are relatively resistant to dormancy problems but tend to
be susceptible to brown rot. I have also heard that the P. armeniaca
from Hunza (N. Pakistan) tend to dormancy problems in eastern North
America.

Douglas Woodard dwoodard(at)becon.org (905) 682-4349
56 Maple Street, St. Catharines, Ontario L2R 2A9


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